Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday he doesn't believe revelations about the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay have become an image problem for the United States and that the facility should not be shut down.

Good to know this isn't a image problem.

Yeah, since image is what's really important.

Hey! I know! Let's talk about how liberals are all moral relativists!

Must be nice to be so sure they're the good guys that they never feel obliged to question whether they're acting that way.

There's a lot of evil been done on that basis.

...unfortunately, if some clever individual figures out how to fly another airliner into another skyscraper, then all this will come to nothing, and this is who we will continue to be. In perpetuity.

Not that I believe violating the Geneva convention is a particularly effective antidote to that possibility...

Teresa. Sure has.

Let me understand this correctly. Were these eyewitness statements about torture of detainees (from a witness who was actually part of the system) read to a committee of the Congress in formal session? Were the allegations instantly and totally disavowed and abhorred, and an immediate and searching investigation undertaken with a view to finding the truth? In other words, will there be a full-blooded scandal and outcry across the whole political spectrum?

If the answer to the last question is no, I would have to say that the light on the hill just got a little more dim.

"...unfortunately, if some clever individual figures out how to fly another airliner into another skyscraper, then all this will come to nothing, and this is who we will continue to be. In perpetuity."

Right, since one of the defining characteristics of being Americans is that we have no moral agency.

Next: we explain how if those gays and Jews get too out of line, we can't be responsible for what might happen.

Hey. "Look what you made me do."

Dave - It was a US Senator, Richard Durbin of Illinois, reading the statement of an FBI agent who was at Guantanamo into the Congressional Record. It's a time-honored method of getting important information included along with the proceedings of both houses, as well as an opportunity to blather about issues of import only to the home constituency. Congress is technically in session when these speeches are read, but the floor is often empty or nearly empty at the time. I don't know when this particular floor statement was made.

For Sen. Durbin to read this into the record, he must be angry, indeed. As he should be. Bravo, Senator.

What's discouraging is that you get Evil Little Trolls (tm) like Senator Sessions stating that even discussing it puts our soldiers at risk (also quoted in that Reuters article). He missed a few logic classes somewhere.

Right, since one of the defining characteristics of being Americans is that we have no moral agency.

Nah. More like... since one of the defining characteristics of large conglomerations of humans is that they have no moral agency. Together we are less than the sum of our parts. Tragically less.

Next: we explain how if those gays and Jews get too out of line, we can't be responsible for what might happen.

I think that's pretty much exactly what Osama and his fans were saying: you won't let us have nice shiny nukes, so we've been reduced to throwing stones. And airplanes.

Once again: not that giving bin Laden nuclear weapons would solve the problem.

He's catching all kinds of hell for this from the Usual Suspects. "Durbin Compares Our Troops to Nazis" and down hill from there.

I live in Illinois, and have done all kinds of research on the torture issue, especially rendition. (I used to post on Obsidian Wings on the subject.) Durbin is really, really, really one of the good guys on these issues (and in general)--maybe the best guy in the U.S. Senate on these issues; certainly, as minority whip, one of the most effective. I was actively psyched to move to Illinois & have him as my Senator. I've even corresponded with one of his staffers on the subject, and they're incredibly nice.

If you live in Illinois, please call his office and give him your support, write a letter to the editor, etc. I'm sure they're swimming in accusations of treason by now, and it might be nice for them to hear some comments going in the other direction.

In the same speech where Cheney claims Guantanamo is no image problem, he reiterates his excuse for violating International Law: that the prisoners in Guantanamo are primarily "unlawful combatants captured on the field of battle" in Afghanistan.

It's immoral and illegal to torture the Guantanamo inmates whether or not they were captured while opposing the U.S. on a battlefield. But, to undermine Cheney enough to stop it, I think the press needs to hit his emotional justification for breaking the law: the evidence that an undetermined number of the Guantanamo prisoners may just be unlucky bystanders, sold to U.S. soldiers by bounty hunters to fill quotas.

