The Loss of Civility - We Are One Zotted Family

For those hoping that a second term would cool the seething resentment of George Bush and his supporters over having to live in a democratic society, it was a sobering moment:

Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President George W. Bush will resubmit 20 federal judicial nominations, reigniting a battle with Democrats who accuse the nominees of hostility to abortion rights and the environment.

The list includes seven of the 10 candidates whose nominations failed during Bush's first term because of Democratic filibusters that blocked Senate confirmation votes. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid called the nominees "extremist'' and said the Senate shouldn't reconsider them.

We shouldn't have been surprised. George Bush has been nothing if not consistent in his determination to brush aside anyone who disagrees with him and get his way, no matter what the consequences. That consistency goes a long way toward explaining not only why so many Americans hate Bush – and why so many people in other nations hate America – but why civil debate in this country has gone the way of moderate Republicans.

Bush didn't just make a point of nominating a number of judges whose views were well outside reasonable expectations of impartiality, fairness and moderation; after the constitutional process had run its course, and the Senate had approved 106 of Bush's 131 federal nominations, he used the rejection of his most extreme nominees to attack Democrats as "obstructionists."

In other words: A branch of government did its job. Bush and his party didn't like the results. But rather than seeking common ground with less objectionable nominations – such compromise being the greatest strength of the world's pre-eminent democratic government – Bush promptly resubmitted the unacceptable ones.

Now Tom DeLay, Bush's top thug in Congress, is following the lead of his party's leader by personally attacking judges – including at least one Supreme Court justice – whose decisions he disagrees with.

How does one engage in "civil" debate with elected officials who have made defiance, obstinacy and unwillingness to compromise official policy?

They made war on Iraq when the rest of the world urged restraint and patience. When the UN wouldn't endorse the aggression, Bush's axis of dweebils attacked it with a campaign of hostility and ridicule – a campaign that continues over two years later with the nomination of the suitably belligerent and intolerant John Bolton to be our ambassador.

Bolton's confirmation hearings have told us everything there is to know about the loss of civility. There was Foreign Relations chairman Richard Lugar declaring that confirmation was inevitable because there are more Republicans on his committee than Democrats; saying, in effect, that nothing actually discussed or revealed in the hearings actually mattered, as Republicans will blindly support anything Bush says, does or wants – the larger good of the country and the world be damned.

(News Flash: Allegations Thursday from a former ambassador that Bolton lied in his confirmation testimony, coming on top of the nominee's history of contempt for international institutions, abuse of subordinates and throwing things at people who disagree with him may have, at long last, imperiled his confirmation, though not irretrievably. Never underestimate the power of unapologetic partisanship.)

You'll recall that Bill Clinton promised to end the ban on gays in the military, but compromised in the face of strong opposition. And that he tried to reform health care, but accepted defeat when it became clear that America wasn't ready. And that the first President Bush reversed himself – fatally, in terms of his prospects for a second term – when economic reality and a concern for the welfare of the country compelled him to raise taxes. And that Ronald Reagan acknowledged that "mistakes were made" in the Iran-Contra scandal. And that JFK swiftly shouldered responsibility for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

Those men, whatever their faults, at least had a basic respect for the particular genius of a political system based on compromise and artful persuasion. But W never learned that respect. Never even tried. Like most people of meager intellect, limited curiosity and even more limited competence, he's too insecure to see compromise and persuasion based on the strength of ideas as anything but marks of weakness. Once he makes a decision – which he does on the basis of the few facts he is able to absorb and his "gut instincts" (see Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack") – he's afraid to deviate from it, fearing that everyone (not just 48 percent of the electorate and the entire rest of the world) will recognize him for the fraud he is.

So, again: How do you civilly engage people who, owing to well-founded insecurities and long-standing, deeply ingrained hate, have declared war on the most vital precepts of constitutional government, and have consistently put political gain ahead of the national interest?

