A Mean and Unholy Ditch
The sleep of reason amid wild dogs and gin

The hardest thing for garden variety American liberals to grasp is what a truly politicized and hateful place much of America has become---one long mean ditch ruled by feral dogs where the standards of civility no longer apply. The second hardest thing for liberals is to admit that they are comfortably insulated in the middle class and are not going to take any risks in the battle for America’s soul … not as long as they are still living on a good street, sending their kids to Montessori and getting their slice of the American quiche. Call it the politics of the comfort zone. Ever on the lookout for free food and brand name booze, I slipped over into the comfort zone on New Year’s Day, 2005 to a lovely literary party of urbanites who’d flown in from upper East Coast. They all seem to have country places down here in the Shenandoah Valley these days. So as I minced over fresh salmon with a chic liberal book editor, she said: “I am coming to understand how Karl Rove drove so many of the American people to vote for Bush during the election” (pronouncing “people” in that way of overeducated urban liberals everywhere, indicating that she did not consider herself one of them). And I am thinking: “JESUS CHRIST LADY, IT’S NOT AS IF IT WERE A LONG DRIVE!”

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  thanks to Bad Attitudes

Riding the Polarized Express

NO torture versus torture. Blue State versus Red State. Liberal versus Conservative. Fahrenheit 9/11 versus The Passion of The Christ. America is riding the Polarized Express - a national train fast approaching a fork in the tracks. One track leads to the republic rediscovered. The other track, to dictatorship and empire. Sounds extreme? Consider: we have seen this all before. In fact, just a hundred years ago, at the start of the last century, the politics of the ‘western’ world was disturbingly familiar to ours, with many nations of Europe similarly on the Polarized Express - Germany, Spain, Russia, Italy, and France among others Back then each nation saw a growing polarization of their electorate. Each nation’s story was a familiar fight between polarized groups, entrenched elites versus oppressed under-classes. The names of these polarized groups varied from nation to nation: leftists, liberals, socialists, anarchists, communists, and republicans on the left; conservatives, monarchists, aristocrats, militarists, fundamentalists, and fascists on the right. But the basic polarization of the divide was the same: the voice of the people versus the voice of the elites. These polarized groups fought over economic justice, over ‘family values,’ over national pride, over the fear of anarchists (the terrorists of their day), over religious values, over empire, over ethnic superiority. And as the polarization intensified so did the politics and leadership of each nation, moving, election after election, from left to right and then back again. And in some nations - Germany, Italy, Russia, and Spain - the polarization ultimately snapped the back of democracy. Extremisms of various sorts emerged with a sureness of purpose almost religious in intensity. These “isms” promised social safety and political clarity. But not all nations on the Polarized Express were victims of anti-democratic extremism. Not all nations lost their democratic soul for the sake of political clarity.

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  thanks to Bad Attitudes