If the Dems were a party of Alan Graysons instead of a pack of gutless weasels, they could take advantage of "Tough Times for the Tea Party"

What if Dems had loudly and proudly fought back?

"It's been a long time since the media took their job as guardians of democratic discourse this seriously. Let's hope it's the start of a new trend."

-- Sara Robinson, in a new Campaign for America's Future

blogpost, "Tough Times for the Tea Party?"

by Ken

Our friend Sara Robinson is back with this follow-up of sorts to her important CAF post earlier this month, "None Dare Call It Sedition," in which, as I pointed out here, she identified what the loudmouth doody-slingers of the Far Right (apparently the only kind of Right that's allowed in the U.S. today, unless you count the Far, Far Right and the So Far Right It Almost Comes Out the Other End) are engaged in as sedition -- the "crime of creating a revolt, disturbance, or violence against lawful civil authority with the intent to cause its overthrow or destruction." Sara insisted it's time for prosecutors to be prosecuting sedition, and as an immediate practical objective, "We need to start talking about this for what it is, and calling it out whenever it happens."

"We are a fickle people, ruled by a fickle media," Sara begins the new post. "It's astonishing how much national opinion can change in just a week or two. And if you don't believe me, just ask the Tea Party." And she proceeds to catalogue the woes endured by the Teabaggers in "a rough couple of weeks," including:

* the disappointing turnout for the third Teabagger express bus tour. ("There is, absolutely, such a thing as overexposure; and the Tea Party seems to have finally achieved it. Reporters coming out for the third time around were no longer distracted by the novelty value of costumes, firearms, and signs -- and thus more likely to start looking at little deeper at who was there and what they were actually saying.")

* strong indications of Fox Noise "backing off on its commitment to the movement." ("This is a costly blow. If the Tea Party loses the amplification provided by FOX's full-throated noise machine, and the day may not be far off when the Tea Party might is nothing more than a bunch of old ladies in gloves and hats, sitting around drinking, y'no, tea.")

* the media finally picking up -- "somehow, somewhere" -- on the Teabaggers' seditious intent. ("Quite a few journalists and their editors made the resolution that this was something that responsible news professionals shouldn't be feeding into, and decided not to spend any more bandwidth on it," leading to the quote I've planted at the top of this post.)

* fuller understanding of what a peculiar and relatively small demographic the Teabaggers actually are, including their strong racist component.

* widening and hardening of the split between the Teabaggers' Palinist "corporatist wing" and the Paulist libertarians.

* TPM Muckraker's documentation of the financial role played by slimy Koch Industries in funding what we've always known was a basically astroturf rather than grass-roots movement.

All of which has "politicians are backpedaling away from the Tea Party's seditionist rhetoric at a speed that ought to qualify them for the next Summer Olympics."

Elected Republicans aren't thrilled by the prospect of facing primary challenges from the Tea Party, which are starting to take shape here and there. GOP leaders are realizing that if the Tea Party candidates win those challenges, they've got almost no chance of winning the general elections and keeping those seats come fall. And almost every other pol with any sense is getting some mileage between themselves and the Tea Party's more rebellious excesses, out of fear that they'll be seen as standing too close for plausible deniability when the next act of right-wing domestic terrorism occurs.

Now this is still far from the end of the astonishing crusade of lies and delusions that has engulfed nearly half the country since the disintegration of the Bush presidency, as all the GOP rats abandoned all those sinking ships of state. But it shows how misleading the screaming noise of the Right-Wing Noise Machine can be, and how thin the support it claims.

Which makes me wonder about the stock response of Democrats, as typified in that shameful WaPo pollster op-ed the other day, urging Dems to "boldly" flee to the gutless, principleless center and pray. One thing you have to give the Right credit for as it took over political dominance of the country in the post-Reagan years: Its champions weren't afraid to take stands and let voters know about them.

Just review the dozens of House and Senate races Howie has reported on in these last several months, where Democratic pols and, even worse, party officialdom (often including the White House) is consistently have fallen over one another racing to be the first to sound indistinguishable from "Just Say No" Republicans. As Howie keeps showing us, all over the country there are Democrats who believe in real Democratic values willing to take the plunge into serious campaigning. The problem has been that, in almost every case, their party does't want anything to do with them.

