SHUT UP AND ROLL OVER
I posted this on the NY Times message board this morning in response to Nicholas Kristof’s ridiculous column today:
OK, let me see if I get this straight:
The Bushies can run roughshod over decades of concensus in diplomatic affairs, tell boldfaced lies and exaggerations to compell otherwise reasonable people to support their invasion of Iraq, hide their actions on important domestic policy under a veil of secrecy, pay off their wealthy contributors with no-bid contracts overseas and tax cuts at home, argue to courts that not just that their actions imprisoning Americans without due process are correct but that the courts cannot even review their actions, blatantly use a tragedy like 9/11 to forward their political aims, etc. and WE'RE the bad guys for pointing all this out?
Perhaps (probably, in fact) the Bushies have felt empowered to drive down this radical path because they know that anyone who stands up and fights would be called hostile and shrill by "let's make nice" liberals like Kristof, which is the only type of liberal allowed to be seen and heard (and only once in a while) in the mainstream media.
It's our liberal nature to make nice and be fair, which is why Al Gore graciously bowed out after the Supreme Court elected Bush and why Bush was given some lee-way to react how he saw fit, in over his head as he was on 9/11. But, it turns out, allowing Bush deference in both of those instances was a mistake. His handlers mistook governmental comity as rubber stamps and mandates and have used every opportunity to drive wedges through the body politic.
In a tactic usually reserved to right-wing talk radio and cable, Kristof takes an extreme statement about "firing squads" and makes it appear that all Bush dissent is that extreme and stupid. (Although the idea does have some appeal and the Bushies certainly are not unfamiliar or unfriendly with governments using just those tactics...) The most effective Democrats now are properly dropping the "nice guy" tactics that got them walked-over since the Gingrich "revolution". We are going to call a lie a lie; we are going to expose the horrors of this administration; we are going to fight for a return to normalcy; and we are going to propose reasonable alternatives.
We are going to speak truth to power because the truth is on our side. That's why the Bushies never debate differences in policy, always reverting to the politics of personal destruction or some other diversion ("9/11 changed everything"). It may be a change in tone and style for the cloistered likes of Kristof. But isn't the truth a defense?
7:08:56 AM 
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