New York Times :
-- snip --
What's happening to Lieberman can only be described as a liberal inquisition. Whether you agree with him or not, he is transparently the most kind-hearted and well-intentioned of men. But over the past few years he has been subjected to a vituperation campaign that only experts in moral manias and mob psychology are really fit to explain. I can't reproduce the typical assaults that have been directed at him over the Internet, because they are so laced with profanity and ugliness, but they are ginned up by ideological masseurs who salve their followers' psychic wounds by arousing their rage at objects of mutual hate.
Brooks vexes. He is apparently incapable of believing that some American citizens have a problem with the likes of this:
Done to people uncharged, untried, in many cases simply let go. Mr. Brooks finds it necessary to delve into a person's psychoanalytic potty-training in order to understand why anyone would take exception . . . extreme exception . . . with Senator Lieberman's acceptance of the Cheney administration's behavior in this matter.
Bound, gagged, with an alien object shoved up the anus. Diapered, flown to strange locations. Tortured. And then let go.
Astonishingly, we are told that the prisoners at Guantanamo are the most dangerous people on the planet, after many of them have simply been let go as being no threat. Let go, that is, after the torture and lock-up and chains. It would seem to be inconsistent of the Cheney administration to claim that the prisoners in Guantanamo are extraordinarily dangerous and then to let them go. It would seem that "hating" Cheney for these actions would require something less than childhood potty-training trauma.
Brooks goes on:
Next has come the effort to expel Lieberman from modern liberalism. In a dark parody of the old struggle between Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey, the highly educated, highly affluent, highly Caucasian wing of the Democratic Party has turned liberalism from a philosophy into a secular religion, and then sought to purge a battle-scarred warhorse on the grounds of insufficient moral purity.
". . . the highly educated, highly affluent, highly Caucasian wing of the Democratic Party"
Where does a sentence like this fall in the range between pointless snark and angry, hateful thrashing? Surely Mr. Brooks knows that it is not just "Caucasians" in congress who despise Mr. Cheney's actions. Further, why is it a backhanded insult, in Mr. Brooks' mind, to accuse someone of being "educated"? Is this some sort of half-assed attempt at populism?
The big story out of the campaign last week was the aggressiveness Lieberman has finally brought to his side of the fight. Over the past few years, polarizers have dominated Congress because people who actually represent most Americans have been too timid or intellectually vacuous to stand up. Even today many Democrats who privately despise the netroots lie low, hoping the anger won't be directed at them.
Mr. Brooks has trouble reading polls. The netroots are not "fringe" in regards to these issues. The netroots may well be outside the beltway, but hardly "fringe". The troubling thing is that Mr. Brooks surely knows this. One wants to accuse him of hackery, here.
Let me emphasize this. Brooks is lying. This is not said often enough, or forcefully enough, of hacks such as Brooks. The man . . . is . . . lying. He is as fully capable as you or me of reading polls, and he falls back on calling us over-educated caucasions. He does this to defend the torture of innocent people. People never tried, never charged, never sentenced. People who are not POW's, not prisoners, people called citizens of no country, hence torturable. Non-people. Brooks is calling us radical for objecting to the creation of non-people.
Think about that.
The alarming thing is this: the so-called media mainstream is radical, not the people. The word "mainstream" now denotes a frightening acceptence of war, blood, geneva-conventions-be-damned, extradition-might-be-negotiable, secret-prisons-are-American, not-enough-people-are-dead-yet.
The media mainstream is radical. Not us. Brooks is spitting in the wind.
Quoting from my favorite spy-film (not a single gun in the whole thing):
In these times, you have to be a hero merely to be a decent human being.
(From The Russia House.)
Do you think we like this, Mr. Brooks? I, honestly, have better things to do. I want to study philosophy. I want, someday, to buy a house and set up a cool model-train. I want to fall in love. Just like you do.
Maybe the right move is to give up in the face of your unspeakable cynicism. Maybe I should just tend my garden, as Voltaire said (yes, I am educated). Is that what you want? Mr. Brooks? For the netroots, the people, to just go away? So Bush can torture people without complaint?
Mr. Brooks, this is DailyKos. And you are hereby challenged.
We are smarter than you.
We are more decent than you.
We are more educated than you.
We are legion.
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