Quote of the day: Sure, politics has always been low-down, but at the level practiced by our Great Divider, how do we ever repair the wreckage?

"When the president of the United States gleefully bathes in the muck to divide Americans into those who love their country and those who don't, it is destructive to the fabric of the nation he is supposed to be leading."
--from today's New York Times lead editorial, "The Great Divider"*

"This is hardly the first time," the editorial continues, "that Mr. Bush has played the politics of fear, anger and division; if he's ever missed a chance to wave the bloody flag of 9/11, we can't think of when. But Mr. Bush's latest outbursts go way beyond that. They leave us wondering whether this president will ever be willing or able to make room for bipartisanship, compromise and statesmanship in the two years he has left in office."

Okay, there the writer takes the argument one step too far. Bipartisanship? Compromise? Statesmanship? Isn't it obvious to real Americans that the commies and faggots and lib'ruls at the New York Times want the terrorists to win?

Just a joke, folks! What we meant to say is: We can now say safely that the man who presented himself to the electorate originally as a "great uniter" was never serious about it. In fact, we can go so far as to say that bipartisanship, compromise and statesmanship are qualities that the modern American Far Right has in large part organized itself to destroy utterly.

And the editorial writer got the consequence exactly right in saying that these tactics are "destructive to the fabric of the nation."

Let's not kid ourselves that politics has ever been thoughtful or fair or unifying. Nevertheless, the strategy that Karl Rove has mapped out for one-party rule set out deliberately to destroy the possibility of rationality in governing as well as politicking. And Rove always knew what he was doing. Taking his cue from the public embrace of ignorance, hatred and bigotry championed by Ronald Reagan as president, Rove and his fellow travelers have set about remaking the American psyche, tuned to the worship of stupidity, greed and superstition.

Somehow that rip in the fabric of American sense and civility has to be repaired, even while the massive damage wrought on the infrastructure of American and our international relations have to be salvaged and entirely reconstructed. It's such a massive job that one hardly knows where to begin.

Well, obviously one begins Tuesday by t'rowing da bums out. And the job would be a lot easier without Democratic forces of destruction like Rahm Emanuel and Holy Joe Lieberman and their philosophy of "Hey, chickie, it's all for sale--for the right price. How much you got?" Unfortunately, voters can't do anything about Master Rahm for now, except perhaps to fill the house with as many of the grass-roots progressive candidates you've been reading about here--the kind of independent-minded people he hates--as possible. But Connecticut voters could do us all one huge favor by making a relatively honest crook of His Holiness, letting him devote his full time, openly, to the career he's always been cut out for and has devoted so much of his attention to: lobbying.

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*As always with hostage-held NYT opinion pieces, the full text of the editorial is appended in a comment.