If it can be proved that they're torturing innocent civilians in there, that may lose them the support of the "hawks" who buy into the idea that it's OK to lie about the rules of warfare and wink at criminal atrocities, because you're only picking on the "bad guys."

The Danger of Knowing for Sure, written in September 2001, quotes Jacob Bronowski from the episode of The Ascent of Man called "Knowledge and Certainty". Here is my extract of the pertinent message.

"The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited.
... It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false: tragically false ... Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge or error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we *can* know although we are fallible ...
Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers ... And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe [with certainty] that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality -- this is how they behave."

[My hands shake with excitement as I type, Ascent of Man (USA) and Civilization (USA) are now out in DVD box sets! If we all keep various extremities crossed, perhaps "O!, What a Lovely War will make it to DVD too (start your wish-list below ... )]

Well, I just went and donated another $25 to Amnesty International....

... the evidence that an undetermined number of the Guantanamo prisoners may just be unlucky bystanders, sold to U.S. soldiers by bounty hunters to fill quotas.

You mean like the three guys in Dilawar's taxi who were sent to Gitmo for being at the wrong place at the wrong time? (Not that Dilawar made out much better: He was beaten to death for Driving While Afghan.)

No matter where we live sending a letter of support to Sen. Durban might not be a bad idea.

Richard Lester's How I Won the War; all of Peter Watkin's work especially The War Game and The Battle of Culloden, for starters on that wish list.

Until Cheney and his boss and his buddies are charged with high crimes and misdemeanors, this is, indeed, who we are.

It's taking awfully long for a chorus of decency to become audible.

I wonder whether the ACLU will releast the 100 photos and 4 films from Abu Ghraib -- and whether they will -- finally -- fire the outrage that the initial ones should have inspired.

Once Stalin received a delegation of workers from the Urals. When the workers left, Stalin looked around for his pipe but did not see it. He called the Chairman of the KGB Lavrentiy Beria and said, "Lavrentiy Pavlovich, my pipe disappeared after the visit of those workers."

"Yes, Yosif Vissarionovich, I'll immediately take proper measures."

Ten minutes later, Stalin pulled out a drawer in his desk and saw his pipe. He struck a match, puffed out a ring of smoke, and dialed Beria's number.

"Lavrentiy Pavlovich, my pipe's been found."

"What a pity," Beria said. "All of them have already confessed."

Another lovely quote from Senatore (long tortutous) Sessions "Some of them [Guantanamo detainees] need to be executed."

For what crime? Under who's authority?

The answer is: no crime we can define in an actual court, and under the authority of the Executive branch. Congress has no authority over Guantanamo. It's an Armed forces run prison, and they're taking orders from the Pentagon.

Sesssions wants the Executive branch to be able to act as a secret judge, capable of executing people without trial, and on no specified charges.

If Nixon had that power, Watergate never would have happened. The people on the enemies list would have been publicaly arrested, and then shoved into gas chambers the next day.

Before I get into more hot water, let's see if I can do a better job of articulating myself:

I think that if things were to remain as they are right now, America would eventually return to where it was before, maybe on 5-10 year time scales. Websites and blogs and media attention will eventually force the current government to revise its behavior - or be replaced by a government that will.

If, however, another WTC or equivalent event occurs, we are in this for the long haul. We will become everything we claim America is not, and we may not even bother with the veneer. We may actually just call it revenge, without trying to justify it to the rest of the world.

Jack: "We will become everything we claim America is not, and we may not even bother with the veneer. We may actually just call it revenge, without trying to justify it to the rest of the world."

What makes you think that has not already happened?

I just posted excerpts from Sen. Durbin's testimony to another forum, dominated by hawks. So far, I only got one rebuttal, but a long and passionate one it was. It used the word "raghead," and said the procedure is standard for American criminals — in other words, "It's not torture when WE do it." The person also described the testimony as funny, and called Durbin "Senator Turban."