Can you imagine what the Dems might even yet do in November if voters knew that they believe in something -- that is, something other than self-preservation?

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It's not as dramatic as my proposed wingnut treason trials, but Sara Robinson thinks we should be prosecuting sedition

I'm thinking firing squads for the treason convicts,

but hanging works too. Or maybe stoning?

"It's time to confront the sobering fact that the entire right wing -- including the GOP establishment, which encourages, endorses, and echoes these sentiments almost every time its officials appear in public -- is now issuing nearly constant invitations to criminal sedition. They're creating a climate and using language that lowers their base's inhibitions around violence -- and irresponsibly eggs on the handful of sociopaths in their midst who are already primed to kill. They've given their newly-expanded corps of flying monkeys permission to brandish their guns in public, empowered their militias, promised them glory, and are now telling them explicitly which targets to hit."

-- Sara Robinson, in "None Dare Call It Sedition"

Sedition: Crime of creating a revolt, disturbance, or violence against lawful civil authority with the intent to cause its overthrow or destruction

-- Brittanica Concise Dictionary,

as cited by Sara R

by Ken

My own impulse, in the face of the pervasive right-wing campaign to bring down the government, would be for the DoJ to begin preparing dozens of treason indictments, so that the trials can get going and in a week or so we can get on to the first of the executions. Or if we labeled them "enemy combatants," could we just turn them over to military tribunals and save even more time?

I was figuring on getting through maybe five treason trials a day. But tribunals, without breaking a sweat, ought to be able to process, say, 25 guilty verdicts a day, no? Plus, it would give the Obama people a chance to call attention to the roll-out of their latest new (wink-wink) "just the same as the Bush regime" policy.

My plan calls for starting with the 15-20 most loathsome crackpots in the Senate and 40-50 in the House. Not all Republicans, of course. The interest of bipartisanship, the noblest political virtue to which Americans, or leastwise liberals, can apparently aspire, dictates that a generous sprinkling of the most odious Dems be included. I'm thinking firing squads would be picturesque, but I could see the case for hangings. Ooh, wait, how about stoning? Followed by purification of the carcasses in bonfires, with free hot dogs and marshmallows for all.

(I bet we could get a quick signoff from the Roberts Court that none of these methods constitutes either cruel or unusual punishment with just a little trick: Slip them a case where it appears it's liberals who are going to be offed. Can't you just see Smirking John's piggy little eyes simply light up at the prospect?)

For better or worse, Sara Robinson -- one of my favorite writers -- is not only smarter than me but more, er, judicious. However, she's deadly serious about the appropriateness and urgency of getting some legal proceedings going. The crime she wants to see prosecuted is one we haven't heard much about recently: sedition.

In an important new piece posted both on the Campaign for America's Future blog and AlterNet, Sara writes:

[I]t's time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they're in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they're out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all -- indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government's authority and capacity to run the country. And it's been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.

Sara wants to be clear that we understand what sedition is. Advocating violent activity: legally protected though extremely dangerous. Planning and of course participating in such activity: sedition.

People who promote subversive ideas, no matter how dangerous those ideas might seem, are completely protected under the First Amendment. Even calling for the overthrow of the government is protected (though not benign, as we'll see later, because it creates justification, permission, and incitement to seditious acts). That's why the conservatives have been safe -- so far. It's only when those people start actively planning and implementing a government rebellion that it turns into criminal sedition.

Fortunately, there are hardy loony-watchers -- like the folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center -- who have become skilled at divining where the line is crossed, whether it's in terrorist or far-right-insurrectionist movements.

These escalating armed demonstrations, accompanied by belligerent sloganeering, are a clear signal that these folks are done talking -- and, worse, have already decided that democracy is futile, and taking up arms is the only appropriate response to the threats we now face. They're carrying weapons to scare us weak-kneed girly libs into submission, and to show us they mean business. Growing up in gun country, I was taught at my daddy's knee that when someone says they're going to shoot you, it's always smart to take them at their word and handle yourself accordingly. Right now, I think that's good advice for anybody in America who considers themselves a member of the reality-based community.

