President Rubber vs. Speaker Glue

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6839

President Rubber vs. Speaker Glue
by Allan Uthman | Apr 16 2007 - 5:06pm | permalink
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If you watched the news last week, then you know that Nancy Pelosi is a traitorous felon, working with her fellow Islamic fundamentalists to undermine our nation. Seriously, this is the editorial opinion of such “respected” publications as the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. She wears a goddamn headscarf in a show of the kind of respectful diplomacy so sorely lacking these days and so-called journalists are literally calling for her to be jailed.

It’s becoming rather common these days for conservatives to call for their opponents’ prosecution. It’s not an encouraging sign, to say the least, for the future of democratic debate in America. But what’s so frustrating here is the sheer volume of willful intellectual dishonesty. To each of these conservative opinion-makers, seemingly from the most exalted columnist down to the very last blogger, it just doesn’t matter that for each of Pelosi’s supposed crimes, there are numerous instances of Republicans doing precisely the same thing, only more so. What matters is that they like Republicans, and they don’t like Pelosi. They are rubber, and Democrats are glue.

That’s the level of discourse today. There is no intelligent debate anymore. Republicans and the cowed, compliant press have reneged on the most fundamental elements of rational discussion: listening to your opponents’ arguments, taking them into account, assessing the facts, and responding reasonably. We all need to acknowledge reality. Reality is important. No intelligent thought, let alone policy, can come from its denial. But the alarmingly successful GOP strategy for years now has been to deny it with great vigor. It pervades their every move and statement. Just ask Dick Cheney, who just this week once again trotted out the spurious al Qaeda-Saddam connection, as if the entire country hadn’t moved past it years ago. Or ask damn near every Republican in Washington, who still insist that Alberto Gonzales and others involved in the clearly political Justice Department firings scandal have “done nothing wrong,” despite clear and indisputable evidence to the contrary.

It’s amazing how these guys turn everything into ersatz Orwell. When they’re not naming new organizations in comically disingenuous ways, they’re turning old institutions into similar jokes. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, goes all the way to the Supreme Court in an effort to not protect the environment. And then there’s the “Department of Justice.” Anyone who thinks that prosecuting seven times as many Democratic elected officials as Republicans is justice clearly has a problem with intellectual honesty. And the same goes for anyone who thinks the DoJ should be appointing “loyal Bushies” rather than competent, fair-minded prosecutors. It doesn’t really matter if there’s a specific law against that (although the phrase “obstruction of justice” comes to mind). Any idiot can see that, whether it’s illegal or not, it’s just plain wrong, and it subverts the very idea of justice. It’s shameful, disgusting behavior, and it mocks the purpose of government. Nobody from any party should be okay with it. Nobody who gives a damn about honesty or decency would be.

Again and again, this administration has taken the position that if it has not broken the law, then it has done nothing wrong—a completely amoral position. Not to mention that, when it clearly has broken the law, it has gotten by arm-twisting a supplicant congress into changing the law after the fact, or simply relying on the same congress (and a DoJ replete with “loyal Bushies”) not to bother enforcing the law.

This is further underscored by the Bush team’s unanimous refusal to testify under oath. It’s obvious, and should be considered unacceptable, that there is only one reason for this: they’re lying. That’s it. They can’t go under oath, because that would make their lying a crime. Simple enough, but why doesn’t it seem to bother anybody that they’re tacitly admitting to being completely full of crap? This is what I don’t get about Republicans: Why doesn’t it bother them when their leaders lie? Why isn’t honesty an issue for them? Any doubt that the administration was lying about these firings has been thoroughly removed by their own boldly conflicting statements in the aftermath. These idiots even went so far as to concoct fake memos after the fact in order to justify the firings, as if no one would check the dates. The average Republican’s response: “I know you are, but what am I?”

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