Andrew Pulrang answers the big question on why no one is really speaking out against Bush and his policies:
Americans are all for civil rights and democracy … for good people. Bad people don’t deserve these things. And we think we can tell who the bad people are just by looking at them or seeing how their names are spelled. We aren’t bad people, so nothing that Bush does could ever hurt us. So, why worry? I really think it’s as tragically simple as that.
I think Andrew is dead on but I also think he is missing something crucial here. There are plenty of people who see through this and are actively pissed off. But right now it’s political suicide to do so. Anyone who comes out against anything Bush is doing is branded unpatriotic and is bound to lose face and favor. The democrats need desperately to gain seats in the house but they also more desperately need to not lose the ones they have. So too in the Senate.
Ann has a problem with that idea. If these people were elected to represent us, then they should do so and speak up. But what is better? To stand up now and possibly cost them their seats giving the Republicans even more control or to stay silent now until a strategic opportunity presents itself (or at least enough time passes that people are no longer starry eyed over this new wash of patriotism)?
As long as Rudy Giuliani (I’m sure I’m spelling that wrong) is still viewed as a great hero and not as the most draconic and mean mayor New York probably ever had and as long as the Grand Old Party sells its soul to this evil tide of civil liberties curtailment instead of waking up and remembering that their core values are supposed to be exactly the opposite of Bush’s actions, there’s nothing much anyone can do.
Maybe I’m wrong about this. My mother, every the democrat stalwart and still the Clinton (both of them) fan, is convinced that Bush is going nowhere. She feels he is far too much of a bumbler to get reelected. People will wake up and see him for what he is long before the next election. I wish she were right but I just can’t see that happening right now. I hope that I will be proven wrong but I still have this sick feeling that something fundamentally awful is starting and people aren’t going to wake up and take action until it is far too late. We’ve seen this before in history and we always think it can’t happen again and yet it keeps happening.
Ah well. Either I’m right and everything is going to hell or I’m wrong and things will be OK. Either way, the American League is losing badly and if that isn’t a sign of the end times, what is?