While it is not one of "Rumsfeld's Rules" I was carefully taught in grad school that "sunk costs don't count" is just as important in the public as the private sector. When Rumsfeld started citing the amount of money we have already spent (~$100 million) on Guuantanamo, all I could hear was the whine of bad managers everywhere, "But we have already spent so much on the project already, why shut it down now? I'm sure it will get better next year!"

I am once again struck by the utter irony of feeling safer and freer in Hungary than in the United States. What a century this is turning out to be!

The "It's not torture when WE do it" is soooo Indiana. (My family being from there.) My father really, truly believes in American exceptionalism. Really believes that no matter what we do, we're justified because we're special and always the White Hats. It's really scary. He has no idea how it comes across. And he's genuinely offended when I suggest that his recent excitement about "Christianity" is rendered moot by his lamentable politics.

But from this side of the Atlantic, I feel safe and far away from it all.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but, in spite of Vietnam, I grew up thinking that torture was something that the bad guys did. You know, bad guys like the Gestapo.

Sometimes I think that Alex Ross's graphic novel "U.S." was foolishly optimistic in thinking that the Good Uncle Sam could overcome the Uncle Sam who allowed the near-genocide of American-Indians.

Something I came across a few days back, which can be taken as a bad sign...

There's a series of books about the invasion of Earth by a thoroughly nasty alien race called the Posleen. There's some help from other aliens (who may not be allies), and limited high tech weaponry imported.

It's all published by Baen Books, and it does rather explain some of their reputation in some circles -- you can, if you want, even get one of the books in their Free Library. Maybe two of them, by now.

Well, the series is getting expanded by co-written books. One of them covers the invasion fron the point of view of Germany. Like every other country, they are rejuvenating all their old soldiers, including the Waffen-SS.

Well, I've done some reading around the subject in my time, and the Wehrmacht wasn't all that innocent, and the Waffen-SS were not all murderers and concentration-camp guards. And they were elite fighting soldiers. If you're facing an alien invasion which eats people, and uses soldiers like the US Army uses ammunition, you'd want to use anyone you can.

But, apart from a couple of genuinely nasty characters, they're depicted as having the inhumanity of drill sergeants.

Wacht am Rhein is the title, and I don't think I want to read the rest of the book. It's setting up the liberal side of German politics as dupes of the "friendly" aliens, who want us to lose the war, and the blurb makes some extravagant claims about the "truth" of the historical components of the story, even while the characters are busily demonstrating that they were not anti-Semitic, even not really Nazis.

So I'm left with a feeling that something very nasty is getting close to the surface in the US. I hope this particular book is a flop, but just seeing it get published creeps me out.

What would Miles Vorkosigan say?

What would Miles Vorkosigan say?

"The one thing you cannot trade for your heart's desire is your heart." Memory

Here's hoping that the sentiment behind this quote will inform the Gitmo debate... because, as a neighbour, that debate's creeping me out more than the Jackson trial ever did.

So if we don't want this to Be. Us. what the $#^#$% do we do??

Seriously. What specific, concrete actions can a moral person take in the face of news like this?

Kate: specific, concrete actions you can take can be as simple as talking about it with people. Either with sympathetic people who are thereby bolstered in their own efforts to make a difference, or with those affected by the group psychosis who may well struggle against seeing the truth, but will ultimately benefit from it.

The media is currently a lost cause; there are people working on rejuvenating it as a force for democracy, but that effort's going to take time. I don't know how you can help them except to listen to Air America and tell people it exists.

Donate to Amnesty. Donate to the ACLU. Those are easy if you have money.

But first and foremost, accept that this is happening, feel outrage, communicate it to people around you, and don't lose hope. Believe me, America has a looooong way to fall, and I'm still not 100% sure it's possible for us to go all the way down without significant popular backlash. I've been optimistic about a turnaround too many times in the past few years to want to say anything now, but I'm still optimistic. (My wife, the European, thinks I'm an idiot to be optimistic before they have Rumsfeld hanging from a yardarm as a start, but I can't help it.)

