No “We” in America – Part I

For a long time now, the casual invocation of the term “the American people” when explaining what we as a nation do or do not believe, or will or won’t stand for -- especially by the Right, but also by the Left -- has been pissing me right off.

Because at the moment, there is no more “We” in this country.

It breaks my heart but I believe the strategic and relentless poisoning of the public well by the likes of Republican Lee Atwater, Republican Newt Gingrich, Republican Rush Limbaugh and Republican Karl Rove has done its work. And other that geographical, there are no more categories in this country to which we can apply the term "Americans" any longer.

Consider this from Tom “Captain Obvious” Friedman in the NYT several days ago as he argues from the specific (port security, about which he is dead wrong) to the general (Murrica – Shining Beacon of Tolerance.) Emphasis added by me:

My point is simple: the world is drifting dangerously toward a widespread religious and sectarian cleavage — the likes of which we have not seen for a long, long time. The only country with the power to stem this toxic trend is America.

People across the world still look to our example of pluralism, which is like no other. If we go Dark Ages, if we go down the road of pitchfork-wielding xenophobes, then the whole world will go Dark Ages.

There is a poison loose today, and America — America at its best — is the only antidote…

What fucking “America” are you talking about, Friedman?

America at its darkest and most “pitchfork-wielding” and “xenophobic” is called the Republican Party. America “at its best” is called Progressive and Liberal America, and in case you hadn't heard, we don’t run anything anymore.

Consider this from any given Jerry Springer show on Air America (emphasis added):

When are Americans going to wake up and realize that we can’t let (insert latest Republican treachery or incompetence here) go on?

Consider this from commenter SnarkyShark over at Steve Gilliard’s casa many days ago, (not in any way intended to single him/her out, just to show that with five mouse-clicks in any direction you can find this perilously-false-but-common-as-rainwater linguistic ornament):

“The average American understands that the Cheney administration has pumped the muslims are the enemy canard, and yet they want to sell our ports to them?

You can argue the merits, but appearance-wise, this is toxic. The irony being that these fools did all the set-up work to destroy themselves.

Imagine what they can do to the country if they are given any more chances.

Give yourself an hour and you could find three dozen more examples that are all of the same piece. That "American’s" generally tolerate blah blah blah, but will not stand for, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Nonsense.

So I’ve been fiddling around with an essay for awhile (which I may or may not ever finish) when I came across this perfect crystallization of yet another member of the Right Guard (“Right Guard, in spray-on or solid: Loyally protecting the GOP from its own stink since 1980!”) using the trope of “We the People” as both a grassy knoll from which to snipe, and a capacious skirt behind which to hide.

This from NRO (to which I am not disposed to link), via James Wolcott (to whom I am always disposed to shamelessly attached myself in any way.)

WHAT IT TAKES [John Derbyshire]

Another reader tells me that I "should join [Ralph] Peters and beat the drum for W's view that we must stay the course and do whatever it takes to win."

I should be astonished and dismayed to learn that that is truly the President's view, or Peters'. Suppose, for example, the Joint Chiefs determine that in order to win, we must turn the Sunni Triangle into an irradiated wasteland. (Not, I think, a particularly implausible determination.) Would GWB be willing to do that? I don't think so. There are things we are not willing to do, and there are sacrifices, financial and otherwise, we are not willing to contemplate. Not me, not the President, not Ralph Peters, not the American people, and not my correspondent. And that isn't cowardice or moral weakness, just plain cost/benefit calculation of the sort that underlies all geostrategic decision-making.

The difference between the Peters/GWB view and the Will/WFB/Derb view is not that the former opinionators are willing to "do whatever it takes to win," while the latter are not. The difference is, that the two factions have different estimates of what it would take to win. (Defined to mean: Create a reasonably stable, strong, orderly, and friendly Iraq.) And that the former estimate lies inside the boundaries of what the American people are willing to do, spend, and sacrifice, while the latter lies outside those boundaries.

The question is not "are we willing to do whatever it takes to win?" The question is: WITHIN THE PARAMETERS OF WHAT WE ARE WILLING TO DO, can we win? My answer, based on my best judgment as to what the American people are willing to contemplate doing, and such knowledge as I have of Iraq, and of human affairs in general, is: No, we can't.

Of course different opinions are possible. I'm paid to offer mine, though, and there it is.

Mr. Derbyshire, kindly do me one huge favor: Keep your whiny-titty-baby, loser stink the hell off my side of the aisle.

What’s with this “the American people” bilge?

About half of “the American people” begged and pleaded and screamed for you not to invade Iraq, or if we were stuck trusting the good intentions of bad people, at least for extreme caution and sober judgement to be exercised when taking the nation to war, including a rock-solid casus belli and exit plan.

And once you had gone ahead done it, and the true scope of the disaster your lies had unleashed on the world started to break like a bitter dawn, a lot of those same people begged and pleaded and screamed for you to at least conduct your despicable war competently and professionally. To at least not make matters worse, and not piss away our nation’s blood and treasure recklessly.

These people are called “Liberals” and were loudly and uniformly called traitors and cowards and un-American by your GOP media killbots.

So what you mean is that your kind were not willing to sacrifice to keep fighting your war.

