DSM, Karl Rove, Dick Durbin…
On all of these, the right (and the mainstream media) try to change the subject.
We (read “I”) have got to stop falling for it.
It even happens when I bring up other, smaller topics (and the right and the media aren’t the only ones responsible). I posted something on tenure yesterday, here and on dKos. It didn’t happen here (thanks, guys) but it did on dKos (as it has here and there in the past): instead of arguing the merits of tenure as it stands and about ways of improving it, I was attacked on other grounds (that other issues concerning education are more important, for example). No one was willing to publically defend tenure (in its current form)–but some don’t want any attention paid to it at all–so try to turn attention elsewhere.
Just the same, the Downing Street Minutes show the Bush and Blair administrations involved in extremely anti-democratic activity. That is the point, not whether or not it is old news. Those who don’t want to face the issue raised by release of the memo, however, try to lead us into dead-end arguments about “freshness” so that we get addled and forget what we were talking about in the first place.
Karl Rove is trying to distract liberals, making us defend ourselves instead of attacking bankrupt policies and their incompetent execution. It doesn’t really matter that he thinks we’re soft on terror–the significant fact is that his policies have failed. Rove doesn’t mind the fervor his remarks created–he said them to that end, so that we would be distracted from the real problem.
Dick Durbin’s comments about Gitmo point out something extremely important: in the eyes of the world, we have lost all moral standing by allowing the treatment of prisoners happening there and in other prisons controlled by the US. That’s the point. It doesn’t matter whom he compared us to, and there was no attack on the “troops” in what Durbin said. But he, and we, got thrown off target by the uproar, one deliberately orchestrated to keep attention away from the real problem.
From little levels (like my arguments over tenure) on to great national and international issues, we are deliberately distracted from the real topics by those who don’t want them addressed.
We (read “I”) need to stop letting that happen.