Right versus Left

Sanity versus insanity

Here is an excellent article, which for me sums up beautifully the nature of the 2 dimensional dichotomy that so much of American media falls into.

Basically, the point that the article makes is that the right-wing can get away with saying just about anything in criticising the left. Calls of traitor, demands for people to be fired, punched in the face, or even rounded up, tortured and shot are met without criticism.

One website (run by an antiBush republican) wrote that dictators historically seduce their population into greater and greater atrocities until they reach a point where they dare not look at themselves, and become the dictator's most fanatical supporters.

Those people who supported the war and torture cannot ever allow themselves to doubt that they are in the purest of right. It has become an article of religious faith that the enemy is always totally wrong. Any suggestion that the war was unjustified, that torture was used on the innocent, or that US foreign policy is the penultimate cause of global unrest can never be allowed to even enter the minds of the fanatical Bush supporters, for to question the war is to question themselves.

And they dare not look too closely at themselves because they know what they will see, a person who supported the unprovoked invasion of a foreign nation, a person who supported the use of torture on innocent people, a person who supports dictators.

Ward Churchill's original article is a mirror held up for right-wing Americans to see themselves in. But like the vampires of legend, they fear mirrors, and will seek to smash them.

Anyway, the comments above aren't mine, but I agree with the general thrust of it. And since I've made a point of reading/responding to some of KMan's right-wing articles, I'm hoping he'll give me his view on this one.
posted by Manchild at 8:00 AM