Look at the quality of thought here. It’s something approaching willfully delusional.

Despite him coming around on the war, Drum still has these schoolmarm moments when he believes we live in a rational world and everyone acts rationally for the greater good. I’m sorely tempted to say that anyone who has EVER had this kind of naive faith in the Bush administration (especially one who didn’t support them) and the broken, corrupt system that propped them up, really shouldn’t be paid to give said opinions, no?

Let’s ask the war dead what they think.

Oh, wait….

All I’m saying is, you get a little credit for coming around to the light, you know?

These things have been made possible with the complicit help of a political party that puts its own interests ahead of the nation’s, and a second political party that is merely inept & supine. Perhaps even more culpable is a media that still frames many issues with little actual grasp of fact. Look at Global Warming: apart from Republicans in office & their blindest followers, does anyone else in the world still believe this is not a major major problem & every damn day we waste not confronting it is another nail in the coffin of the only planet we have available to us? There’s no serious debate anywhere else in the world, because the facts speak for themselves. But facts don’t stop these people.

I have never approved of totalitarian measures, but I’d make a certain grasp of fundamental facts a prerequisite before someone can hold a position of power.

And the “history” that Bush so lovingly invokes will look at a people that allowed Clinton to be impeached for a specious non-offense and then watched as his successor committed the grossest breaches of international law and did nothing of substance to stop him, and we will all be judged harshly.

Short answer is that there was a massive feeling of vulnerability and desire for vengance that collectively fed the media and Republican narratives that shaped the war debate. That had not died down completely by November of 2004.

When you had John Kerry saluting and “reporting for duty” at the Dem convention, it fed into a militaristic mindset that kept the country on a war footing and dulled any desire for scrutiny or accountability.

When Bush dropped the ball with Katrinia, a non-terrorist based catastrophe that anyone with a weather map could prepare for days in advance, the image of the President as protector against all evil acts of God and man was shattered.

Slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, destroying the Native culture, treating everyone but rich white men like shit (and up until recently, that was the law of the land), continuing rampant sexism, racism, homophobia, religious bigotry, goddamn reality shows, man, take your pick. Plus, I think we’re all realizing, as a culture, what a really bad idea it was to spend the last, say, 40 years pretending that being stupid and uneducated and provincial was somehow a mark of moral purity and real Americanism. Only pansy foreigners like books ‘n’ learning ‘n’ shit.

‘Course, you’ll never hear anyone own up to that publically. We pretend that every ravaged tribe or lynched black man or 80-hour work week in shitty conditions meant God was not only on our side but set the whole shebang up for just us Americans.

Cognitive dissonance, man, no wonder we are, as a country and as a culture, go from zero to fucking looney at the drop of a hat. And we’ll kill anyone who tells us we might not be right.

Does that much like our good old Democratic Party?

Another difference, in movie war the Good Guyz roll in, roll up the Bad Guyz and shortly after that the credits roll.

In real war it tends to be messier. Especially when the GGs are sort of invading for no reason only they don’t know it because their leader is 180 degrees from a Good Guy and the people who are being invaded know there’s no reason for the ‘splosions and they get pissed. They shoot back and then the GGs have to shoot back and while they’re shooting at the citizens here come some real bastards to take advantage of the fact that the Bad Guyz’s army can’t watch the borders and now they’re shooting at you and the civilians and you have to shoot back and accidentally catch some guy who sort of liked you and now his relatives are pissed.

Also, Abu Gharib.

So if someone will take a brick or a large rock, write “There are no ‘do-overs’ in war.” on a piece of paper and tie it around the brick or rock and heave it through Mr. Beat Like a Drum’s window, I’d be ever so grateful.

Thank you.

then it started getting dirty.

After awhile, it was obvious to everyone that the only way to get by was to lay low. Everyone was afraid to complain.

Pretty much the Grand Old Scheme. A reign of terror.

Either way, nice comparison, Kev. *wags finger right back at him*

Right. I think his point is that even though this exact same thing (lying our way into a stupid pointless war) has happened before, it will like so TOTALLY never happen again, because…uh…bad stuff doesn’t happen in America anymore. Or something.

In scams and advertising, he is what is known as a ‘mark’.

Either way, nice comparison, Kev. *wags finger right back at him*

Two words: “Jeff Gannon”