Kate, the biggest thing you can do is be politically involved on all levels: local, county, state, national... ...everywhere... in the political organizations that least cause you to want to throw things at the reps. Voting is just the first step and it doesn't count for enough, with the stuff that's going on around us.

And keep informed - and informing others - of what's going on. It is so easy just not to know. Shed light on things, and keep shedding it.

Oh, and one thing more: for heaven's sake, don't trip on Goodwin's Law - it's bad enough without giving the guyz who think torture is ok ammo against us (us - roughly, those who think torture is not ok).

Does moveon.org have a petition somewhere?
I can't find one.

Here you are, Mr. London. (It's at MoveOn PAC, not MoveOn.org.)

linkmeister, I think I signed that one already. And it's more about the Downing Street memo, "fixing" intelligence, and whatnot. A petitition or something that says the undersigned believe torture is fundamentally wrong was more what I was looking for.

What a good idea! Greg, Amnesty International USA has a petition, here.

Thank you very much for the link Randolph. That was quite helpful.

Bush the Younger brings to mind one of the evil magians of legend, who cannot be killed because his heart is locked away in some remote and inaccessible fortress, guarded by magical creatures, and waiting to be stolen by the valiant and resourceful hero.

Oh dear, I've just realised what I wrote...

Bush/Arnie slash fanfic, anyone?

Dave, nah, that's Cheney--why do you think he keeps having surgery on it? W. Bush is the arrogant young princeling who never really grew up.

"James D. Macdonald ::: (view all by) ::: June 16, 2005, 12:35 AM:

Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday he doesn't believe revelations about the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay have become an image problem for the United States and that the facility should not be shut down.

-- CNN

Good to know this isn't a image problem."

I'm not sure if Cheney genuinely believes this, or just wants others to. Either way, he's very wrong.

Sick, sick, sick:

http://www.cafepress.com/iheartgitmo

There was an interesting article on the ethics of torture in Sunday's NYT magazine. It's thoughtful, pragmatic, and horrifying. Squirm squirm. Interesting that the piece mentions the show "24," which IMO is a highly entertaining shill for admin policies. Torture makes so much sense in context, and administered by Kiefer Sutherland, no?

Oh dear, Cheney and Bush as Koschei the Deathless and Prince John.

Since the legend had the heart inside an egg inside a duck and so forth, rather like turducken or an Arabian wedding feast camel, this somewhat explains what Cheney was doing with Scalia on all those hunting trips: teaching him how to put his heart into a duck so he too can live forever.

But after that moment of levity, I'm glad to hear Durbin raising the issue, since it raises the profile and eventually the stink will get enough that they will have to pin it on a few high officials. I'm hoping for Rumsfeld, personally.

I was calling Gitmo "Devil's Island" from day one. I'm disgusted but not surprised to see how accurate that description's becoming.

Here's a possible explanation for Cheney's recent enthusiasm about defending Guantanamo:

Halliburton Gets Contract to Build New Prison at Guantánamo

Chiming in late because I'm on my annual visit to Hell, where my mother has informed me that we should cooperate with our security forces because they're just doing a job and it isn't their fault. I mentioned secret police and the US Constitution and she changed the subject.

I suspect herein is the reason I've pretty much given up reading and writing blogs. I don't think there's any hope. They're never going to hear what they need to hear. They either can't or don't dare. Or perhaps both. They think they're listening to the liberal side though because they get NPR here.

MKK

Mary Kay will perhaps forgive me for wondering if her Oklahoma family's intractability is actually the best metric for judging (1) the reasonability of hope and (2) the usefulness of blogs.

Mary Kay will perhaps forgive me for wondering if her Oklahoma family's intractability is actually the best metric for judging (1) the reasonability of hope and (2) the usefulness of blogs.