Sara points out that the revolutionaries have even been provided with a convenient target list by that pathetic scrambled-brained loser Bernard Goldberg, with his book listing the "100 people who are destroying America." "He was writing a target list with seditious intent," she says.

From a legal standpoint, though, sedition is a tough charge to prove in court. A successful prosecution in the Hutaree case would be the first such case made to stick against American right-wing groups.

[B]ut the first step in stopping sedition is making sure everybody knows exactly what it is when they see it. And that means calling out the S-word every time we see the conservatives defiantly flinging their hands and feet out over that line to score a few cheap political points.

And the immediate challenge is to force the people who are manipulating and trying to take advantage of the crazies, whether for personal or political gain, to face up to what they're doing.

If this is just political grandstanding to energize the base, they're playing with fire, and they need to bring this incendiary campaign to a screeching halt. Right now. This Mickey Mouse pussyfooting around, play-acting at sedition is criminally dangerous chickenshit politics that puts the short-term needs of the Republican party ahead of the long-term viability of the American democracy they've sworn to uphold. In case the party leaders haven't noticed, their base has taken them as seriously as a heart attack -- and they're genuinely making ready for armed revolt.

On the other hand, if they're actually serious about seditious rebellion against the US government, then let them stand up, follow through, and face the charges. They're either Americans, committed to working in good faith within the democratic process to create our common future; or else they're seditionists in intention or fact -- and thus enemies of the state, plain and simple.

For the good of the country, we cannot continue to let them have it both ways. They need to choose whose side they're on: America's, or their own.

I was intrigued by the story Howie passed on earlier of that archloon Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn confronting just this distinction at an ugly town hall meeting back home, where he wound up lecturing the crowd on civility and defending Nancy Pelosi. As Howie put it, "Coburn stared the teabaggers in the face and was mortified to see the gross ignorance and overblown bigotry."

Score one small victory. The only thing is that, crazy as Senator Dr. Tom is, his craziness has never taken the form of fomenting violence. On the scale of craziness, it turns out, he's a moderate.


"STOP THE PRESSES" HEADLINE OF THE DAY:
BIG AL "MUMBLES" GREENSPAN REJECTS CRITICISM!

Courtesy of the New York Times today:

Greenspan Rejects Criticism of Policies at Hearing

Because Big Al (aka "Mumbles") is widely known for his invariably thoughtful consideration of reasoned criticism of his judgments.

With regard to Big Al's testimony before the financial-meltdown commission, CAF "Our Work" blogger R.J. Eskow writes in his assessment, "In the Dark: A Good Prosecutor Would've Pinned Greenspan Down":

It was almost anticlimactic when the power failed during the final fifteen minutes of Greenspan's appearance. The light had left the room long before then.

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The only thing scarier than wingnuts who think "moral clarity" is "just words"? Wingnuts who think they know what those words mean

On Friday's Countdown, Jonathan Turley insists that we don't have any choice about prosecuting the Bush regimistas responsible for torture -- it's not only morally but legally required, or "the Bush crimes become our crimes."

"Now, it's true that a serious investigation of Bush-era abuses would make Washington an uncomfortable place, both for those who abused power and those who acted as their enablers or apologists. And these people have a lot of friends. But the price of protecting their comfort would be high: If we whitewash the abuses of the past eight years, we'll guarantee that they will happen again."

-- Paul Krugman, in his Friday NYT column, "Forgive and Forget?"

"People with 'moral clarity' recognized the ultimate existential evil of Communism, and were constantly on guard against its unceasing efforts to bring down the capitalist world by any means necessary. To these early movement conservatives, having 'moral clarity' meant that you weren't the kind of weakling who would be deceived into negotiation with the Commies, or consent to arms control, or be duped into merely containing their relentless march across the globe. It meant that you had the intestinal fortitude (or pure enough vital bodily fluids, as you wish) to do whatever had to be done to permanently exterminate America's implacable enemies -- whether it was to send in the Marines or drop the bomb."

