I originally posted this as a comment in Occam Hatchet's diary about the NSA Ruling. But I really wanted to flush it out into a full blown rant. Consider this a kind of "meta-primal scream". I am just sick of this shit, I'm tired of feeble democrats who refuse to stand up for themselves.
Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm a moderate. I disagree with liberals on a number of issues. I'm not a pacifist. I'm not a feminist. I'm opposed to gun control. In short, I'm not from around here. Having said that, understand that I am absolutely, positively, in no unfuckingcertain terms opposed to authoritarianism. And I'm here to say... I was wrong about Howard Dean.
I was wrong. Totally wrong. Completely, absolutely, letting-your-kids-go-to-a-slumber-party-at-Neverland-Ranch wrong about Howard Dean. I was one of those guys who supported Gephardt, and I hated you guys for bringing him down in Iowa. I originally thought of Howard Dean as a cynical opportunist, a nobody trying to get his name in the papers by latching onto to a bunch of hippies and pacifists in order to get the Democratic Nomination. This really pissed me off. Here's this guy, who nobody gives a shit about, who comes out of nowhere and gets on the cover of Time by pandering to a bunch of well meaning but totally unrealistic motherfuckers who think that "Give Peace a Chance" is a viable foreign policy. I was on the verge of dispair about Howard Dean's campaign.
I know alot of you don't understand why people hated Dean so much, but there's a reason for it, at least there was for me. George W. Bush, and all his followers/enablers, scare the shit out of me. You see, I'm from the south. Specifically, the Bible Belt. I grew up with these people, I know how they think, these so called social conservatives, the fundamentalists. These are dangerous, scary, creepy people. They need to be removed from power with the quickness. To me, that objective takes priority over all other concerns. Gay Marriage, Abortion Law, Terrorism, even Iraq Policy takes a backseat to the overriding goal of removing these people from office. That's why I hated Dean so much. I thought he was unelectable. I was ecstatic to see him melt down after Iowa and get beat in New Hampshire. I thought Kerry was the best guy to take on Bush. And I couldn't have been more wrong.
I have seen the light! I realize now that "playing to the swing voters" is a self defeating strategy. Politics isn't a zero sum game. It isn't a tug-of-war, where you try to maximize the number of votes you can gain in the middle without losing too many from your base. Politics is more like chemistry. I remember something from high school about how sodium and chlorine are both dangerous and unstable elements, but when you combine them, you get table salt. That's politics, things which appear stable can become explosive and unpredictable if you split up their core components. That's not always easy to do, it takes some work, but it can change the dynamics and make the inconceivable reality. The GOP understands this, and so does Howard Dean.
We should be attacking these bastards, and hard. Not necessarily from the far left, mind you, but we should definitely be attacking. Of course, while it is a bad idea to go instinctively to the left, it is counterproductive to always try and stake out a compromise position in the middle. It looks like (and is) pandering. It makes Democrats look disingenuous and weak. Nothing turns people off more than a coward, and with people like Hillary, Biden and Kerry you can smell the fear a mile away. I used to think that Karl Rove cynicaly set the Democrats up to nominate someone like Dean, an unelectable ideologue. I thought it was part of his evil masterplan. But now I know better, Dean was his worst nightmare. He was terrified of Dean, and he succesfully bluffed us all into nominating the hapless Kerry. In short, we had a royal flush and Rove had a pair of threes, and the bastard bluffed us into folding our hand. Never again.
I don't want people to get the wrong idea, I disagree with liberals about some, but not all issues. And these are mostly relatively minor sticking points. As far as I'm concerned you can have all the gay marriage you want. Hell, I'd vote for it just for the fun of watching James Dobson have a nervous breakdown. While we're on the subject, you guys are doing it all wrong. It's not gay agenda, it's homosexual agenda. And you've really got to stress it, like this: homo-SEXXX-ual agenda. I digress. Look, here's the deal. We're not all gonna see everything the same way. No one is ever right about everything all the time. But any alternative to the status quo would be a good one at this point. John Kerry, Mark Warner, Al Sharpton... any of those guys would be a welcome change right now.
But we're not gonna get that change if we keep on being afraid. Nor can we be timid. It's past time to stop reinforcing GOP themes on Democratic weakness by validating them in our own rhetoric. One of the events that has led me on this path to enlightenment has been the behavior of Senator Obama. Count me as one of the people who said, after his speech in Boston, "that's what we need, what a refreshing alternative to that angry, liberal Howard Dean". I was wrong about that too. Obama has been a disappointment. All his sucking up to Bush is embarrasing, nobody likes a bootlicker. The "liberals are intolerant of religion" crap was the last straw. What a fucking moron. Liberals are intolerant? Are you fucking kidding me? You need to get out more, Senator. I don't think it's our side that has the biggest problem with religious intolerance. But that kind of talk, saying that the biggest problem with Democrats are the strongly held beliefs of Democrats needs to go away. Don't blame liberals, Mr. Obama, the GOP is the problem.
