My response to Kathleen Parker's absurd WaPo Piece of Dec. 9

[markpkessinger]

Kathleen Parker, in one of her typical uses of selective memory and absurd leaps of logic, published a column in the Washington Post titled, An America that no longer knows itself, dated September 9. She purports to analyze the causes of the dysfunction in our public discourse, first claiming that 9/11 caused "the entire country to go insane," implying that the insanity that arose was a function of the disagreements over things like the war in Iraq, as opposed to the relative degree of sanity that existed on either side of the question. Then she turns to President Obama, claiming he has perpetuated the dysfunction because he "sounded bossy' in his jobs speech. Incredibly, the only reference she makes to the GOP's contribution to the dysfunction is an oblique reference to the "excessive emotionalism" of Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst during the president's 2009 address to a joint session of Congress concerning the health care legislation.

Here is my response (posted in the comments section of the original article).

markpkessinger
Ms. Parker, without a hint of irony, purports to analyze the sources of the dysfunction in our present public discourse, pointing first to Osama bin Laden, and then to President Obama, while glossing over entirely the role played the the previous President and his Administration. Nothing about the events of 9/11 required a a Vice President and his puppet president to sell a war to the public on false pretenses, based on evidence carefully selected to influence that sale in a predetermined direction. Nothing about Osama bin Laden (nor certainly about the current President) required the previous Administration's Dept. of Homeland Security to deliberately manipulate public fear by ratcheting up terror alerts for political gain.

Ms. Parker then goes on to assert a moral equivalence (or an equivalent insanity) between those who supported the war in Iraq and those who opposed it. Washington and other media pundits dismissed those who called for putting the brakes on the rush to war as being somehow less than loyal Americans, yet they proved to be right. Only one side of that question was insane.

Only one party was wiling to bring down the entire country's economy in order to extract concessions to an agenda it did not have the votes to pass through legitimate legislative channels. And only one party sent an entire freshmen class of representatives to Congress bound to a pledge not to raise taxes under any circumstances whatsoever (a pledge made to a man nobody has elected to anything). Only one side has announced that it will block any nominee whatsoever to fill the headship of the FCPA, an agency validly created by Congress, merely because they are ideologically opposed to reasonable regulations. Only one party used the filibuster more than double any Congress in history, thereby rendering legislative governance virtually impossible by imposing an artificial 60-vote Senate requirement on even the most routine legislative items.

On all of these issues, Ms. Parker, it has not been the entire country that has been insane. It has been a particular faction of one party, along with the rest of that party that has enabled the insanity to continue. All the hope ijn the world for some sort of "Kum-bah-yah" moment of cross-party cooperation will do nothing to change the fact that the insanity has emanated consistently from one side of the aisle. And much of the country has caught on to the DC punditry's assertions of false equivalence, and we are no longer buying what you are intent on trying to sell.
Today 9/11/2011 8:40:58 AM EDT

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. Well said! kr

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. Parsing over the facts.

The insanity began in 2000 with that election, and actually, before that when the conservatives began to knock down every convention that we lived by in order to get at Clinton.

[wizstars]

4. I can trace it beck to 1980, when right wing nut groups "targeted"

Democratic Senators with ads showing crosshairs of a gunscope over their hearts.

IT STARTED WITH REAGAN!!

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Back then, I don't think the nut side of the population was as primed as they

were when Clinton came into office. You needed both factors to take this country into the abyss.

[Submariner]

3. Liberation tastes like crow to anti-war crowd

Never forget the statement this douche bag ahole made back in 2003.

What was that whimpering sound? Oh that. It's just the "Yes, but" crowd formerly known as the "anti-war pundits." Ignore them.

Saddam's statue had barely hit the ground in central Baghdad before America's armchair doomsayers began harrumphing a new caveat in which to couch this unseemly turn of events. One might almost think they didn't want Saddam to fall.

You couldn't help noticing the careful balance the antis tried to strike between reluctant admission and preachy admonition. The formula goes something like this: "Yes, we defeated Iraq, BUT . let's not get too carried away, it ain't over yet."

No one exercised this template better - or more oddly - than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Here are a couple of snippets from her column the day Baghdad collapsed:

No one exercised this template better - or more oddly - than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Here are a couple of snippets from her column the day Baghdad collapsed:

"Victory in Iraq will be a truly historic event, BUT (my emphasis) it will be exceedingly weird and dangerous if this administration turns America into Sparta."

And this: "There remains the unfinished business of Osama bin Laden. BUT (my emphasis) the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom should not mark the beginning of Operation Eternal War."

http://townhall.com/columnists/kathleenparker/2003/04/12/liberation_tastes_like_crow_to_anti-war_crowd