Your Gutless College Republican Rodents of Unusual Size.

Your Yellow Elephants who have refused to enlist in droves to support your lying President’s Reckless Iraqi Adventure.

It was Democrat Charles Ragel that was at least willing to face the bleak reality your President was planning to visit on us and talk about a draft.

It was these Congressmen and Congresswomen –

1 Rep McDermott, Jim [WA-7]
2 Rep Lewis, John [GA-5]
3 Rep Abercrombie, Neil [HI-1]
4 Rep Cummings, Elijah E. [MD-7]
5 Rep Hastings, Alcee L. [FL-23]
6 Rep Jackson-Lee, Sheila [TX-18]
7 Rep Norton, Eleanor Holmes [DC]
8 Rep Jackson, Jesse L., Jr. [IL-2]
9 Rep Conyers, John, Jr. [MI-14]
10 Rep Stark, Fortney Pete [CA-13]
11 Rep Velazquez, Nydia M. [NY-12]
12 Rep Moran, James P. [VA-8]
13 Rep Clay, Wm. Lacy [MO-1]
14 Rep Brown, Corrine [FL-3]
15 Rep Christensen, Donna M. [VI]

Democrats all – who, despite profoundly disagreeing with you, were willing to co-sponsor a bill calling for “We the People” to share the burden for your war.

No, it was your Congress run by your Party that would never even whisper the words “selective service” even though we’re all supposed to pretend that your President is Vewwy Vewwy “Pay any price -- Bear any burden” Cheney-Heart-Attack-Sewious about fighting and winning your war.

Despite the fact not a single soul could ever clearly explain just what in the fuck “Mission Really Accomplished” would even look like, or how exactly we were supposed to get there.

It was Democrats like Rangel who called for,

“…more equitable representation of people making sacrifices."

But it was your SecDef, Don Rumsfeld, who said,

"We're not going to re-implement a draft. There is no need for it at all."

It is the Democrats who have called for at least a minimal return to fiscal sanity and have asked that the unnecessary and immoral tax cuts for the wealthiest people in history that is your Party’s only visible domestic policy be rolled back in order to pay the freight on your President’s massive debt, racked up because of your President’s Holy War.

It is your Party that has instead called for making the givebacks of billions of dollars to the rich while the nation goes broke paying for your war permanent.

It is your Party who are always giddily happy at the idea of noble suffering and sacrifice for their pet projects, and always quick to drive the slimedozer right over anyone who quibbles with the details or legalities…just as long as it is other people doing the paying and dying.

And finally, when you ponder loudly, “Suppose, for example, the Joint Chiefs determine that in order to win, we must turn the Sunni Triangle into an irradiated wasteland” and ask if that is something that GWB would be willing to do – and then fiercely assert that he would not – you have to know, on some level, that you're talking right out of your poo-hole, don't you?

Because what in his long history of his stupid, reckless mistakes makes you think that Bush wouldn’t nuke everything between the Jordan River and the Ukraine if it came to that, and then head off to clear some more brush down at Rancho Ragnarok without a backwards glance?

And what in the wide, wide world of sports makes you think his base – your people – wouldn’t greet the news that the whole of the Mideast had been bombed to glass with wild applause?

Or haven’t you noticed that your whole Party floats on the tectonic plates of bigotry and Dominionist Fundamentalism? So how the fuck do you think an atomic, pay-per-view lynching of a billion sinister brown people who are hogging all the oil would play among your Segregationists?

And thrown as a pre-Rapture bon voyage party in the Holy Lands to boot?

Are you kidding me?

Five minutes after the first nuke took out Tehran, Republican Christopaths would declare Bush the Second Coming of Jebus, and the cleansing of America of its queers, Liberals, feminists and tree-huggers would begin at 8:00 a.m. sharp the next day.

Just because a slaughter that would make the Holocaust look like a rounding error turns your stomach, John, don’t you dare pretend that it wouldn’t be greeted with candy and flowers and "USA! USA!" by a huge percentage of your orc base.

Because your base, in its own, perverse, howling-mad way, does take this war seriously and have just been itching for the your President to pull the trigger and start raining holy fire on everyone, everywhere that makes them uncomfortable.

No, John, it's men like you who "lost" this war, because Iraq, from start to finish, was supposed to be a photo-op for your party of Chickenhawks.

Fast, cheap and camera-ready…except it wasn’t, and it was never going to be.

For your Administration, invading Iraq was a neocon opium-dream of creating fake fear-demons out of whole cloth, and then slaying them live on Fox, and then taking the credit for being bold and decisive just in time for the next election.

You are the ones that never for a minute took this war seriously, because you take nothing seriously.

It is your President who has let his Gang that Couldn’t Loot Straight piss away tens of billions into the deserts of Iraq and into the pockets of Halliburton on the spectacularly incompetent Iraqi Rebuilding Debacle.

And it is your people who, when faced with incontrovertible evidence of the President’s incompetence, lying, criminality, and recklessness nonetheless re-elected him.

This, Mr. Derbyshire, is the House Divided that Rove Built, brick-by-deliberate-gay-bashing-Liberal-slandering-brick, so kindly quit pretending that in the Age of Dubya “We The People” means anything anymore.