Why does Fred Thompson want to be president? Why does he want to be George Bush III? Why does a man who espouses now debunked ideas about the rightness of American power think of himself as the superstar who will win the hearts of Republicans?
Why would conservatives only embrace a man whose beliefs most Americans have shown repeatedly they don’t subscribe to anymore? Why is he getting all this media attention for being exactly what Americans say they don’t want in a leader: a simplistic populist showing belligerent behavior to other countries?
Why do conservatives embrace folksy zeppelin-gassy windbags who say explicitly that we should attack any country on the planet that we can IMAGINE attacking us? Like Fred Thompson did in a video in 2003. Why do conservatives continue to insist that their presidential candidates demonstrate their adherence to values that in the past four years have proved to be catastrophic for the United States?
Why are they continuing to say this after leading us into a new Vietnam — a war in Iraq that was fought using the patently immoral rationale of pre-emptive war and that has proved to be not only unwinnable but a manifest tragedy?
Why do otherwise good people like Rudy Giuliani and John McCain insist that we must continue to fight and lose in our new Vietnam? Why do these good, effective leaders not see that it’s mainly their support for the war that’s losing them campaign money and credibility? Why is John McCain, a man who probably otherwise has more personal integrity and honesty than Hillary Clinton, going to be clobbered by her in election polls and lose his eminence in history because he refuses to admit that America started a bad war?
Why do the same conservatives who, in the Bill Clinton administration, rode around with bumper stickers saying “I love my country but fear my government” now defend the right of a president to spy on us with wiretaps (and without warrants) and use torture methods by any other name in the name of national security? Why do conservatives defend these beliefs using ridiculous hypothetical imperatives like “Of course you would torture someone if you thought it would save a baby’s life.” Why do they not realize that codifying it into law is different, and makes us as bad as we ever thought the Soviet Union was?
Why do conservatives think that criticizing your country, even when your country has done something horrific, is treason, even though that’s the kind of thinking that allowed Adolf Hitler to rise to power?
Why does nobody subscribe to the relatively easy to understand concept of the “sunk-cost fallacy,” which says you have to keep losing more lives in meaningless ways to justify lives already lost in meaningless ways?
Why do far-right wingers think that the bald emotions of their arguments make their arguments right? (Such arguments usually start with a sentence like this: “My son/father/grandfather died on the beaches/streets/jungles of ….”)
Why do conservatives not understand that these criticisms are not criticisms of a country’s obligation to defend itself, which is a different argument?
Why do conservatives put the sexual scandals of a man like Bill Clinton on a level of moral equivalency with those of a man like George Bush, whose wars have led to the deaths of thousands of people (if not a hundred thousand), who has argued that America has a right to torture people, who has defended the right to spy on us without any legal procedures (which should be loathsome to conservatives first and foremost) and who has shown a repeated and provable willingness to lie to justify these things?
Why do conservatives not realize that a lie is still a lie, even if George Bush doesn’t admit he’s lying?
Why do conservatives say they don’t like being lied to by Bill Clinton, but seem to eat it up like love when George Bush lies to them, as if they were masochists wearing chains and red balls in their mouths and swaddled in black leather gimp gear?
Why do conservatives have no responses to these questions other than asking “Why do liberals hate America?” Why would they ask that kind of non sequitur question unless they were afraid in their terrorized hearts that there might be something to hate about America?
Why has America not gone back and corrected our biggest political, diplomatic and legal mistake after Sept. 11: admitting that the attacks were an act of crime and not an act of war, and a job for international law enforcement agencies cooperating together rather than a unilateral act of a country bent on aggression and the use of its military? Why do we not realize that we followed the wrong conclusion after 9-11 only because we were hurt and angry and not rational? Why do we not realize that whenever Americans are hurt or afraid, we will ALWAYS be taken advantage of by politicians, because it is in the nature of the politician to accrue more power to him or herself, whether Republican or Democrat. Why did we not realize that we could unite after 9-11 but also be skeptical of simple things like a president quickly arrogating much unconstitutional power to himself? Why do conservatives not realize this the way liberals do?
(Originally posted August 4, 2007)
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Beauty is Imperfection 