Missing the real argument. (Which they then win or stalemate.)

[gulliver]

Ask yourself a question: What did poor America do to protect herself for her 224 years of history before the Junior Wonder and his fellow genius Dick Cheney took the controls? How did we get into a position where we seem forced to reconsider the value of state-sanctioned torture, un-warranted wiretapping, secret prisons, and war for war's sake? Has the world gone mad?

Few of us seem to have the unequivocal, unstoppable peace of mind that comes from knowing the answer: None of the wild things Bush is doing and speechifying so vehemently about have any proven value whatsoever. The Republicans, especially Bush and his clods in the GOP Congress, have been allowed the presumption that they are doing these esoteric, double-naught spy, "dark side", out-of-the-box things to our way of life for some plausible reason. They aren't.

They've got nothing. The outrages we are seeing have no foundation in fact or sense at all. They are just rhetorical devices. The Bushies have never shown any proof of the slightest effectiveness or the worthiness of any of the nutty things they seem to be fighting so viciously for. They assert that they have "saved lives" and "made the world safer," but there is no one but them saying so. There is zero proof. There is no bi-partisan, cleared Congressional committee backing them. There is not a single name of any person saved, nor any destructive event supposedly prevented that can be shown to have resulted from anything that could not have been done by all of Bush's predecessors using normal American methods.

Accept it. Take courage from it. Bush and the rubberstamp GOP are fighting to change a Constitution they don't need to change. They started a war we didn't need to fight. They tortured and are still torturing people they didn't and don't need to torture. They bullied, pushed, slandered, and bribed other countries for no good reason at all. They spent and talked big. They were bossy. They agreed to agree with themselves. But they produced nothing -- less than nothing for all our trouble.

Unfortunately, they still win or score a stalemate because of the power of elementary rhetoric. The media audience and, worse, most of us Dems have been rhetorically tricked. I hope we snap out of it soon. I hope we get angry enough that the killer instinct finally shows itself. (I except Clark, Murtha and a few notable others.)

Dems too often miss the real argument. We argue the Geneva Conventions, but we don't simply sell and believe in the presumption that Bush has no good reason for contravening the Geneva Conventions in the first place. We argue that Bush is violating and planning on further violations of the Constitution, but we don't simply sell and believe in the presumption that Bush has no good reason to mess with the Constitution and is not president enough to trust with it anyway.

In a way, we mentally accept "for the sake of argument" that torture or changing the Constitution might somehow do something useful. We don't buy it, but we accept by our argument style that our audience might. We try to persuade people how terrible messing with the Constitution is, and in so doing we accept the burden of proof.

[babylonsister]

1. Great post, gulliver, and you're right! nt

[fooj]

2. Prove it, Little Lord Pissypants! Prove it.

Great post!

[GuvWurld]

3. We Do Not Consent

We Do Not Consent (.pdf)

[many a good man]

4. GOP phony macho bullshit

The foundation of the media-supported meme that Republicans are better at protecting us is phony macho bullshit. It appeals to 55-59% of American white males and 55% of white females (some of the time). Enough to turn the election if it becomes voters' top issue.

For the sake of mankind I hope Democrats can pierce this myth once and for all. The current situation is the best possible case-in-point how this approach has done nothing but fuck US almost as much as it has fucked the rest of the world.

[jimshoes]

5. Our situation is not so dire

that we should be contemplating throwing 230 years of the American experience out the window in favor of a fascist/corporate authoritarian regime. The biggest threat America faces is the threat from within, not without.