-- Sara Robinson, in a Campaign for America's Future post,
"Redefining 'Moral Clarity'"

by Ken

I've been trying to write a post that should be ridiculously simple, because it really consists of nothing more than distilling the wisdom of three incredibly wise people. It shouldn't require anything more than this simple 1-2-3:

(1) Read Paul Krugman's Friday NYT column, in which he argues that we have to prosecute the crimes of the Bush regime, because otherwise they're not only likely but certain to be repeated. This is Krugman in top form, which means it doesn't get any better.

(2) Watch the above clip from Friday's Countdown, in which Jonathan Turley (after Keith O actually quotes from Krugman) takes the argument a step further. Confronted with demonstrable war crimes, he says, we don't even have a choice. It doesn't matter that prosecuting the torturers might be inconvenient, as AG-designate Eric Holder seemed to be saying to the Senate Judiciary Committee in his confirmation hearings. We are not only morally but legally required to prosecute. Otherwise the Bush crimes become our crimes. This is Turley in top form, which again means it doesn't get any better.

As a bonus, Keith plays the clip of Texas Sen. John Cornyn, apparently campaigning for the title of World's Dumbest Human, haranguing AG-designate Holder with his insistence that he accept Dumb John's 24-style "hypothetical" -- that we have a terrorist in possession of information that can only be extracted via torture, a "hypothetical" that flouts reality in ways that are clearly beyond the understanding of a brain-dead blitherer like the senator.

Really, I think the Senate needs to adopt a rule whereby people like Senator Cornyn be required to wear a dunce cap -- with minimum cone diameter and height specified -- anytime they appear in the Senate or on Senate-related business, like campaigning.

We should talk about the 24 phenomenon someday. I suppose the show, ghastly as it is (being concocted out of the worst writing and acting in, well, the history of writing and acting), is forgivable as mindless escapist entertainment, on the order of the really, really bad James Bond movies. But people like "Dumb John" Cornyn and Bill O'Reilly, not to mention the Fox Noise viewership, think they're watching something of documentary-like accuracy and insight. In reality it's not only bullshit, but bullshit so appallingly stupid that you would have to be truly brain-deficient to accord it the slightest seriousness. Which, as it happens, brings us to --

(3) Read the above-noted Campaign for America's Future post by Sara Robinson, making an important connection regarding the phrase "moral clarity." As Chimpy the Prez demonstrated the other night in his pathetic "farewell address," it falls really clunkily out of the mouth of a bozo like our Chimpy. (Clearly the Senate Dunce Cap Rule, and its presumed corresponding House version, needs to be adopted by the executive branch as well. And for that matter by the judicial branch too, for the use, not only of Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito, but also of all those lower-echelon judges stuffed into the court system on Chimpy's watch.)

In the clip intro, Keith O in fact makes specific reference to Chimpy's use of the phrase "moral clarity." I think we can see him wince involuntarily at the association of the phrase with a person so utterly devoid of any kind of purposeful morality. And I think most of us hear the phrase the way Keith did, as just some words that wingnuts as just part of their clueless delusion. It sounds like "just words" to them -- and as with so many other words, they have no clue what they mean. They just like the sound of them.

But here comes Sara, picking up on something very different, and very important. She notes that conservatives use the phrase "moral clarity" a lot.

And it always sounds absurd to progressive ears, coming as it does from members of an administration that shredded the Constitution, deprived people of due process, committed horrific acts of torture, and lied the country into the worst military debacle in its history. It's always bewildering to listen to such people lecture the rest of us on "moral clarity." What in the hell are they talking about?

They keep using those words. It turns out that they don't mean what we think they mean.

Over the holidays, Sara reports, she "devoured" U.S. Vs. Them, in which J. Peter Scoblic
"looks at the way the conservative penchant for 'othering' (a word I coined to describe their perpetual need for someone to project their own demons onto, and then hate on) has shaped US foreign policy from the beginning of the Cold War through the current administration."
From this she has gleaned the definition I've quoted above.

