There's a diary on the rec' list that seems to have excited everyone. I'll admit, there are some touching videos--with great background music--in that diary. They made me all teary-eyed.
Then, after a bit of reflection, they made me angry.
Yet, apparently I'm almost alone in being disturbed by what we don't see on those videos. Not in a single one of those sweet vignettes does anyone say, "What was done in our name was wrong. We're so very sorry for that."
Most of you will tell me, "It's not the time." "Don't judge," or just plain "shut up."
I accept your opinion. But take just a second to hear mine.
Of course it is encouraging to see that suddenly, the scales have fallen from the eyes of so many. I willingly accept that many of these same people were victims of propaganda and manipulation by their own government. Even as so many of the truths were slowly coming out into the media even before the 2004 election that we were lied into war and that evil things were being done in our name. I can understand how millions were cow-towed and frightened.
Still, what I see absent from those conversion videos is that these people, by and large, have changed their minds for one reason:
It wasn't the hysterical hatred of Muslims;
It wasn't the lies that led us to an illegal war in Iraq;
It wasn't Guantanimo, the secret prisons, rendition or even torture;
It wasn't the 4,000+ dead in Iraq;
It wasn't the loss of our Constitutional rights, like Habeus Corpus and the 4th Amendment;
It wasn't even the poisonous culture of hate and ridicule spilled out upon the "liberals," and "the gays," and anyone else who dared to be different or raise a dissenting voice.
No...it would seem it's for far more selfish reasons. As the economy tanks, they're losing their jobs and their money and their security. As the DOW Jones drops 500 points on a daily basis, suddenly "We're for Obama!"
That's wonderful. Woot!
That is, only if you forget, for the sake of winning an election, that in 2000 we were being told--by many of these same people--who sneeringly shouted us down and told us to shut our mouths and stop whining about Bush stealing the election. They called us traitors to America because we spoke out against the war and demonstrated for our Constitutional rights. Some of us lost our familes, or friends and even our jobs for speaking out.
As one of these re-born Republicans expressed last night to floods of mojo, "It's not my fault, I grew up in the rural south and had to go to Church 4 times a day."
Are we really prepared to accept such breathtakingly facile explanations in the Age of the Internet?
Just as Colin Powell's endorsement was seen by many pragmatists as a good thing, it doesn't change that the man was instrumental in lying us into a war and should have known better.
Good for Mr. Buckley, Jr. But, didn't the crap he wrote over at the NRO for years and years help put us in the mess we're in? Are the Republicans who helped keep the Bush regime on course for so many years, to be exonerated because on the eve of an election that it is increasingly clear they will lose, they change sides?
I'm glad--truly--that so many are waking up in the final days before this historic election, but it is too much to ask to hear any one of them accept responsibility for supporting this regime? Is it too much to ask for any one of them to say: "I'm sorry, what was done in our name was wrong?"
Apparently it is too much to ask. Apprently, it's rude to ask for some kind of mea culpa from anyone.
Apparently it's ok if no one is ever going to be held accountable--not Bush, not Rove, not his administration, not the people who supported him blindly for so many years. Join the party. Welcome aboard Republicans...fellow Americans all.
In our rush to hug and make up, however, let's try not to trip over the freshly placed tombstones in Arlington National Cemetary or bother ourselves with the shredded remnants of our Constitution.