By Dennis Loo
Have you forgotten Bush and Cheney’s proud admissions that they authorized waterboarding (i.e., torturing) detainees? Do you recall Cheney calling it repeatedly “a no-brainer?” Do you not remember the Downing Street Memos that revealed that Bush and Blair were consciously fabricating grounds to attack Iraq and that their WMD claim they knew to be false? Did you not know that even if Iraq had had WMD that attacking a country that has not first attacked you is the supreme war crime under international law?
Equating anti-war activists, such as Code Pink’s political actions illustrating these wars’ criminality by putting fake blood on their hands, with those who ludicrously claim that Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim socialist/communist/Nazi, and who don’t hesitate to call blacks ”niggers” and women bitches and worse, doesn’t make you appear to be a proponent of the sensible middle. It makes you look like someone who can’t tell the difference between truth and falsehood and between those who propagate war crimes and bigotry and those who seek to expose and stop those war crimes and bigotry.
Your call for a 10-30-10 rally in Washington to “Take It Down a Notch for America” is based on the notion that what is wrong with politics today is the tone. Glenn Greenwald points out that acrimonious debate in American politics goes back to as early as the 1700s and that torture-advocating extremists like Bill Kristol and John Yoo are very polite. While the right-wing’s tone overall is reprehensible and deliberately designed to foreclose rational thought and investigation, the main problem with them isn’t their tone, it’s the content of their arguments and the ends that they seek: endless wars of aggression, torture, and suspension of all civil liberties, establishing a theocracy, and blind American xenophobia perpetuated by indefinite and cultivated fear of the “Other.”
When you indiscriminately tar both sides in this fight as extremists you are opposing those who are actually opposing what you yourself oppose. You are also providing ammunition for the right-wing to claim that their despicable lies and 24/7 rants are a reaction to the same emanating from the left and that they are only doing it because “the other side is doing it.” Is this what you want to do?
The left does not own Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. Ask yourself, who does? Who gets to put out their distortions, outright lies, cover-ups, and self-serving interpretive framing and make literally millions of people take it all as gospel?
As long as the right-wing dominates the airwaves, print, and bureaucracy, and gets its way, whether Democrats or Republicans are in office, any talk of an alleged middle-ground acts as a cover for the really ugly and malicious policies and agendas being implemented as we speak.
Comedians who skewer the rich and powerful, the corrupt and maleficent are a treasure to the people because they use the power of humor and point out the truth through contradiction, exposing the blatant hypocrisy of those who seek to deceive and whose positions and privileges are protected through their lies. Those comedians who skewer those who seek to right injustice and who speak truth to power, on the other hand, act on behalf of the rich, powerful, smug and self-serving. Which kind of comedian are you?
The so-called middle ground you seek to promote is fast disappearing while those with malicious purpose gain ground relentlessly. Those who are in this middle ground because they have “s*** to do,” as you say, need to recognize the real “s***” that’s been going on and get the hell out of the agnostic middle and join those who are fighting against these atrocities.
Which ground are you on Jon? Which kind of comedian are you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-3eKS-yRWw
Glad to have seen this statement (thanks, Scott Trent!) I know Jon has been making inroads with young people, but I hadn\’t seen that THIS was the nature of his rally and current views. Absolutely we cannot support any notion of one \”extreme\” equaling the other — or even the idea that \”extreme\” in itself is wrong. Extreme times require not only extreme action, but extreme ideology. Jon, you ain\’t that at all!
Not only do we have a moral divide, but the psychological divide among Americans is growing more and more obvious.
Those whose stock in trade is the cultivation and propagation of fear, xenophobia and the irrational, unreasoning reaction against the “Other” are having a field day as they skillfully manipulate, mislead and misdirect a deeply distracted, disengaged and disconnected population to lash out against one another in an insane frenzy as they embrace ugly and malicious policies and agendas which would have horrified the Founders.
Unfortunately, Jon Stewart’s “Rally For Sanity” is just another tool which the corporate state and their loyal followers can use in order to keep Americans distracted, disengaged and disconnected long enough so they can be pitted against their fellow citizens who are anti-war activists and genuine patriots. Meanwhile, the war crimes continue, and bigotry is justified in the name of “national security”.
What we’re witnessing here< Dennis, is the tried-and-true oligarchical game of "divide and conquer" in action. Keep the American people divided and distracted by the relentless promotion of irrational fears, insecurities and xenophobia long enough for those who have the most to gain through implementation of those ugly and malicious policies and agendas to establish those policies as the law of the land. I wonder if the Founders are standing before God, as they attempt to explain that America isn’t supposed to be a corporate-owned nation, with dreams of empire abroad and fascism at home.
Dennis,
THANK YOU!!! I am with you. We finally see the end of dear Jon Stewart’s corporate leash. Agggghhhhhhh. I have been seeing more and more of Rachel’s and Keith’s.
There is a moral divide in this country and the pragmatic apologists for Obama adm. are still in the “bargaining stage” of the 5 stages of grief post Obama-hypocrisy campaign.
I am so glad you mentioned this. I too brought it up in a recent blog on the insane military machine.
DENIAL is more than a river in Egypt, as they say.
libby