"For Our Own Good"

On the subject of the FISA bill: As is so often the case, digby finds the words that the rest of us wish we had.

I am not by philosophy or temperament a "bring down the state" kind of person and that tends to make me look for reason in unreasonable actions and try to affect change through the political channels that currently exist. Persuasion, education, discussion, blah, blah, blah. And I'm not a naif. I know craven politicians are craven and suspect them of selling out to any number of interests for any number of reasons. So, I'll tend to try to find ways to change their political calculations under the assumption that they have no real substance to begin with.

In this case,however, I don't think any of that is true. When it comes to the encroaching police state, the politicians of both parties have shown their true colors and their shirts are a disturbing shade of coffee.


When I cheered for (and worked my ass off for) the Democratic victory last fall, I had no illusions that Pelosi and Reid were going to ride into committee on white horses to remake the country as a liberal utopia. I know no one (in my own camp, at least) who did expect anything of the kind. That was not, I explained what seemed like thousands of times to various lefty friends and relations, the point.

As it happened, the Democrats had a number of pretty good plans available to anyone who would listen, but whether or not one found the Dems exciting on a policy level, it was opaque to me--still is--how the fact that most politicians are indeed useless most of the time could be any kind of argument for allowing a pack of greedy, amoral cowards to amass permanent one-party rule and finish driving this country into the ground. "The Democratic Party: The other guys don't believe in the goddamn Constitution" may be a negatively framed selling point, but it was enough to get me knocking on doors in the rain.

I didn't expect the Democratic majority to save the world. I did expect them not to roll over and play dead quite so easily, particularly since this administration is a sinking ship with which Republican politicians don't want to be associated. And I have the terrible feeling that digby is right--as she usually is--and that the Dems' participation is not just because of the beltway blinders that Glenn Greenwald describes, though that is surely part of it. I have a terrible feeling that the Dems who voted for this crap, and for the MCA, actually believe that the way to protect our freedom is to diminish it.

Another such victory and we are undone.