[L]ong before Barack Obama achieved any significance on the political scene, I considered blind leader loyalty one of the worst toxins in our political culture: it’s the very antithesis of what a healthy political system requires (and what a healthy mind would produce). One of the reasons I’ve written so much about the complete reversal of progressives on these issues (from pretending to be horrified by them when done under Bush to tolerating them or even supporting them when done by Obama) is precisely because it’s so remarkable to see these authoritarian follower traits manifest so vibrantly in the very same political movement — sophisticated, independent-minded, reality-based progressives — that believes it is above that, and that only primitive conservatives are plagued by such follower-mindlessness. The Democratic Party owes a sincere apology to George Bush, Dick Cheney and company for enthusiastically embracing many of the very Terrorism policies which caused them to hurl such vehement invective at the GOP for all those years. And progressives who support the views of the majority as expressed by their poll should never be listened to again the next time they want to pretend to oppose civilian slaughter and civil liberties assaults when perpetrated by the next Republican President.
—
Glenn Greenwald on the follow the leader mentality pervasive in American politics.
(via aheram)
I’d be interested in response to this Greenwald article from Ari Kohen or Squashed, if they see this and are so inclined.
(via jeffmiller)
Why? When it comes to critically questioning the bloodsoaked brutality and injustice that defines the celebrated “peace laureate” President Barack Obama’s foreign and domestic policies, Ari Kohen is guilty of the exact same willful blindness that Glenn Greenwald vehemently condemns. Kohen is a good read in some matters, but not this.
By the time Obama (or a Mitt Romney) deploys and executes these same drone campaigns and extra-judicial policies against our inner cities and rural heartland, it will be too late. All because the thought-terminating, petty partisanship that cripples Obama-worshipping liberals’ (or Bush-loving conservatives) capacity for reason and sense of empathy for the brown-skinned “non-people” — many of them women and children who are the victims of Obama’s international reign of terror — is more important than voicing opposition to Obama’s policies.
However, reading Kohen’s partisan contortions is always amusing.
(via aheram)
(via aheram)