This definition of "moral clarity" has been a major factor in U.S. foreign policy ever since. From that day unto this, the conservative movement has never been without a demonized Other to focus its vaunted "moral clarity' on. "Moral clarity" is why conservatives hate summit meetings; why they've scuttled every attempt at arms control and non-proliferation; why every problem in the world can only yield to a military solution; and why defense is the only valid government expense. To people with "moral clarity," these choices are obvious. Those who disagree (like those progressive pantywaists who refuse to acknowledge the threat, or are willing and eager to coddle Pure Evil by parleying with it) are, perforce, inherently weaker and less morally serious. If you've ever marveled at the depths of conservative moral self-righteousness, now you know the deep well from which it springs.

It is, in a word, Cheneyism. I've written before, a number of times, about the "higher truth" Big Dick clearly thinks he's in possession of, which justifies the campaign of atrocities to which he has devoted the portion of his life that isn't devoted to enriching beyond measuring his pals the greedy Repulicronies.

Of course the collapse of the global Communist menace was an existential nightmare for these people, whose thinking (for want of a better word) was based so overwhelmingly on death-sworn opposition to that "other." Of course they tried other "others," like the homos and liberals (same thing, no?), but even they realized that, fun as we are to demonize, we really aren't up to the job of being the required Other. And make no mistake, it's a big job. It remains to be seen whether the Islamofascists are up to it.

Whenever you hear a conservative go on about "moral clarity" . . . there is always an enemy. They are always out to get us. They will stop at nothing. You cannot coddle them or negotiate with them; you can only survive by annihilating them. And people who see the moral world clearly will not waste time or breath questioning these essential truths.

It's pretty stunning stuff when you read it that way. It really makes you realize that conservatives live in a world of paranoia, xenophobia, and seething aggression that most progressives can't even fathom. And their entire moral universe has been twisted to serve their externalized fears; to take that will to project their own demons onto someone else and then destroy them, and elevate it as the highest possible moral good. It's a definition of "morality" that renders the rule of law meaningless, but readily justifies genocide and torture as moral acts of self-preservation.

Is it any wonder that the Bush regime has done everything in its power to prop Osama up? It's as if the regimistas' entire foreign policy -- and most of its authoritarian domestic policy too, come to think of it -- came straight from Al Qaeda HQ.

"Once we understand what they're really saying," Sara writes, "it becomes pretty obvious that one of the first things we're going to need to do in this new era is challenge this horrific definition of 'moral clarity' and overwrite it with one of our own."

We believe moral clarity is defined by the Constitution, embodied in the rule of law, and on display wherever the dignity of other people -- including those whose interests oppose ours -- is upheld. And, in case there's any question about where the real moral clarity lies here: Ours is the morality America was founded on. Theirs is one that almost put that light out forever.

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Why progressives should celebrate Veterans Day

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow . . ."

"Canadians believe in peace in no small part because they make a point of stopping, once every year, to truly ponder the cost of war -- to look their veterans in the eyes, and take in the damage, and thank them. And, perhaps, to ask forgiveness for asking so much."

-- Sara Robinson, in a post yesterday on CAF's Our Future blog,
"Why Progressives Should Celebrate Veterans' Day"

by Ken

Say, didn't today used to be Veterans Day?

It's not a hard date to remember: November 11, 11/11 at 11:00. A whole bunch of people died because some genius decided to set that time for the suspension of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I. (I know there's a figure for the number of people who died for this little bit of historical cuteness, but I can't lay hands on it right now.)

It used to be Armistice Day, but then in 1954 was transformed into Veterans Day -- with, officially, no apostrophe [not "hyphen," as I wrote originally; boy, when those brain cells start dying . . .], I learn from Wikipedia -- celebrating all veterans. Unless we don't actually celebrate it, that is.

In Canada, Sara Robinson tells us in her remarkable post (which you should really read in full at the link above), they celebrate Remembrance Day:

Most Canadian cities have permanent spaces designed specifically for Remembrance Day exercises. Even small towns boast a downtown park dominated by a tall and stately stone cenotaph, a memorial obelisk that is the centerpiece of the day's events. On November 11, these parks are full to the edges, because nobody, no matter how anti-war, misses the event. (In 2006, the CBC reported the dismal news that only two-thirds of Canadians had attend some kind of Remembrance Day exercises. The horror.)