You don't. You can't, the way you can't have fulfilling, mutually satisfying sex with someone who finds you physically repugnant. The way you can't reason with psychotics; to wit:

"[Former Bush Treasury Secretary] Paul O’Neill – God love him – he just didn’t get it. Some of the stuff in that book did not happen. Suskind knows how to sell books. I think he made stuff up. Richard Clarke [former counterterrorism czar in the Clinton and Bush administrations] used to be a friend of mine. Most of the stuff I was there for. Some of the stuff in that book did not happen." -- Republican strategist and author Mary Matalin on books critical of the Bush administration by insiders Paul O'Neill (with Ron Suskind) and Richard Clarke.

Two respected public servants – both Republicans – tell similar tales of Bush administration deceit and ineptitude, and the conservative response is ... what else? Attack and deny.

It's the only response available to rigid, brutish ideologues. And it's a hell of a lot easier than rational, civil debate.

All of which begs the question: Is a return to some degree of civility even possible in our political debate?

No. Not as long as you have the Senate majority leader joining Christian extremists in a church pulpit to claim Democrats are "against people of faith."

And nuts like Sen. John Cornyn suggesting a link between the recent murders of a judge, another judge's family members and courtroom staff and so-called "judicial activism."

Yet their may be reason to hope. If Americans pay attention to the way Republicans are subverting our most cherished values – fairness, fiscal responsibility, separation of powers, and independent judiciary, separation of church and state – next year's midterm elections may yield some progress in a return to civil – and rational – discourse.

Current, real-life example: To see how hate and ignorance have poisoned political debate at the lowest levels of society, check out the reaction of the crew at FreeRepublic.com to news that Rep. Henry Waxman is accusing the Bush administration – based on its admitted record of inaccuracy – of trying to conceal the true number of terrorist incidents.

Dear Leftist Maggot:

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As they say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour p!ss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you. You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon. You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done. I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell? Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs. You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot. And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake? You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile, one-handed, slack-jawed, drooling, meatslapper. On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go. You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted boggish foot-licking twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You churlish boil-brained clotpole ponce. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup pratting naff. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill. You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away. I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid, so stupid it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me.

After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh. The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative post was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you. P.S.: You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, socially-retarded, puerile, and generally Not Good.

For those hoping that a second term would cool the seething resentment of George Bush and his supporters over having to live in a democratic society,

Don't you have this backwards? Bush and the GOP won the election, right? Why in the world would they be objecting to living in a "democratic society?"

Its the left that is truly outraged about having to live in a democratic society. You're the ones whose collective jaws dropped when all those right-wing fanatics came out of the woodwork to outvote you. "Why, that's intolerable! We're smarter than they are, better educated, and now they control the Presidency and Congress. They think that gives them the right to enact their agenda, but they're just overlooking the fact that our wisdom means their votes shouldn't count. They may be in the majority, but that's really just a big mistake, because polls show people really don't like them."

Too bad, sport. We have elections to determine the direction this country will take, and you guys lost. For some odd reason, you think that our winning the election really doesn't mean much, and that its "antidemocratic" for us to wieled our majority status as if we actually won or something. Har-har.

As for your comments about Waxman, it never ceases to amaze me how you folk scream "censorship" or "antidemocratic" or "intolerant" whenever one of your own gets criticized for the content of his political speech. I always thought such criticism itself was political speech, but whatever. What amazes me is you level those charged without looking in the mirror and seeing the things you've said about Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Scalia, DeLaw, Frist, or whomever. Compare what's been said about Waxman by private individuals over some of the things that have been written by professional journalists about some Republican leaders.

Apparently, your rules of political debate are that you are permitted to make nasty personal attacks that demonize Republicans -- that's part of "fair political debate", right? But when the same comes right back at you, its an antidemocratic, fascist outrage.

Most Republicans are willing to play with the gloves either on, or off. You guys apparently believe that a fair fight is us wearing gloves, and you not. No thanks.

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