In the year or so that I've been a member of the Daily Kos community, I've come to see a pattern of sorts that puzzles me. Someone relatively unknown -- a politician or performer or activist -- will be mentioned in the press in a way that resonates with a large number of people here. Howard Dean, in his first months of the heated primaries. Or in this past week, British PM George Galloway in front of a Senate subcommittee or Venezualan President Hugo Chavez for refusing to be intimidated by a Bush administration that praised the people who orchestrated a coup against him.
People here get excited. Someone's stood up to the administration for a change, and even if it's just some guy from a London suburb we've never heard of or a country most of us know little about, you can hope that it's a little bit of truth getting through.
In the discussion threads, though, there's always a few people -- with seemingly endless time on their hands -- who pop up to say that Dean's crazy/Galloway's a crook/Chavez is an unhinged socialist and that we should repudiate!, repudiate!, repudiate! them not give them any credit for speaking the truth or being willing to rebuke the leaders of the most powerful nation on the the planet.
And I have to wonder how these people expect a political process to function? Or if they're at all interested in anything but the status quo within the Democratic Party or the United States.
First off, who do they think they are "informing" us of anything? I'm in my forties. I've been a voracious reader of news and history since the end of the Vietnam War, through the Iran-contra scandal, the failures of the Balkans and Rwanda, hell I remember when there were two Pakistans. Having watched and participated in interactions with some of these folks, I can't see that they're supplying any information beyond what might be gleaned from a quick read of right-wing blogs in most cases. And I suspect from the age poll done the other day -- unscientific as it was -- that I'm not the only person who remembers more history than they care to.
Second, if we're going to wait for people with pristine records to tell the truth about what's going on, we're doomed. Certainly the Bush administration has no problem consorting with mule-molesters, child-abusers, and corporate criminals. That's been true for the past several Republican administrations; G.H.W. Bush had to pardon a whole raft-load of Reagan's right-hand men for the Iran-contra scandal. Does Dean really act as crazy as people in the media and the DLC were willing to paint him last spring? Even if some of the allegations about George Galloway are true, the documents put forth against him by the Christian Science Monitor were proven (by the Monitor) to be false, which means that someone's actively attempted to link him to Saddam by forging evidence. And as for Hugo Chavez's ruthlessness, just for a moment consider the likely fate of anyone involved with executing a failed coup against the Bush administration to the fact that Chavez hasn't gone on a spree of mass arrests and executions since his attempted ouster three years ago. Chavez has closed some newspapers and he's reportedly shunting some military officers out of their jobs. Somehow I doubt that the Bush-Gonzalez justice system would be so clement.
These types of folks have been with the Democrats as long as I can remember. They poo-pooed George McGovern for his anti-war stance as a wimp, despite his medals and dangerous duty in more than 30 bomber missions. They helped bring down Jimmy Carter, saying he was too soft when he stood up for human rights around the world, an attitude that might have prevented the crisis in Iran if it hadn't been going on for so long. They hurt Walter Mondale's race against Ronald Reagan because he supported a nuclear freeze and the Equal Right Amendment. They stood by and let G.H.W. Bush skate on Iran-contra while laughing at Army veteran Michael Dukakis because many of them supported a "strong" stance in Central America, even if it meant dealing with newly-theocratic Iran.
So the next time someone makes the charge that you can't possibly like what someone's saying because they have an opinion or have done something (proved or unproved) that you should -- as a liberal -- disagree with, consider that their opinion may have even less in common with you than the person they're criticizing.