And it's a show worth showing up for. Brass and bagpipe bands march. The Mounties turn out in their scarlet coats. Old men stand a bit straighter in their regimental jackets and kilts, their chests full of medals, to receive their nation's honor once again. Brilliant red poppies bloom on the lapel of every dark coat as the poem "In Flanders Fields" (written by Canadian officer John McCrae, and inscribed in the memory of every Canadian schoolchild) is read aloud. Families come together, and go out for lunch after. Every civic group and church comes forward to present a wreath in memory of Canada's fallen soldiers, in a procession that can last well into the afternoon and ends with enormous piles of greenery and poppies banking the monument. And at 11:00 sharp, the entire country -- in streets, in stores, everywhere -- comes to a dead halt, observing a full two minutes of national silence honoring the moment that the Armistice began, and World War I came to an end. . . .

Tomorrow, as the city falls silent at 11 am, I will marvel -- as I do every year -- at the fullness with which peaceable Canadians embrace the sacrifices of war, and the unconflictedness of their feelings toward their veterans. This is the country that is known, more than any other, as the world's peacekeepers. Their whole culture is built around conflict avoidance; that scrupulous gentleness and politeness goes bone-deep, and there is no doubt in most of their minds that war usually entails far more mindless waste than it does noble and worthy sacrifice. And yet, there they are, standing for hours in the November wind and rain, coming out once again to honor those who fought in a war that wasn't even really their own. At first, this seemed like a massive contradiction. But last year, during that long quiet minute, I finally understood.

It is not a contradiction. In fact, Remembrance Day and Canadian pacifism are two essential parts of one consistent whole. Canadians believe in peace in no small part because they make a point of stopping, once every year, to truly ponder the cost of war -- to look their veterans in the eyes, and take in the damage, and thank them. And, perhaps, to ask forgiveness for asking so much. They gather at the cenotaphs to remind themselves and their children of what is lost, and how precious life is, and how very important it is not to allow those kinds of conflicts to get started in the first place. It is that annual willingness to come back, year after year, and unflinchingly take stock of the prices paid that drives their determination to pursue peace. If they failed to remember, to open their hearts to their grief as thoroughly as they do, their commitment to peace might not be so strong. Those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

Sara notes that, except among veterans, Veterans Day slipped down the American memory hole in the wake of Vietnam. ("We were so conflicted about that war that any holiday about war did more to divide us than it did to bring us together"). And then in the Reagan era what was left of the holiday was "captured by pro-military groups, and voices promoting peace were shut out of the discussion."

And I think that's a loss. I suspect there's a direct relationship between the near-invisibility of Veterans' Day and the near-invisibility of our support for our veterans -- or our awareness of the true costs of our current wars. It's a lot easier on our corporate masters if we spend the day shopping the Veterans' Day sales at the mall, rather than spending it standing out on Main Street listening to our veterans' stories and confronting the actual flesh-and-blood consequences of our leaders' decisions. The devaluation of Veterans' Day is of a piece with the way the Bush Administration brings fallen soldiers home in the dead of night, or embeds reporters, or cheats veterans out of their benefits. It's all a distraction, another inducement to look the other way. For all the talk of "supporting our troops," the last thing they want is for us to gather by the thousands in the park, and be sobered into silence once again by the magnitude of the sacrifice these men and women are making.

My Canadian experience suggests that a heartfelt willingness to stop, remember, and honestly reckon the cost can bring tremendous moral gravity and authenticity to progressive arguments for reason, diplomacy, and peace. Beyond that, it's a lot harder to ignore the needs of our veterans when you see their proud faces out there, every November 11, accepting the nation's thanks. You're forced to realize that once a year isn't enough; that they are part of your community, and their day-to-day care is a community responsibility. The "thanks" rings hollow if you're not backing up the words with real and constant support. If we stopped the country for a full day just to look at all that, as the Canadians do, I think the things we'd see would change the terms of our conversation about war forever.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— John McCrae

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