The elections in November represent an historic opportunity. With control of both houses of Congress, we can take those Article II arguments that Cheney likes to throw around and smack his bitch ass upside the head with a righteous Article I retort. In order to do that we need to be aggressive. I don't know of any time in American history where a political party was as open to attack as the modern GOP is now. But here we are, not attacking (at least, not near enough). This NSA thing is, for me, too much to bear.
I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore! Since this story broke, the Bush Admnistration has been crapping their collective pants. You think it's true when they claim that they welcome an investigation into the program and then won't even let their own DOJ lawyers look at it? They're hiding something. But besides that, this is totally unacceptable behavior. Massive government surveillance of private communications... with no meaningful oversight. Are you fucking shitting me!?! This is authoritarianism people. No authoriatarian goverment in history has ever not done this. It's step one in "How to start a dictatorship". The Nazis were doing this shit before they ever even thought of going after Jews. This must be stopped. But dating back to January of this year, with few exceptions, the response from Democrats has been timid, meek, semi-criticism and the proposal of half-solutions and even outright appeasment. No more. It's time to decide if we're Democrats or Liebermans. The arguments for warrantless spying are transparently false. FISA gives the president all the authority he needs to go after Al Queda and fight terrorism. We know that already. My problem is that this isn't the number one line of attack being pushed. This ought to be pushed by Democrats like the GOP pushed the Swift Boat campaign in 2004. Look, I don't know what Al From's problem is. And Joe Klein is fucking retarded. But to everyone else out there, if you want to win, you need to stop being Obama and start being Dean. You need to get tough. People respect that, even when they're not sure they agree with you.
Wow, that was one hell of a rant. OK, so here's what I believe we need to do. We need to go Karl Rove on their bitch asses. Attack their perceived strength. Don't even worry if it makes any sense, just attack like mad dogs. If that tactic succeeded in making George W. Bush look like a tough guy and John F. Kerry look like a dishonorable coward, it can definitely be effective in undermining the GOP on security. Forget all the concerns about whether or not there is evidence of wrongdoing here, just say that there is, and say it loud. Look, for one, I'd be shocked if it turned out there was no abuse of power going on here. I'd bet the farm that these guys have used this program to spy on political enemies, journalists, to advance their business interests and to datamine for the benefit of RNC campaign efforts. But even though we lack specific proof of this at this time, I say we claim it's true anyway. It's smart politics.
There is only one strategy in politics: Attack. It's just a question of how. All this mealy-mouthed talk about domestic policies and criticism of "the conduct of the war" is uberlame. These halfassed attacks, in and of themselves, make Democrats look like a bunch of pussies. They need to come right out and call these guys a bunch of lying crooks, dishonest thieves, manipulative charlatans. They need to say, in clear terms...
1. These assholes are using fear to acquire money and power, that's all they care about.
2. They didn't do a damned thing to stop 9-11, they've done precious little to prevent something like that from happening again.
3. The terror alerts are all bullshit. Unfounded fear mongering intended to generate hysteria for political reasons (there is actually ample evidence for this already). They're like a kid in high school who yanks the fire alarm to get out of taking a test he's unprepared for. In other words, they're working the system!
4. Terrorism is up across the board. Since these clowns have been in charge, terrorism is up - before and after 9-11 - and it's really only a matter of time before we have another 9-11. Because these guys aren't doing their fucking job. The fact that there hasn't been an attack since 9-11 is meaningless, there was an 8 year gap between the first WTC attack and 9-11, and we weren't doing anything special then.
5. These guys are full of shit. They say we got attacked because of Beirut. Beirut?!? That was twenty fucking years ago! What the fuck does that have to do with anything? When they do their "Bin Laden says we're weak because we withdrew from Somalia and Lebanon" routine, you ask them why the hell they would base our foreign policy on the ramblings of a pychotic madman.
This stuff works, it gets people thinking. High minded policy arguments are too wonkish for Joe Swingvoter, you've got to put it in language people understand. That's why attack politics works. It gets people thinking, "Just how bad are these assholes?". And that's when we win, because as we know all too well, these assholes are pretty fucking bad.
Update I: Some concern was expressed in the comments that I was too critical of feminism in the intro. Feminists are the favorite punching bags of guys like Rush Limbaugh, and I don't want to be known for taking cheap shots at easy targets. So I changed that part in order to even it out with the rest.
Update II: Wow. Just wow. I am astounded by the response to this post. I know that alot of important people in the Democratic Party and in the Press read this blog. I hope I got the message through to them that I wanted to. I hope it resonates with everyone who reads it. Thank you for listening to my concerns and for all your great feedback. This country needs more organizations like Daily Kos.
Update III: I need a motherfucking burger. And some fries. I'm going to Jack in the Box. Keep on coming with the comments, people, I will get back to you.
Update IV: Mmmmm. That was a tasty burger! I'm signing off. Thanks again for all the great feedback. I can already feel another rant coming on, it's rolling around the back of my head, looking for a way out. We'll see what happens. Remember, we're all in this together. Take care of each other, Democrats. And don't take no shit.