Y’all created this monster, giving her the ABSOLUTE MORAL AUTHORITY to say whatever she wanted, regardless how ridiculous it was, so have fun with her. Now she is IN UR BASE AND KILLING UR D00Dz! Good luck.
My opinion on Cindy Sheehan was that she suffered a devastating loss, one that few of us could ever comprehend. I hold her no malice--I have no idea how I would respond in her shoes. But she isn't a credible political commentator, and she is not helping the party or the country.
Why so emotional? Hi, all. I'm on the net trying to find a way to give Cindy Sheehan (CS) a small political contribution in response to yesterday's run-against-Pelosi announcement. No luck yet (post the link, someone). I'm struck by what a big presence CS-as-a-topic has in the blogosphere, in part because I see that CS herself uses this great new soapbox to find a voice. Bravo to all that. But have you noticed that so much of the blog comments/commentators are concerned with the personal motivations and sincerity or lack of it in this entrant onto the national political stage? Why such strangeness? Think about your own personal journey in the past few years, but let me speak for only myself. A coup in slow motion is consuming a democracy I once defended with pride in the years I lived overseas. Seizing control of the country is not the same as leading it. The intellectual elite is AWOL and agency after agency of government is gutted of the career professionals one needs to run a complex technological civilization. I didn't realize how powerless I was, I didn't realize how institutionalized the manipulation of my place in life was. I overestimated the sincerity of those who spoke (lied) to me, and I found that the realm of debate was couched to frame an agenda so that the energy expended to defend "my side" was wasted as planned by others (not to sound too paranoid here, but it did take excellent minds and many think tank millions to change the language and re-frame the debates--"it's your money, take it back, gut your government, foreclose your future, etc.) IN THIS CONTEXT WE ARE ALL STUNNED BY THE IMPROBABILITY OF SUCCESS when a single individual with whom we can identify gains the national stage. Sorry to climb on the same psychoanalytic couch, but the Sheehan blog swirl seems to reflect that lots of us share the same outrage, identify with the response, and find ourselves tinged with guilt (shoulda tried harder) or jealousy (but hey, the system's stacked against everyone). Rejoice in what you have, and in an Internet that still brings freedoms as it disappears into a tool of surveillance before your eyes (sorry, that's a telecom nerd comment).
ReplyDeleteUm David, where do you get off declaring that Sheehan "isn't a credible political commentator"? Do the opinions of nearly half of the country's citizens not count either? Bush and Cheney haven't done anything illegal (wiretapping, illegal war under intn'l law, torture, etc.) that merits impeachment, but Clinton did? What's your criteria for who's credible and who's not? You're not much different than the corporate media on this one - it was okay for her to mourn her son's death and protest Bush, but as soon as she examines why her son died and widens her critique to encompass much of the political and economic system in this country, anything she says or does is dismissed or ignored by default.
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