I hate to say it, but I agree with her underlying point: blogs are very useful for preaching to the faithful, energizing the base or otherwise building echo chambers and they're excellent conduits and amplifiers of emotional response, but IME they're near-worthless for rationally changing people's minds. That's the beauty of the ability to self-segregate coupled with the ceaseless (predominantly rightwing) assault on notions of objective truth: everyone now gets a community in which to create their own reality, and never the myriad shall meet.

Oh, the diverse realities will meet.

It's a question of circumstances, is all, but they will meet, somewhere between blood, death, and (probably nuclear) fire and collegial argument.

It's amazing what people will do in preference to acknowledging that they're not good.

No one is; nothing achieves an absolute. There are big bits of formal Christian teaching about this -- We do not presume to come to this, Thy table, trusting in our own righteousness but in Thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs from under Thy table. -- but humility is by Thor tough to do, and gets lost in favour of comfortable certainties on a fairly much continuous basis.

And, you know, if y'all could get the votes counted, that'd near enough do it. The exceptionalism and the embrace of ignorance are so doomed, these next twenty years.

Oh, I don't disagree that blogs are useless for getting through to MKK's parents.

I refer you back to what I actually said.

(On the other hand, I disagree with Anarch's rather hasty categorical assertion that weblogs are "near-worthless for rationally changing people's minds." My mind has been changed about quite a few things by reading rational arguments posted in weblogs, as it happens. Just as it's been changed by things people argued in magazines, in books, in bars and in convention hospitality suites. Just as there's nothing magically extra-potent about weblogs, there's nothing mystically super-ineffective about them either. Good arguments and human common sense are effective wherever you find them. Enough about "blogs" as if they're made up of some kind of new, extra-potent words never before seen.)

But Patrick, they call it hypertext!

How ironic, Lois!

PNH: On the other hand, I disagree with Anarch's rather hasty categorical assertion that weblogs are "near-worthless for rationally changing people's minds."

It wasn't hasty: it's an observation built of three or so years of commenting on various blogs and some dozen years in various internet-related fora. [I've got nothing on the assemblage here, of course, but unless we're Ents I suspect that's sufficient background to qualify as "unhasty".] That was the point of the qualifier "IME"; I wasn't making a categorical claim across all people's experiences, merely my own.

My mind has been changed about quite a few things by reading rational arguments posted in weblogs, as it happens.

I spoke somewhat imprecisely: I don't think it's a typical experience to have one's mind substantively changed away from one's moral and political predelictions (say from conservative to centrist, or progressive to less progressive); whereas I think the converse is very common indeed. If your changes were of the former type then I don't mean to be snide, but I don't think you're at all typical.

IOW I tend to regard the internet as an enhancer/exacerbater: as a general rule, whatever positions one holds prior to serious "internet exposure" tend to deepen and entrench away from whatever notion of center we have (which ain't much). There are exceptions, of course -- I didn't mean for my statement to be as categorical as I think you've taken it -- but they are, in my experience, in a distinct minority.

Good arguments and human common sense are effective wherever you find them.

I disagree: the medium may not be the message, but it certainly affects how the message is received. For example, I'm generally going to regard an online essay as being of somewhat dubious sourcing and background, whereas I'd probably regard the same essay in an academic journal as being rigorously checked. [Yes, that's a gross generality, but as generalities go its kernel of truth is larger than most.] It's a question of context, of medium, of barriers to access, of trust and verification with limited resources.

And, for the record, I'll also note that I don't accept the premise of your claim there: good arguments and common sense are not necessarily effective, period. They can be; I wish they were; they're often not. I've known far too many people in both my public and private life who've allowed themselves to be swayed not just by irrational thoughts (pretty much every human emotion is "irrational" in some light, which makes that categorization effectively worthless) but what I call "subrational" appeals -- jingoism, baseless fears, hatred, naivete, idealism &c -- for me to accept that particular categorical assertion. And as I mentioned over on ObWi, although I can't remember which thread it was in offhand, history is replete with (regrettable) counterexamples to that claim.

It doesn't stop me from trying rational arguments, mind, it just makes me keenly aware of the limits of their effectiveness. Perils of being a logician, I guess.

