> Over the top arguments by both sides keep us from addressing real problems. > When the debate is at this level, both sides are too involved in proving > that the other folks are evil to worry about the details required to > actually solve problems.� Further, it is hard to reasonably convince people > with this type of argument.� Now, one can, as Rush does, appeal to baser > instincts, but that isn't helpful.� I'm not putting you on Rush's level, > Tom, but I really don't see the value in such an over the top argument. > These type of black and white good guy vs. bad guy arguments aren't helpful > to me. >
I'm not accusing you of this, but it's easy for people who are sunk in vicious rhetoric to condemn their opponents for responding in turn. As Budd Schulberg wrote in _What Makes Sammy Run?_, "you can't be a son-of-a-bitch and the first time you get it in the belly, holler brotherhood. You can't eat your brother and have him." The right would just love it if the left would universally disarm. You're right that over-the-top rhetoric coarsens debate and makes it harder to have constructive discourse. And you know what? Sometimes, I just don't give a damn. Sometimes, I just get SO FREAKIN' ANGRY at George W. Election-Stealing-Compassionate-Conservative-My-Ass-Draft-Dodging-Deserting-Leave-No-Millionair e-Behind-Where-Are-Those-WMDs-You-Swore-To-The-Entire-World-You-Knew-Exactly-W here-They-Were? Bush, that I just want to scream until they complain about the noise on the Moon. There are times I don't want to convince anyone, I just want to respond to obvious applause lines from people preaching to the choir I happen to be singing in. That said. Something nasty happened here. Someone, probably someone quite high up in the Bush Admin, leaked Valerie Plame's name to Robert Novack and some other journalists. I think it was a deliberate attempt to screw with Joseph Wilson's mind and punish him for publicly dissenting from the party line about Saddam and the WMD. Call it incompetence, call it evil, call it whatever you want - it happened, and it seems to me that Bush is trying to cover it up rather than find the culprit. I think he knows who did it, and it's Karl Rove, and Bush is trying to save Rove's ass. Yes, I'm not giving Bush any even minimal benefit of the doubt. He is not encouraging me to do so by his actions - or, rather, inactions - so far in finding who did it. This is not the kind of leak that plagues all administrations. This is not some whistleblower or empire-builder dissenting from a policy and trying to wreck it from within. The only purpose of this leak was to personally hurt Joseph Wilson. If the person who did it mistakenly thought they were helping Bush, they should confess and take the consequences. Bush should be leading the way to find the person and punish him. But we all know he won't do that, and we all know why he won't do that. I think, under the circumstances - and certainly considering that if this had happened in the Clinton Administration, the Republicans would already have started impeachment proceedings - I'm justified in at least some of the heatedness of my rhetoric. Tom Beck www.prydonians.org www.mercerjewishsingles.org "I always knew I'd see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed I'd see the last." - Dr Jerry Pournelle _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
