Dudgeons* and Dragons

#StandWIthGeorge 

Because however much his stunt was clearly targeted at advancing his personal political fortunes by  playing to the worst paranoid fantasies of his wingnut base, his stand on federal gummint overreach is convenient to me at the moment.

Which is why every true civil libertarian must absolutely ignore everything else this freak has ever said or done and stand shoulder to shoulder with this hero.

Unless, of course, you're a Liberal hypocrite who hates America...just like Karl Rove, George Bush and Sarah Palin!

Such Obama-defending progressives also wilfully ignore just how much they now sound like Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, and George Bush when ridiculing concerns about due process for accused Terrorists:

Bush in his 2004 Convention speech mocking John Kerry: "After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers";

Rove in 2005 mocking liberals: "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments";

Palin in her 2008 RNC Convention speech mocking Obama: "Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights".

Find any defender of Obama's claimed power to assassinate accused Terrorists without due process and that is exactly what you will hear. 

Because, yeah, wondering aloud whether there might not be occasions where killing a terrorist with a drone is logistically necessary and/or the best bad-choice out of all the bad-choices available is exactly the same as mocking Liberals as soft-headed dolts who are too stupid to love America in the proper, approved, lights-out missionary fashion.

Do not try to distract me with piffle about how there are meaty debates about the uses of drones breaking out all over, like this exchange on NPR I heard yesterday while en-route to a meeting:

How The 'War On Terror' Became A War On 'Tribal Islam'

INSKEEP: Well, let's talk about what happens when you begin raining drone fire on a region like Waziristan. And let's talk about it first from the proponents' point of view. What are the advantages if you are a foreign power like the United States to using drones, rather than sending thousands of troops into a region? 

AHMED: The American argument is plain and it's clear. And it's a strong argument, that none of our troops are involved, there's no danger to them. We're sitting in the Midwest somewhere, we press a button and people are killed across the world, and we achieve what we want to achieve which is to kill the bad guys.

The reality is that for every one, quote-unquote, "bad guy" who's taken out, there may be a hundred ordinary mothers, children, relatives who are killed. So when the drones falls, it doesn't just fall one day and goes away for the next 10 days. Steve, what happens is in fact, the drones are hovering and buzzing overhead round-the-clock, so that kids cannot sleep. They're traumatized.

They're terrorizing entire generations because they say we're living in fear; fear of where this will strike next. And I think as someone very concerned about trying to bring some sense of peace and order and humanity to the situation, we really have to step back and begin to say: Is this the most effective way of dealing with terrorism, and is it working?

INSKEEP: Are there some pretty well-documented bad guys who've been killed this way?

AHMED: Yes. But how many other bad guys have emerged, Steve? If you kill five or 10 or 15 or 30, you may have then alienated 100,000, 200,000, 300,000. Someone has to do the mathematics. 

...

And do not to try to deflect my righteous (tm) anger (tm) with a lot of yadda yadda about how, as Liberals, we believe that making our conversations about critical issues of the day as expansive and inclusive as possible is a virtue.

Instead, let me remind you of the rules of Dudgeons and Dragons:

• Players are permitted to choose between two-and-only-two roles: America-loving, civil libertarian hero and hypocritical, boot-licking O-bot Rove-clone. 

• Players are required to conduct all discussion within severely circumscribed limits as dictated by the Dudgeon Master (me).  Players attempting to smuggle any broader context or mitigating information into the game will be severely penalized 

• Because the Dudgeon Master says so, that's why.

UPDATE:

* dudg·eon ¹  (djn)

n.

A sullen, angry, or indignant humor: "Slamming the door in Meg's face, Aunt March drove off in high dudgeon" (Louisa May Alcott).