Enough about "blogs" as if they're made up of some kind of new, extra-potent words never before seen.

See above. And I don't restrict it to blogs, btw, I regard it as an internet-driven phenomenon. [Hence "internet exposure" above.] Blogs, BBSes, USENET... the potential for edification is there, certainly, but my experience has generally been that signal inevitably loses to noise because noise is so much easier to make.

Doubtless your experience is different; I was very impressed back when I was a regular lurker on r.a.s.w (1994-96) at the quality and caliber of the discourse there. Part of the reason I was so impressed, though, was the stark, almost ludicrous contrast between the quality of the discourse there and nearly everywhere I looked online, and the intervening years haven't done much to change my views on the matter.

"Perils of being a logician, I guess."

Good God. Don't you strain a muscle or two, patting yourself on the back like that?

Anarch, JVP. JVP, Anarch. Enjoy one another's company; you're both convinced you've got the inside track.

Hey, but "Friedmandias"!

Good God. Don't you strain a muscle or two, patting yourself on the back like that?

Uhhh... no, that's not at all what I meant, and I certainly don't believe that I have any "inside track" whatsoever. [If anything, it's the exact opposite.] I'm sorry if I gave that impression; all I meant was that I think logic's role in persuasion is less potent than we usually think -- due to the whole "familiarity breeds contempt" thing -- and that that's not a flaw in either logic or ourselves. We simply operate in different domains, albeit ones with a fair amount of overlap.

Nevertheless, if that remark offended, please accept my apologies and strike it from the record. I've no desire to shower myself with fake laurels, nor to have others think that's what I'm doing.

Anarch,
I feel like I have to chime in on this one. I was an ardent Green supporter, and after reading many reasoned arguments on electrolite, I shifted my support to the Democratic party. Yes, I'm a flip-flopper.

It wasn't any ads on TV, it certainly wasn't NPR or FOX News, and it wasn't Foreign Policy, or Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, or Harper's that changed my mind. It was the input from several well-written posts on a blog.

Blogs are part of media now, they are part of our culture, and they have an influence on what information and opinions are disseminated. I wasn't brainwashed by a blog, I just learned something.

There are blogs that only preach to a niche audience, but even they could adopt a position that will influence the way their constuency thinks. Senator Freedom Fries wants the troops out of Iraq. You could argue that he's shifting in the political winds like a weathervane, but if he has a blog, perhaps somewhere a reader of his is saying, "Wait now, maybe we shouldn't kill the French over this. And how about going over our plan in Iraq again while we're not killing the Frogs."

I think it's hard to tell when you've convinced someone--I find it plausible that people are much more likely to change their minds when they've heard similar things from multiple sources.

Still, I think blogs are as likely to make a difference as any other sort of argument.

Patrick: I suppose there are things I wouldn't forgive you for but they aren't coming to mind just now so don't be silly.

As usual I was a bit too ellipitical. My family are not, you know, unusual of their type, which would be your basic middle American middle class folks who live in very conservative area. And there are a dammed lot of them. It's been a year since I was back in OK and I found the place downright scary. I came down with a really bad cold and since I had to fly today I went to the drugstore to get a decongestant. The display informed me I had to ask for them at the pharmacy counter. Okay -- the war on drugs strikes again. Then, at the counter they told me I had to present id and have my name taken down. It's the law in Oklahoma now they said. You have to. I refused to do so pointing out to them that such a requirement was almost certainly unconsitutional and that they shouldn't, as it was their state, allow it to remain a law. They looked at me as if I were a space alien. (When I had to live in Oklahoma I pretty much thought I WAS a space alien.)

Then when I got to the airport and got into the security line I had to show my boarding pass not once, not twice, but three times to 3 different people, all of whom were visible to each other. When I informed them that it this was a waste of my time and my money (airline tickets and tax dollars) the nice lady behind me in line informed me they were just trying to keep me safe. Though when challenged she couldn't explain to me how having 3 people, all of whom could see each other they were so close together, look at my boarding pass made me safer. But if they were doing it; it must be doing something.

