Dear Daily Kos World,
I was wrong. You are right.
I didn’t get it. I have spent the last few years thinking that the left-wing of the Democratic Party is unnecessarily harsh. I considered most progressive bloggers to be screeching shrews living in a liberal bubble. I thought they were uncompromising zealots with little regard for the concessions necessary for politics. Terms like DINO (Democrat in Name Only) seemed shrill. After all, wasn’t it better to have a "moderate" Democrat than almost any Republican?
Then I watched the Democrats take all bargaining chips off the table before the negotiations began. I watched the Republicans, who just two years ago threatened the "nuclear option" if Democrats filibustered, use the same filibuster at a record pace. I watched the Senate Democrats cave on the Police America Act, Waterboarding and every other civil liberties issue. They wrung their hands over high-crime and misdemeanors while the Republicans shredded the constitution with glee.
In the mean time the main stream media doesn’t seem to notice. On the day that CIA Director Hayden confessed the crime of waterboarding, CNN.com featured a surfboard-riding kitten on its website. The MSM has reported the fear mongering words of Bush & Co. without questioning the facts. They have been duplicitous and in as much as I have not stood on a street corner and screamed in protest, I have been too.
Now I’m pissed. I’ve had enough. I get it. I hereby confess, I was wrong and you are right. I have been naïve to think that the nice Republicans were going to play fair. I had been lulled into believing that the era of post-partisan politics had arrived and we could all move on. I was wrong. This is a war and we have to fight for our liberties with every breath.
Call me a screaming liberal. Call me what you will. I call myself a pissed-off patriot. I’m turning up the volume. I’m joining the revolution. You are right.