Aid and Comfort

How have we come to this point? The constitution was written to be unassailable, yet it is being shredded piece by piece by the current administration, aided and abetted by the Keystone Kops-like ministrations in our Legislative Branch. Most interesting to me is the prevalence of pre-fascist mentalities seeping into our government like the sewer backing up through your toilet and slowly turning the hall carpet doo-doo brown.

Glenn Greenwald is so much more of a heavyweight on this I must defer to his take on Holy Joe. And this is just one (albeit extra-slimy) senator. It is a common refrain in our political discourse to attack anyone critical of this administration as ‘traitors’ and ‘un-patriotic’. What really chaps my hide is the fact that this rhetoric does double duty:

• It affords the supporters of this disastrous policy cover while the decisions are being made
• It plants the seeds of discontent (in a war that many of us recognized as unwinnable from the first place) that will flourish once the inevitable occurs. Like Vietnam, the neo-cons and hawks will not blame whatever fallout befalls us on bad policies, but on the lack of ‘backbone’ and ‘sticktoitiveness’ that the anti-war Left displayed to the detriment of the Wise Leaders.

At the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law in my First Evar post, here I go. This is the exact kind of attitude that gave the Nazi party traction in the late 20’s and early 30’s, as well most anywhere else fascism has taken hold. If you saddle the voices of peace with failure that is actually your own fault, you send a clear message about where you’d like the Nation-State to go :

“Peace? What did peace bring our Great Nation? We lost the War thanks to those peace-loving hippies! What we need is a strong military! A strong Leader! Never again will we let those peace-niks endanger our Great Nation!”

Take it away, Herr Goering…

That’s my two cents for now. Hardly uncharted territory, but, hey, I’m new.

BTW- What is it with the authoritarian/GOP set that seems like they live in Bizarro World? Everything they say they intend to do, they achieve the opposite.  Less Terrorism?  Hello Iraqi Terrorist Incubator!  Less Debt?  Hello staggering cash outlays!  Homeland Security?  Hello ineffective boondoggle and porous borders!  Hate gays?  Hello closet!