(Below is a repost of a thread I wrote on General Dicussion Politics.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2553128&mesg_id=2553128 )
I'm just venting. But it is so frustrating that Republicans always seem to be allowed to have their "clear victories" or unambiguous positions. But Democrats/liberals/progressives have to be subjected to some phony Cosmic Balance Sheet in which it's always "one step forward, two steps back."
Whether it is coincidence or conspiracy -- or somewhere in the middle -- it seems like we always are subjected to distractions, whenever something seems to be working in favor of our side (using that phrase in the broadest terms) or against the Republican Conservative Machine.
First of all let me say that I DO NOT believe the incident with McKinney was a Rovian plot. From what it sounds like it, this was the kind of dust-up that happens every day in all walks of life, in which tempers flare.
I'm also not going to make a judgement about whether the Capitol Police were racist or otherwise out of line, or whether McKinney was behaving badly.
BUT what I do wonder about is the aftermath. The guy who was once the most formidable, and obnoxious, GOP members of Congress resigns under a cloud stemming from systemic institutional corruption. But, lo and behold, the right-wing Spin Machine finds another Congressperson with a legal problem to browbeast simultaneously.
There is no proportiionality in this. One incident is a Big Deal. The other is not. The fact is that one incident goes to the heart of GOP politics (and the whole culture of special interests in Washington). The other was an unfortunate specific personal incident involving a Democratic member of Congress.
But McKinney's behavior is made into something at least as important as allegations of lobbyist influence and the purchase of elections....And worse yet, Fox and the rest of the "liberal media" and the Beltway Establishment choose to make it seem like McKinney is symbolic of claims that "those liberals" are nothing but but a bunch of anarchistic hotheads and crybabies.
Alas, we on the left fed the beast too. We get into flame wars over it.
This Phony Balance is perpetual. It's no different than the fact that at a time of his successful presidency, Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about sex. But today, when the ountry is falling apart, if a Democratic Senator even tries to get a mild censure over the current administrations' trashing of civil liberties, he is subjected to vilification as a "troublemaker" who is just playing a "political game" to advance himself.
Or when Paul Wellstone -- a liberal who was univerally respected as a person -- died, we weren;t allowed to mourn or take solice in the bi-partisan expressions of honors he received. Or in the admittedly partisan inspiration of his memorial service....Nooooooo, the whole thing had to be tainted with a Fake Controversy about how "inappropriate" his memorial service was....But when Ronald Reagan died, anyone who expressed frustration with the week-long canonization of a controversial Republican president was accused of mean spitrited vindictiveness.
Somehow, this notion of a necessary "balance" in political fortunes that only applies to Democrats/liberals/progressives is a charade we have to stop buying into.
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