"We" aren't the problem

During a meeting back in April (Bloggerpalooza Act 1), Laura brought up a point worth considering.

My concern is that Harper and his brand of conservatives will forever change the political atmosphere in this country.

Or words to that effect.

Her point was that, as dirty as politics can get, we've always maintained some modicum of civility.

In the United States, particularly over the last decade, that civility has apparently vanished with the emergence of the conservative movement.

Fareed Zakaria has written an interesting foreign policy essay which suggests it's time for Americans to move beyond the rancid and rotting administration of George W. Bush and look to the future. It's something of a feel-good piece and in it, Zakaria makes a huge mistake.

He fails to acknowledge that allowing the cancerous body which created the situation in the US today, the conservative movement, to survive at all, is not an option. Zakaria writes as though Bush and the criminal enterprise for which he fronts sailed through the past six years with no opposing view. He doesn't acknowledge that an entire segment of American society, a large one, had been predicting the outcome of the Bush administration's devious machinations with alarming accuracy. And while they tried to stop him, instead of being acknowledged as presenting a legitimate dissenting view, they were smeared, marginalized and dismissed by a political machine built to crush any and all opposition. The current conservative movement, both in the United States and Canada does not brook debate in any way, shape or form.

Zakaria missed that completely. But Driftglass didn't.

Fareed attempts to frame the epic tale of the rise, hubristic apotheosis and catastrophic failure of the Modern Conservative Movement on every front and the degenerate freaks who still stand loyal to the criminal junta that runs it…down into a short story about a couple of bad seeds.

The story of Crazy ‘Ol Gee Dubya; sleazy skulker who wrecked the world all by his lonesome firing from the windows of the Textbook-Conservative Depository.

A loner. Disgruntled, with a fetish for guns and violent video games.

A phony-brave dimwit who mumbled a lot about smokin’ ‘em out and bringing ‘em on. Who somehow got his hands on the United States Government and caused a lotta ruckus.

You know the type.

A Lone Gunman whose Magic Bullet managed to take out the courts, maim the electoral process, turn around in midair and kill habeas corpus, wipe out New Orleans, level Iraq, trash our international reputation, set superstition in the Throne of Science, defile genuine Christianity, etc, etc, etc, etc ad nauseum.

That was the tame part. Drifty was just getting warmed up.

Conservatives now flail around like Daffy Duck having a grand mal seizure trying to explain that Dubya was some kind of goofy accident. That they…uh…they….just sneezed too hard and…uh…sorta pooped their pants a little, and there he was.

Just a case of temporary Constitutional Incontinence! So can’t we just forget the whole thing and go back to the Conservative Happy Days of Potsy, Richie, Ralph and President Ronald Wilson Fonzarelli?

Call do-over and go back to hating Negroes and queers, slaughtering the Middle Class blaming Liberals for every-fucking-thing?

No, Fareed. Because without a seething mass of millions of pinheaded, Rush-Drunk, Fox-Blind, Falwell-Gelded imbeciles to play to, Dubya would either be selling mobile homes in Midland or our Ambassador to Paraguay; either way drinking himself blind in the heat, shooting at the neighbors dogs for spite and screaming at his houseboy that his fucking pancakes aren't round enough.

From this point I would urge you to go back and read all of Driftglass's post. For what Zakaria missed and Drifty so neatly pinpointed is that it isn't about one administration. It's about a movement made up of people who would so corrupt the political and democratic landscape of a country as to leave it a wasteland. And they will continue to do what they do now: Blame it on everyone but themselves.

That would be the "we" Zakaria failed to identify.