Teeing off and well

22Jan09

Occasionally, someone in the media finally lets go and rightously blows off steam.  I read the Daily Kos every so often, and have seen its editor, Markos Moulitsas, on various talk shows as well as the Daily Show.  He is an articulate left-liberal, and certainly no radical (except relative to the great mass of Wallmart shppers constituting the American electorate), but since his emphasis is electoral politics and domestic issues, he avoids offense more than some of the AIPAC denizens of the left-barely-leaning Huffington Post. 

The occasion was the latest column by the ever-so-moderate, prim and condescendingly ”centrist” Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius, who contrasted Obama’s “post-partisan” approach with Limbaugh on the far right, or the Daily Kos on the left.  This was utter crap, and Markos rightly called Ignatius on it.  Ordinarily I would not get excited about such exchanges, but the Daily Kos’ viceral response echoes what we in the United States have had to put up with by the hordes of “centrists”, so-called “Iran experts”, members of the “arms control community”, and politicians who equate 4 Israeli deaths with 1300 Palestinians. 

I include the Daily Kos’ fully justified screed in full.  The blog is a recognized voice for the “establishment” left (such as it is - I’m thinking here, people like Barney Frank or the soon-to-be Senator Al Franken.  It’s a far cry from Europe.)   You may avert your eyes at the invocation of the f— word.  Go get ‘em, Markos:   

Hmm. The extremes, according to David Ignatius: us. And Rush Limbaugh.

I would feel better about these pointed words towards us (and by direct extension, me) if I knew which things counted as the “petty grievances” that a radical voice like mine should be “reflecting” upon. Which were they? Was it speaking too loudly of the devolution of the United States into unapologetic torture? Was it complaining of the lives lost in Iraq, or making petty noises that even the president should follow the Constitution when it came to spying upon certain Americans, or making the case for their internment?

When I put up that picture of the Iraqi girl who had just seen her parents shot to death at a checkpoint while Iraq descended into chaos, was that the petty one? When I complained at a presidency that declared patriotism synonymous with support for White House policies, and nationalism synonymous with both? Where was that line, what were the things I am supposed to keep my mouth shut about, in the future? When Rush Limbaugh was playing “Barack the Magic Negro”, all in good fun, of course, what abominable slight was it precisely that makes David Ignatius think of him and me as cut from the same cloth?

What were the worn out dogmas, the ones I should avoid? The insistence that energy policy be rational, or scientific fact be given plain acknowledgement regardless of ideological convenience? The constant, annoying observations of each time that conservative rhetoric was proven utterly false by conservative action? The staggering assertion that competence should be not only be expected of government, but that it could and should be judged? The insistence that if “every life” is sacred, that even those that conservatives did not like might count too? Is it my fury at the plainness with which powerful men can avoid the law, was that the bridge too far, the tired ? So tell me, poster child of the press guarding our democracy, since you have read our site enough to compare it as equivalently distasteful to one of the most hateful, politically blindfolded propagandists in the nation, a man who has truly been nothing but a suckling pig, devoted and supine, at the teat of whatever war against half the nation the policymakers could devise — which were the complaints I had that crossed that line?

This is why I have come, in these recent years, to despise these people. There is no abomination on this earth worth an emotional outburst, in their minds — no conflict worth a raised voice. There is only the mushy, cowardly middle, one that never stands for anything too much or critiques anything too loudly. They all stink like fish, they have been praising the status quo for so long and so colorlessly — and yet they fancy themselves intellectuals for it, and even presume themselves courageous for it.

Throughout a near-decade of partisan demonization from the White House, through constant assertions that fighting against conservative assertions was nothing more or less than treasonous, through incompetence that, at long last, has proved absolutely staggering in every possible arena, from military tactics to disaster preparedness to economic guidance to the most basic acts of government — setting its own budget and ensuring its own financial stability — Never — never — did I hear from the majority of our national supposed watchdogs more than petty fucking odes to a faux-centrist position in which fantasy and reality must be given equal weight, and that legality be not judged to pedantically, or ineptitude too keenly, or partisan viciousness too forcefully, lest anyone get too pissed off or lest the vaunted “centrist” teacup be jarred even slightly by the plain actions of the both parties, out there for all the world to see.

What’s that saying — in easy times, everyone is a patriot? I won’t soon forget Bush and his band of incompetent, bullying, self-absorbed, ideologically obsessed buffoons — an administration so bereft of value that even the Economist wrote its obituary using examples, comparisons and words (incompetent included) that had appeared on this site for most of Bush’s time in office. But I also won’t forget those who, in service to their own coddled hierarchies or fear of sounding ‘petty’ or ‘dogmatic’, weren’t willing to lift their voices too loudly or too energetically against one damn bit of it. They are as much to blame as anyone in the Bush administration, and while it would be As Convenient As All Fucking Hell for the world to forget that it was their own deregulation odes that led to catastrophe, that their own military-playtime assertions were proved concretely to be nothing short of moronic, and their own papers hemmed and hawed over whether or not blind inhumanity towards our fellow man — in the form of torture — was really condemnable, or merely gauche, or whether or not government figures spreading now-proven-absolutely-no-question-about-it-false assertions to goad a democracy into war count as something that should be held against someone, or merely the stuff of past history, nobody’s fault really — while it would be astonishingly convenient for all of us mere peons to forget all of that, and cast recriminations against no one, and go on with our lives like good little shoes and thimbles in someone else’s damned board game — I think I will probably not forget. I am fairly certain, in fact.

But no, these are the people who protect our democracy, our first and only true line of defense against a government that acts against the interests of its own people. These are the people who are paid to pass judgment, and yet have made careers out of never passing judgment, at least not in any way that would provide more than the slightest inconvenience to those in power, and if we were to look into our rear-view mirrors at this past Bush administration, failed and mean-spirited, we would see their faces there too, shaking the same damn hands and mouthing the same damn words as they have always said, year after year after goddamned year, while all of this unfolded on their own television stations and in the pages of their own damn newspapers. And so everything I or anyone else in opposition has ever given voice too can be dismissed, because it was all the stuff of — what was that phrase again? — ah, yes, petty grievances.

Perish the fucking thought.

May Allah bless you, too. 

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