Political Debate Today

“Just the facts, ma’am.”  Where is Sgt. Friday when you need him?

I’ve no­ticed that de­bates with Obama’s apol­o­gists have a very sim­i­lar tra­jec­tory as those with Re­pub­li­can par­ti­sans. Be­cause par­ti­sans are hard pressed to ex­plain away the af­fronts to truth­ful dis­course and good gov­er­nance dis­played by the politi­cians they sup­port, any at­tempt to en­gage them in de­bate in­volv­ing the mer­its (or lack thereof) of the poli­cies of said politi­cians (e.g., their un­wa­ver­ing sup­port of the 1% and U.S. mil­i­tarist im­perium)–quickly de­volves into vol­leys of ad hominem at­tacks launched from the ranks of their sup­port­ers.

For ex­am­ple, from the right, OWS ac­tivists are la­beled dirty, Amer­ica-hatin’ hip­pies who sup­ports swarthy ter­ror­ists, yet from the lib­eral camp, OWSers who refuse co­op­er­a­tion with the De­mo­c­ra­tic Party are cast as purer-than-thou types–too above it all to sully them­selves by an ac­cep­tance of the prag­matic na­ture of po­lit­i­cal re­al­ity.

What is the rea­son for this ir­ra­tional re­sponse from lib­er­als–from folks who scoff at teabag­gers and re­li­gious fun­da­men­tal­ists for their less than sane and san­guine ap­proach to po­lit­i­cal dis­course? There is sim­ply no rea­son­able way to de­fend the acts of our blood-sus­tained em­pire abroad and the machi­na­tions of a preda­tory eco­nomic elite at home; hence, the testi­ness evinced by the en­ablers of the du­op­o­lis­tic state.

Withal, when I post an ar­ti­cle or Face­Book sta­tus crit­i­cal of Pres­i­dent Obama–the tone and tenure of the en­su­ing de­bate with his de­fend­ers takes on a Bush era aura. As a gen­eral rule, when the ra­tio­nal­iza­tions of both Bush and Obama sup­port­ers are coun­tered with facts re­gard­ing their dis­mal gov­er­nance, the in­vec­tives fly. Granted, the gram­mar and syn­tax of Obama apol­o­gists is su­pe­rior to that of Re­pub­li­can loy­al­ists–but their fal­lacy ar­gu­ments are every bit as dodgy.

Con­se­quently, the poli­cies of both par­ties (bul­warked by the con­cretized sup­port of par­ti­sans) trans­late into un­nec­es­sary suf­fer­ing and death–the call­ing card and ground level cri­te­ria of the oli­garchic/im­pe­ri­al­ist state. And sorry, Obama loy­al­ists–your man is not the lesser-of-two evils can­di­date: He is among his peers. In many ways, he has proven him­self a more de­ceit­ful, ruth­less crime boss than his preda­tory, Re­pub­li­can pre­de­ces­sors, in other words, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of a mil­i­tarist em­pire.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/phil-rockstroh/40581/secrets-of-empire-and-self-deceptions-of-partisans-yet-a-howling-defiance-into-the-darkness-of-the-c