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Sunday, August 29, 2004
It's tempting to take sarcastic pot-shots at the kind of rhetoric Sheri Dew uses. For one thing, even the most casual of Usenet posters knows about Godwin's Law, in which bringing up Hitler automatically qualifies whatever point the arguer was making as being meaningless, over-the-top drivel. And there's the underlying reality that this sort of thing is just rabble-rousing window dressing, a cultural war distraction from the true mission of this Republican administration - the gutting of environmental protection, the ravaging of the economy in favor of the weathiest among us, the war for oil and some irrational need to punish Iraq that had its origins well before the events of 9/11. Still, we would be wrong to merely shake our heads at the idiocy of it all, ruefully laughing at those who eat this wacky stuff up, while their actual needs - for jobs, for a good education for their kids, for access to health care - are completely ignored. Because the truth is, these folks could win. In some very important ways, these folks are already winning; they are effectively controlling the field on which these discussions can even take place, the terms that are used, the oppositions and possibilities that are allowed. And if "our" side can't get a grasp of that, and soon, we could end up with more than Four More Years: we could end up with a terrible legacy that I'm not sure we'll be able to unravel in my lifetime.
posted by jeev |
7:25 PM |
 
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