A convergence of enemies

The far right will say or do anything to harm Obama.

The far left will say or do anything to harm America.

And this is a natural for the jerk extremists on both ends of the spectrum who call themselves by the flattering appellation, “civil libertarians.”

Their new common hero is that booby, Snowden.

Everybody between those extremes despises the kid and, exasperated with recent challenges to national security supported by them both, wants to see the government win one.

And win it fair and square.

Not like what it did to that PFC dufus Bradley Manning, who leaked to Julian Assange.

Bradley Manning

Julian Assange says WikiLeaks helping Snowden gain asylum

Snowden

The Guardian is just loving itself to pieces and laughing its ass off at the US on all this.

Guardian: Wikileaks

The real problem, of course, is that the pressmen, who own all of the propaganda machinery in the world, have forever constantly blared the lie that their choices what beans to spill cannot and ought not be controlled by law or punished in any case for anything, apart, perhaps, from libeling private persons or maybe corporations.

On the left we have Common Dreams, Fire Dog Lake, and all the leading fans of that jerk, Glenn Greenwald, and his safe-house, The Guardian.

On the right, with their usual unchecked lust for instant gratification at any delayed cost, the bomb throwers at Fox have betrayed the work of their former heroes, George Bush and Dick Cheney, and their quondam neocon allies in order to hammer the president.

They have joined the paleocons and libertarians in terrifying their idiot audience with their new bogey, borrowed from the firmer and really hard left, the “national security state.”

The politicians are terrified of them and the state dares not touch them.

And so they cannot hope to punish their real targets and the real villains of this story, the self-seeking glory-hounds, the corporate self-seekers, the bomb-throwers, and the ideological America-haters who staff and control too much of journalism.

And so they go after the schmucks, the sacrificial lambs, the tools and dupes of the pressmen, the leakers.

And even here their means of exemplary punishment are way too limited, thanks to the triumphs of Frank Church and his like, enabled by the stupidities of the Vietnam War, the Watergate burglary and cover-up, and our national security adventures in Latin America in second half of the 20^th Century.

Frank Church

So they rely on the usual contempt of American law enforcement machinery for a defendant’s rights to reasonable bail and a speedy trial, imposing draconian punishment without trail for that very, very long stretch between arrest and verdict.

Those who want to deny the government the ability to do much of anything, and especially much of anything military or in the sphere of foreign policy, in secret, sell their agenda as crucial to democracy, freedom, liberty, and the safety of the people from government abuse, selling points notable for their perennial successes with the American booboisie and their special resonance on the right.

But what did you think they would say?

That they are out to cripple American foreign, military, and national security policy and restrict the government to doing nothing at all without them, the press, shouting in their ears and blaring scandal about it, at will, controlling their every move as if with paralyzing jolts from a cattle-prod?

But that is exactly what they want, these so-called anti-imperialists and anti-fascists, these anarchist baboons, many of them because they hate and want to “bring down” America or at least totally cripple American political and military globalism.

And others – so many others – merely because they are stupid.

I, too, oppose, in my way and manner, American globalism.

But I would not see America made powerless to prevent missteps most of which (not all, certainly), in my view, have been altruistic or anyway by no means deplorable in intention and to our own loss.

The war in Vietnam, for example, was a mix of altruism, stupidity, and rigidity born of cold war panic – America’s “inordinate fear of communism,” to use the words of Jimmy Carter.

Compared to which the Contra war against the Sandinistas was a reasonable choice dictated by national interest.

Much like the green-lighting (could we have stopped it, really?) of the Chilean coup against Allende.

For that matter, had Kennedy gone to war in Cuba, for instance, that would have made a lot more sense than Johnson going to war in Vietnam.

Anyway, many of those who rightly supported Obama against Romney as by far the lesser evil have now gone into steady and more or less uninterrupted opposition, not only regarding domestic economic policy but regarding that nasty old national security state.

With friends like these  . . . .