"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Sunday, July 24, 2005

Best. Blog. Entry. Ever.
Posted by Jill | 1:29 PM

Driftglass smacks down Tom Friedman:

But yes, Tom, we are at war with Islamic terrorists.

And since we are at war, we should be taking every measure to fight them intelligently, using every tool at our disposal. And, conversely, every time someone gives aid and comfort to our Enemies -- every time someone makes it easier for them to recruit new blood and harder for us fight them – that person deserves public censure, prison and, if necessary, a firing squad.

But on the face of your Flat Earth, Tom, our enemies are Small and we are Gargantuan.

Like the Titan that we are, we have to be very careful where we put our feet. We can roll over while watching a ball game and crush entire economies. One especially zippy ad campaign for Coke can obliterate a local deity.

Now some of our more thuggish and brick-stupid citizens think this is cool. They are moral and theological weaklings and pussies and like all those of their ilk, they can only overcome their mental and emotional impotence and feel the flush of what they mistake for courage by beating the shit out of other, weaker people.

We call these types “Republicans”.

Others of us very much like all of the amenities afforded to us by the luck of the birth-lottery that landed us in the United States. We love our country. We love what it is supposed to stand for, and against. We love the liberty of it. The freedom of motion and belief and the Constitutionally-burned-on-fucking-the-motherboard ideal of tolerance that makes the whole thing go.

And boy-howdy do we hate it when so-called-Christian Americans work day and night to eviscerate that ONE thing that sets us apart from fascist and theocratic states.

It is unarguably true that, time and again, we have failed and we have fallen and we have come up short when we measure ourselves against our own high-flow rhetoric.

So what? The key is to keep trying. The solution to the problems of Democracy is More Democracy.

OTOH, the eternal Enemy of Democracy is Theocracy.

Everything in which we take a measure of justifiable pride is made possible by having a Tolerant and Explicitly Secular Nation, and every time an enemy rises up to harm us, they march under the banner of God’s Mandate. Or the Divine Power of the Dear Leader, or the Chairman, or the Fuhrer...but it all comes to the same thing.

On the face of your Flat Earth, Tom, we cast by-far the longest, deepest shadow. There really isn't even a close second. And in spite whatever megakill-the-brown-people fantasies Limbaugh and Cheney and DeLay jerk off to at night, we really can’t just slaughter everyone who pisses us off.

Or, to very aptly paraphrase Victor Lazlo from “Casablanca”, “What if you murdered all of them? From every corner of your Empire, thousands would rise to take their places.”

“Even Rumsfeld can't kill that fast.”

[snip]

So I’m sure you will agree that presenting a Fanatical Fundamentalist face to the world, and openly using the word “secular” and “tolerant” as partisan pejoratives would be an insanely stupid way to fight this war...and yet that is exactly what we have done and continue to do.

And as long as Republicans run this country, and they are run by scum like Frist and Cheney, Dobson and Falwell, this will be our fate.

As long as the owners of the GOP insist publicly that we are a Christian Nation first and foremost, we will continue to drive away potential friends and give aid and comfort to our enemies.

As long as the leaders of this country openly make war on the very idea of a Free Press and state that judges should bend a knee to the whims of Tom DeLay and his Christian Sharia and kick the shit out of gays in the name of Jesus every time they need a few votes...as long as this is the case, the Republican Party acts as nothing less that a traitorous Fifth Column for our terrorist enemies.

You wrote: "Whenever they are exposed, they react the next day," Mr. Carmon said. "No one wants to be exposed in the West as a preacher of hate."

But what about in the West, Tom? Why is it that not a single Christopath with a megaphone in our country fears being exposed as a, “preacher of hate.”

Shit, why are they actually proud of it? And why does every, single Republican of note cower like beaten, temple eunuchs every time douchbags like Ken Mehlman or Mary Matlin or Pat Robertson shows the nakedly hateful face of the GOP on nation television?


More here. Do go read the whole thing. It's worth it.
0 comments
Bookmark and Share