pitchforks at the ready

A leopard never loses her spots.

Once she was a loudmouth authoritarian of the right and now she’s a loudmouth authoritarian of the left: Arianna Huffington jumps on the truth-and-reconciliation bandwagon (which I described here) [e.a.]:

It’s no coincidence that a war built on lies continues to be conducted using lies (”the surge is working”). Mark Green proposes a way to end the cycle of deception: create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “This worked in a very different historical situation of South Africa and can work here as well,” wrote Green on HuffPost. “South Africans who engaged in murder and violence were given amnesty if they confessed under oath to their crimes and knowledge — but would be prosecuted if they didn’t…. The largely successful effort led to both truth and reconciliation.”

Richard Clarke echoed Green’s proposal last week, and also suggested something each of us can do: “I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grievously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives.”

If the leaders responsible for that suffering are not held accountable — both at the ballot box and by being shamed and shunned as Clarke suggests — we dishonor the sacrifices of the fallen, and make it likely that many more will endure a similar fate.

I can’t help but note that some of the most vocal Obama supporters in the blogosphere share these same revenge fantasies, and that their rhetoric runs strongly counter to what Barack Obama posited as a successful electoral strategy in an opinion posted on DailyKos in 2005. He was very clear back then that hyperpartisanship was not the way to win the White House [e.a.].

I don’t believe we get there by vilifying good allies, with a lifetime record of battling for progressive causes, over one vote or position. I am convinced that, our mutual frustrations and strongly-held beliefs notwithstanding, the strategy driving much of Democratic advocacy, and the tone of much of our rhetoric, is an impediment to creating a workable progressive majority in this country.

According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists - a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog - we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in “appeasing” the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.

I think this perspective misreads the American people. From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don’t think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don’t think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don’t think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country.

Perhaps Obama has changed his mind since then. He certainly has changed his behavior and his rhetoric an awful lot since then. (Jennifer Rubin has been bird-dogging his flips and flops on just one issue.).

What he believes today and how he will behave tomorrow: those are the things that matter, and some of us feel quite insecure with an otherwise appealing candidate, because a) he has been thoroughly compromised by the PRopaganda^TM campaign that made him into a messiah with devotees who were urged to “come to Obama” and b) because even those of us who are ultra-tolerant and can understand on some level the pull of a Rev. Jeremiah Wright on Obama just can’t figure out where he stands.

And then there are the Clintons, who don’t care at all where Obama stands: they’re too busy keeping score. Don’t worry, though. Revenge has nothing to do with it, says Terry McAuliffe [e.a.]:

Mr. Band keeps close track of the past allies and beneficiaries of the Clintons who supported Mr. Obama’s campaign, three Clinton associates and campaign officials said. Indeed, he is widely known as a member of the Clinton inner circle whose memory is particularly acute on the matter of who has been there for the couple — and who has not.

“The Clintons get hundreds of requests for favors every week,” said Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. “Clearly, the people you’re going to do stuff for in the future are the people who have been there for you.”

Mr. McAuliffe, who knows of Mr. Band’s diligent scorekeeping, emphasized that “revenge is not what the Clintons are about.” The accounting is more about being practical, he said, adding, “You have to keep track of this.”

I hate politics. But, even more than politics, I hate attack-dog authoritarians and demagogues and ideological purists—of both the right and the left.