Original Sin

I posted two pieces from this exchange (from the WW episode "Dead Irish Writers") between the bitter Toby and the flamboyantly boozy Lord John (Earl of Croix, Marquess of Needham and Dolby, Baronet of Brycey, England's Ambassador to the United States) Marbury for two reasons.

First, good writing showing two, very different, very smart people from entirely different worlds sizing each other up by tossing history, literature and insults back and forth. Over a couple of Lagavulins.

Second, it provides a lovely insight into the practical realities of politics. Into the frustrating job facing people of goodwill when they try to find ways to bridge the distance between what they know must do and what, it appears, they absolutely "cannot" do.

And third, it speaks of slavery in its proper context: as America's Original Sin.


Slavery was profane ground, and Racism was the Church we built there.

Our House was Divided from the beginning because we constructed an entire ideology -- replete with fully articulated religious, political and capitalist economic buttresses -- around an institution that was an open and absolute blasphemy against everything our founding documents purported to celebrate. Fatal compromises with Slavery were codified into very DNA of our democracy's Owner's Manuals, dooming generation after generation to domestic warfare -- hot and cold -- along with endless and elaborate biblical, educational, social and legal skirmishes all designed to defend the indefensible.

And it always looks the same: one group of Americans trying to coax, cajole, persuade, compromise and, finally, force another group of Americans to actually live up to all of our pretty words, while that other group screams like the Devil getting a Holy Water enema with a fire hose and swearing to burn the place down rather than give another inch.

From Lincoln's Second Inaugural:

...
Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.
...

So why bring it up now?

Because as our mainstream politics and media continue to obsess over trivia and process while abdicating their civil responsibilities, more and more often we on the Left find ourselves dragooned into having to grappling on our own with the problem of understanding and confronting the army of half-bright goons who now openly lust for a real war against the imaginary enemies that these clowns

and thousands of their fellow travelers have spent decades hard-wiring into their targeting computers.

The slavering wingnut legions more commonly known as:

Scary New GOP Poll
John Avlon

On the heels of health care, a new Harris poll reveals Republican attitudes about Obama: Two-thirds think he's a socialist, 57 percent a Muslim—and 24 percent say "he may be the Antichrist."

To anyone who thinks the end of the health-care vote means a return to civility, wake up.

Obama Derangement Syndrome—pathological hatred of the president posing as patriotism—has infected the Republican Party. Here's new data to prove it:

• 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.

The belief that Obama is a “domestic enemy” is widely held—a sign of trouble yet to come.

• 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
• 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president"
• 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is "doing many of the things that Hitler did"
• Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama "may be the Antichrist."

These numbers all come from a brand-new Harris poll, inspired in part by my new book Wingnuts. It demonstrates the cost of the campaign of fear and hate that has been pumped up in the service of hyper-partisanship over the past 15 months. We are playing with dynamite by demonizing our president and dividing the United States in the process. What might be good for ratings is bad for the country

...

-- the Republican Party.

And to understand who and what they are, we first have to understand what the Age of Bush meant to them.

For eight years, the Bush Administration beat the living shit out of the United States Constitution and the American Dream. They aggressively and deliberately corrupted every branch and twig of American government and every institution of American civic life they could get their grubby, fascist fingers into.

The did it openly, with a smirk, while the called anyone who questioned their motives or methods a traitor and unAmerican. They have never apologized. They has never admitted that they made a horrible, horrible mistake.

Quite the contrary.

They are brayingly, sneeringly proud of who they are and the catastrophic damage they have done.

Our of their berserk paranoia and rage, they have carved another swath of profane ground straight down the middle of our democracy, on which they are building a new temple to evil and fear.

And if the wounds they have inflicted are not cleaned and dressed -- if their poison is allowed to continue to fester and spread -- they doom us to more generations of warfare and, finally, kill this country.

Bury what is left of us under our new Original Sin.