Normalizing Extremism In America

The Article: Extremism Normalized by Glenn Greenwald in Salon.

The Text: Remember when, in the wake of the 9/11 attack, the Patriot Act was controversial, held up as the symbolic face of Bush/Cheney radicalism and widely lamented as a threat to core American liberties and restraints on federal surveillance and detention powers? Yet now, the Patriot Act is quietly renewed every four years by overwhelming majorities in both parties (despite substantial evidence of serious abuse), and almost nobody is bothered by it any longer. That’s how extremist powers become normalized: they just become such a fixture in our political culture that we are trained to take them for granted, to view the warped as normal. Here are several examples from the last couple of days illustrating that same dynamic; none seems overwhelmingly significant on its own, but that’s the point:

After Dick Cheney criticized John McCain this weekend for having chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate, this was McCain’s retort:

Look, I respect the vice president. He and I had strong disagreements as to whether we should torture people or not. I don’t think we should have.

Isn’t it amazing that the first sentence there (“I respect the vice president”) can precede the next one (“He and I had strong disagreements as to whether we should torture people or not”) without any notice or controversy? I realize insincere expressions of respect are rote ritualism among American political elites, but still, McCain’s statement amounts to this pronouncement: Dick Cheney authorized torture — he is a torturer — and I respect him. How can that be an acceptable sentiment to express? Of course, it’s even more notable that political officials whom everyone knows authorized torture are walking around free, respected and prosperous, completely shielded from all criminal accountability. “Torture” has been permanently transformed from an unspeakable taboo into a garden-variety political controversy, where it shall long remain.

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Tax Cuts Do Not Equal Growth

Obama And Paul Ryan Throw Down

Here’s to hoping that future presidential and vice presidential debates are a little more rousing.

What We Will Be Ashamed Of In 20 Years

The Article: You Will Be Embarrassed About This in 20 Years by Michael Kinsley in Bloomberg.

The Text: Just 16 years after a Democratic president signed the fatuously named Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage in the U.S. as requiring one man and one woman, the debate over gay marriage is over.

Isn’t it? Even though DOMA is still on the books, even though most states that have voted on the issue have voted against same-sex marriage, all the energy is in the opposite direction. What seemed at first like a bizarre idea has become utterly conventional. By judicial decree interpreting the state constitution, by act of the legislature and someday soon by popular referendum, one state after another is falling. Same-sex marriage is legal in Canada.
About Michael Kinsley

Does anybody believe that five years from now it will be harder than it is today for two women or two men to marry? It’s no longer all that hard today. I suspect — don’t you? — that even many anti’s have given up in their hearts and have resigned themselves to taking comfort in one more example of how the country is going to hell.

“What’s next?” opponents of same-sex marriage have sometimes asked, they thought rhetorically. If a man can marry a man, what about a man marrying two men? Or two mixed-sex couples merging into a married foursome? Or — the inevitable reductio ad absurdum — why shouldn’t a man marry his German shepherd if he wants to?

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Meet Romney Gump

Run, Romney, Run! Preferably out of this country.