Mourning in America

I think of all the things that this rotten administration has done to us over the past eight years, the one that bothers me the most is the blatant fearmongering that they have undertaken in order to press their own authoritarian agenda. It almost seems like tinfoil-hat paranoia to state that our President and his administration have cynically exaggerated threats from shadowy terrorist groups in order to push their laughable theory of the unitary executive, but as Glen Greenwald points out, it is undeniably true:

Back in August, when the Bush administration wanted to pressure Congress into passing "The Protect America Act" -- which vested in the President vast, new warrantless eavesdropping powers to spy on Americans -- they sent out Mike McConnell days before the August recess to tell everyone in Congress that they better pass the bill before they leave or The Terrorists would kill us all and the blood would be on the hands of Congress for failing to give the President what he wanted

He goes on to use Mike McConnell's quotes to illustrate that at the critical moment the administration needed to get Congressional approval for broad wiretapping and eavesdropping powers, they trumped up an immediate threat of a terrorist attack on our homeland. And..

After scaring everyone with the latest Al-Qaeda-is-Coming warnings, the CIA also admitted for the first time that it waterboarded detainees in its custody, but what's a little water up the nose -- or a little presidential omnipotence -- when Al Qaeda is coming to get us in our Homeland?

I mean it really is hard to pick and choose which of the outrages of the past two terms have been the most egregious, but to me, the idea that our own government would use these threats cynically and politically is beyond belief. I suppose if your faith in the principles of the Constitution, in the bedrock of representative democracy and the balance of powers is so weak that you literally feel that it is a moral imperative to lie to the republic in order to "protect" them, then you can see how these cretins got to this point.

That's why this throwaway line from Dan Henninger's editorial in today's WSJ jumped out at me. In discussing why the Republican's should eventually come to their senses and support McCain, he says:

Conservatives, for whom any glass is always half full, have sold themselves short.

This line of thinking goes back to the Reagan era, of course, to one speech, the "morning in America" speech, which supposedly pointed to a new time in America, a beacon of hope leading us out of the dark Carter years. Reagan was the eternal optimist, full of faith in the markets and the industry of the individual. Small government movement Conservatism writ large. It was a fetid crock of shit, we all know, and that band of criminals resorted to the type of double-dealing that gave rise to good American supporters like Osama bin Laden. But that's a story for another day. What strikes me is that Henninger looks at his party today and still feels that that sort of optimism remains.

The Republican Right that I see represents the most fearful, backward-looking xenophobic, homophobic group of sissies that I can imagine. They long for authoritarian tough-guys, like Rudy and W, faux cowboys and an actor like Fredrick of Hollywood. They lump Arabs and Persians, Sunnis and Shia, illegal immigrants from Mexico and Islamic Americans into a big pot and call them Islamofacsists. They're happy to tear up the Constitution and the rule of law in exchange for a strong executive that will save them from the outside world, from an ascendant China and India, from the shoe bomber next door, who always looked a little Islamic after all......Do optimists build fences around a country to keep people out? Do optimists put up signs that demand that their patrons speak fluent English? Do optimists advocate the use of torture on prisoners that have been denied the basic prerogative right of habeas corpus? Fear is a powerful tool, no doubt.

BTW, Mitt's kids got sick of him blowing through their inheritance and got him out of the race, I hear.

UPDATE: If you don't think that this administration is rising to new heights (sinking to new lows?) of audacity in asserting their own agenda above the rule of law or the constitutional principles that underly our republic, wrap your head around this circuitous logic.