I’ve been reading Big Lies. It angers me. I tried to get a friend to read it, but she said I’d have to read Treason first. And let’s be honest here: Conason is a political hack, and “Big Lies” is obviously, clearly, and totally partisan. But Coulter is bullshit. Conason says, in effect, “I don’t mean to imply that all Democrats have served their country honorably. I am pointing out that the stereotype of the unpatriotic left is complete hogwash; at least as many Democrats as Republicans have served in the military, and much of the right was as afraid as the left to actually go to war in Vietnam: Dubya, Limbaugh, and Lott all bailed.” Coulter, on the other hand, says things like “There are no good Democrats” and “Liberals hate America.”
I am a liberal and I love America, OK? Maybe we’re going to have to start calling it progressive, but let’s think for just a minute about what it means to be liberal: not breathing coal-dust, not having your arms cut off by machinery, not working 80 hours a week for pennies a day, going to an emergency room and knowing you’ll be treated even if you don’t have proof of insurance. Promoting those values abroad. Promoting international diplomacy over international bloodshed. You can thank liberals, progressives, and pinkos for that kind of thing. The New Deal. Voting rights. Public education.
Media bias? My ass. Look at the real stats. CNN is moderate, everyone else is right, and the only radio that’s left of center is Pacifica, which is carried by three or four college stations in California and maybe Athens Georgia.
Yeah, unions get ossified, yeah, the academic theorists are absurd. Chomsky needs to shut the fuck up. But don’t say “liberal” means “traitor.” Don’t say “you hate America, freedom, and humanity” just because I try to put myself in my enemy’s shoes, try to understand where they come from and why they do the things they do, just because I acknowledge that my nation is not perfect.
Do you love your parents? Do you recognize that maybe they were wrong once or twice? Do you think maybe you could stand to acknowledge the faults in yourself and your nation before you begin tearing down others?
I acknowledge the role of the US government in destabilizing and toppling the Chilean government on 9/11/73. I acknowledge the role of the US government in the deaths of thousands of innocent or guilty civilians across the globe. I am aware that the US sponsored the Taliban, promoted jihad and fundamentalist rage at the Communist infidels. The US has, in the name of freedom, imprisoned many, just as churches have, in the name of the prince of peace, killed. That doesn’t mean that the US, or the churches, are bad things– merely that they have failed at one time or another.
Failures on the part of the US don’t make Allende a good president, or the Sandinistas saints. Intransigence on the part of the IDF doesn’t make the PLO right, either. US manipulation in the civil wars in Afghanistan during the 70s doesn’t mean that when Al Quada attacked, anyone deserved it. Nobody deserves that.
No, it’s not fair to say “they had it coming.” But then again, neither did Nicaragua. Neither did Chile. Saddam had it coming. Even then, after a certain point, that’s not what matters. We knew something was coming, whether we ‘had it coming’ or not. The Sandinistas knew, Allende knew, we all knew, when we did what we did, that we were playing with something we couldn’t control. And the US diplomats and spies and development agencies, when they fiddled with the geopolitical morass of the Middle East, knew that they were fiddling with a system too complex for anyone to control. They did what they thought was best at the time they did it, and that’s all that anyone can do.
Lileks accuses people like me of disliking ‘moral clarity,’ and there, I guess he may be right: moral clarity is often a sign that you have made a gross simplification, rash judgement, or transparent justification for something that isn’t nearly as simple as all that.
Look at your gallery of bizarre foods, James. Listen to the political tapes of Thurmond weighing in against the negro race in his swimming pools. Fifty years from now, how much of what we have said and done will be completely incomprehensible?
Secretly Ironic 
