Those Kossacks who keep tabs on Andrew Sullivan will not doubt have seen his recent post the US attorney general scandal and, of course, his ongoing confrontation with Bush conservatives over torture. However, Sully has finally gone all the way in his analysis of the Bush administration. He is now, for all intents and purposes, one of us now. Money quote:
But did he actually fully realize what he was doing? He is certainly shallow enough to authorize torture and not fully grapple with what that means. The man is a master in denial. And he is deeply, deeply morally lazy. This is a guy who could laugh and mock a woman he was about to execute. Remember that? He makes his cut-throat mother look compassionate.
Did he wrestle long and hard with the question and decide that allowing torture was a terrible thing but he had no choice to protect American lives? Or did he just say "fine," do what you have to do, and move on? I suspect the latter. Woodward has Bush at one point asking casually, "Is there any evidence these harsh interrogations work?" He'd already authorized them at that point. Occasionally his glib callowness still has the capacity to shock, even after all these years. His dry-drunk capacity for utter denial of reality - especially about his own moral complicity in torture and the deaths of thousands of innocents in Iraq - renders him immune from taking moral responsibility. For anything.
That's what fundamentalism can do to a person: it can so convince you that you are on the side of absolute good that you do not even stop to imagine that you are also capable of absolute evil. But Bush has been capable of absolute evil. His glib, lazy hands are covered in the blood of others, and he has tainted the honor of his office and the military more deeply than any president in modern times. But he is saved, isn't he? And the saved cannot do evil, can they?
Lots of people here don't like Sully. I'm of two minds about him. I don't agree with him on certain set of issues, but I don't find him to be disagreeable as a blogger or, when I've seen him on TV, as a person. He is a conservative equivalent of the 'Good German', and so in a sense has my pity as he has watched his ideology and party get hijacked, albeit with his initialy strong support, by the cryptofascists now calling themselves Republicans.
Sully, futhermore, represents a strategic part of the electorate who are deeply disgusted with the Bush administration, but are unable, for whatever reason, to call themselves Liberals or Democrats. And that's ok. America needs an honorable opposition like one that Sully represents. But, right now, despite our differences, I believe we need to unite with folks like Sully to cast out this curse called the Bush administration.
That's why I pose the question below:
Should Sully be invited to address the DailyKos community, either at the YearlyKos convention or through a guest, Front-page post?
I think we would all greatly benefit from the discourse that would result.