Darth RoveGate: Mark Kleiman and The Left Coaster are On iT
So go check 'em out.
I've totally lost my head about this stuff now. Quit reading this blog. Go away. I've lost my head. I want to break things.
I wanted to hold back and wait for more facts, but the nefarious machinations of the Republican noise machine have pushed me over the edge. When it seems like every American should recognize that we need to get to the bottom of this, the Republican leadership has explicitly adopted a strategy of misdirection and stonewalling. Despite my best efforts, these tactics have made me far more inclined to view Rove unfavorably. It's hard to maintain objectivity about a dispute when one side in it is so obviously trying to deceive you.
It is, I think, in large part the tactics of the Republican leadership that is the big story here. Even if we're not sure exactly what Rove did, nor sure about whether it was legal or not, we know how the Republican leadership operates: hide the facts, stonewall reporters, deceive the public, accuse their political opponents of dishonesty, treason, or insanity. All administrations seem to stonewall and misdirect to some extent, but this administration long ago crossed the line separating ordinary--though still reprehensible--political bullshit from indecent and undemocratic moral crimes.
Listen, we can't run a democracy like this. We can't let people like this remain in control of our government. We have responsibilities--to our principles and the people who have died defending them, to the Founders, and the the world. We are thought of as the paradigm of liberal democracy, and the more our leaders act like tin-horn dictators of third-rate bananna republics, the more ammunition we give the anti-democratic forces in the world that sit in the shadows hoping and waiting for democracy to fail--or who actively try to bring it down.
That's it. I'm out of here. Go somewhere else where someone can still think clearly.
So go check 'em out.
I've totally lost my head about this stuff now. Quit reading this blog. Go away. I've lost my head. I want to break things.
I wanted to hold back and wait for more facts, but the nefarious machinations of the Republican noise machine have pushed me over the edge. When it seems like every American should recognize that we need to get to the bottom of this, the Republican leadership has explicitly adopted a strategy of misdirection and stonewalling. Despite my best efforts, these tactics have made me far more inclined to view Rove unfavorably. It's hard to maintain objectivity about a dispute when one side in it is so obviously trying to deceive you.
It is, I think, in large part the tactics of the Republican leadership that is the big story here. Even if we're not sure exactly what Rove did, nor sure about whether it was legal or not, we know how the Republican leadership operates: hide the facts, stonewall reporters, deceive the public, accuse their political opponents of dishonesty, treason, or insanity. All administrations seem to stonewall and misdirect to some extent, but this administration long ago crossed the line separating ordinary--though still reprehensible--political bullshit from indecent and undemocratic moral crimes.
Listen, we can't run a democracy like this. We can't let people like this remain in control of our government. We have responsibilities--to our principles and the people who have died defending them, to the Founders, and the the world. We are thought of as the paradigm of liberal democracy, and the more our leaders act like tin-horn dictators of third-rate bananna republics, the more ammunition we give the anti-democratic forces in the world that sit in the shadows hoping and waiting for democracy to fail--or who actively try to bring it down.
That's it. I'm out of here. Go somewhere else where someone can still think clearly.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:11 PM
9 Comments:
This is what happens when you confuse news and entertainment. We don't hear much about uncomfortable stuff because its bad for ratings - the modern variation of the big lie.
As a result, too many of our fellow-citizens seem to see the world as a big sandbox and W as the brave little boy who stood up to the bully because it was the right thing to do. "Wanted, Dead or Alive" Cowboys in white hats in grim pursuit of the evil Black Bart bin Laden. W playing a strong silent Gary Cooper-type - somebody's nuts alright.
A great man once wrote:
"I'm not saying it's an unreasonable reaction, I'm saying that we usually can't trust the assessments of those with frothy mouths. That raises a problem though: if a real outrage is outrageous enough to make a reasonable person (to stick with my increasingly annoying metaphor) froth at the mouth...well, you see the problem. If an administration does something outrageous enough to make the rational people who oppose it lose their cool, then they win a rhetorical victory by effectively neutralizing rational critics."
Wise.
Back in the 90s, there were a number of folks afflicted with Clinton Derangement Syndrome. They went into apoplexy about a relatively minor matter, and actually tried to use it to remove Clinton from office.
Well, they lost their offices in the 1998 election almost to a man, and even their leader, the Speaker of the House, who conceived and engineered his party's historic victory in 1994, was forced to abandon his political career. They lost everything.
Did Clinton and his people stonewall and (gulp) lie out of self-preservation? Mebbe they did. Were the anti-Clintons technically correct in their accusations? Yup. They wuz.
So what? This has been going on forever. It's just with the advent of the 24/7 news cycle and its voraciousness that we notice.
Save your ammo and keep your head.
Um, tvd, your comparison between the Rove Attack Squad of today and the Clinton Attack Squad of seven years ago breaks down because the unlying matters are not remotely equivalent. Clinton was guilty of screwing a willing intern, and later lying about it under oath. Rove is guilty of treason.
Clinton's perjuty was a serious crime, a felony, but it was not a national security risk. Rove's crime is literally, realistically, a national security risk: we'll never know how many of our assets overseas were tortured and killed after their handler, Valerie Plame, was exposed as a US agent. We'll never know how much future intelligence will now be missed because of this.
So, in a nutshell, I see profound differences in both degree and substance between the two situations. But maybe that's just me.
If Ms. Plame had reason to be concerned about repercussions for her CIA contacts, she wouldn't have done a photo spread for Vanity Fair. Her photo distributed worldwide would be far more harmful than Rove's oblique reference. But she didn't exactly drive an Aston Martin with rear mounted dual water cannons.
If she were as hot as some of our correspondents are making her out to be, she should be shot along with Rove.
But I'm not making an equivalency with the Clinton case: the US attorney will sort the facts out. Perhaps Rove (and thereby Plame, IMO) is some sort of traitor, or at least a loose-lipped ship-sinker.
I happen to think both incidents were minor. I'm on record as noting that the House Republicans who led the charge against Clinton were almost all turned out of office, and there was a certain justice in that. My point is that going to DefCon4 inappropriately tends to come back and bite you, is all.
Mostly, I'm just worried about WS. In my meager fashion, just sending some love from this side of the wall.
tvd:
In this segment of the multiverse, Plame was photographed in Vanity Fair months after she was outed by Novaks' infamous column.
Any spy who had to see the picture in VF to then realize who she really was working for probably wasn't worth whatever salary his/her government was paying him/her.
Thanks tvd. I'm feeling a bit less psychotic today.
OK, man. We return to our regular programming and try to get back to normal around here. :-)
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