What He Said
What we are looking at here is a stark illustration of what political speech is in this country, what the right wing has known for some time, and what liberals and centrists are belatedly coming to understand – it is a way of expressing and exerting power. I’m not saying that reasoned political debate is useless – it is essential to democracy – I’m saying that the O’Reilly-ized political climate is so pathological at this point that to treat political discourse with the right as anything other than an exercise in brute force is to concede without a fight. So, sticking with the torture issue, it is worse than pointless to get into the debates that the right wing wants to have – what if there was a ticking bomb? how can one define torture to infinite precision? what are appropriate and inappropriate historical analogies? – are distractions, and distractions by design. Guantanimo Bay is a fantastic place where all guilty brown people recieve far better than they deserve and anyone who says different hates America; then, lose a few contracts and stir up some bad publicity and, suddenly, there are all these shades of grey you never considered. Amazing, that.
Yeah. And don’t count on the press to sort it out. Like Monsignor Tim sez “You get it from the left and the right, and I think that kind of confirms you’re doing a pretty good job..”
How convenient, eh? Gray is the color of dirty dishwater, no matter what the shade.
.