The last time I told you there were more of them than us you disagreed. Listen to me Patrick, I use my family as examples because they are entirely typical of all their friends and all their relatives (other than me) and huge numbers of people who live in the so-called red states. They really really really believe that George Bush and Co. are doing what's best for the US. That if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about. That all those nasty things at Gitmo and other places are exaggerations or the actions of a few bad low-level people who've been found and gotten rid of so everythings's ok now. That the terrorist attacks happened because Clinton let the defenses deteriorate and didn't go after terrorists when he had the chance. They don't realize Cheney was CEO of Halliburton who are now getting more no-bid contracts from the Pentagon than they can handle and are gouging us blind. These are all things which were said to me in the less than a week I was here this time. The Tulsa World would give you a coronary. (And there's not a single fucking Apple certified technician in the whole of Eastern Oklahoma!) I'm appalled, depressed, and scared. I want out of this country, but I can't do that unless I'm willing to leave my husband. Which I not ready to do. Yet.

MKK

I'd been hoping that PNH would have responded before I posted again, but what the heck:

Sean: I'm very glad to hear that, and I wish/hope there were/are many more like you out there.

Nancy: I find it plausible that people are much more likely to change their minds when they've heard similar things from multiple sources.

I think that's true and is part of why I think the internet tends to move people away from the nominal center: there's a lot more, and more heated, rhetoric on the Net than there are in other media because of the reduced barriers to access and to produce. FOX News and talk radio are obviously just as bad in this regard but IMO they're bad in different ways; it'd be interesting to explore how but I don't have the time right now.

Mary Kay: The last time I told you there were more of them than us you disagreed. Listen to me Patrick, I use my family as examples because they are entirely typical of all their friends and all their relatives (other than me) and huge numbers of people who live in the so-called red states. They really really really believe...

Which is one of the greatest challenges facing liberals and progressives today, IMO: how to reach these people, to break their faith in the unworthy and to ensure they know the truth about what's been going on for the past four years. I suspect we're going to need some kind of pseudo-evangelical movement ourselves, establishing "missions" in the red states, preaching the gospel of truth and accountability, educating them about the horrible failings of the Bush Administration, inspiring them to higher moral callings (e.g. believing that torture is wrong), and all the rest of that jazz. The problems is that it's going to take one hell of an effort because we've pretty much lost our inroads, and I'm not sure there are any existing liberal/progressive networks that are capable of bearing that load.

I think it's hard to tell when you've convinced someone

Very true. But I always remember a dramatic exception: the excellent Dave Luckett, who not only changed his position on same-sex marriage but wrote his representative opposing a bill that would have banned it.

I guess the only point of bringing this up is to point out that it's easier to tell when you've convinced someone who's intellectually honest enough to tell you so. I aspire to this condition myself!

Patrick was playing the blues in Westchester last night.

I love Westchester. Had best friend there. Not far from a Rockefeller estate and Martin Gardner. My Dad lived there for a while after my parents were divorced. Saw Mill River Parkway and all that. But, hey, aren't the Westchester Blues rather White? Or have demographics changed?

Mary Kay, I draw your attention to this letter from today's Altercation:

Name: Timothy Adams

Hometown: Elwood, Nebraska

Today my wife and I had lunch at the senior center in our small Nebraska town. The people at our table were, by and large, members of the WWII generation. One man was a veteran of the China Burma India theater, having served with Merrill's Marauders. Some of the other men at the table may have been veterans as well. The subject of the war came up and these very patriotic people expressed grave doubts about the war and anger that they had been misled about weapons of mass destruction. The CBI vet said, "I know that our people over there believe in what they are doing, but does that make them right?" Bush has lost the Elwood senior center. If conservative people in this, the reddest of red states, are disillusioned about the war, then he has lost the country. I begin to see a glimmer of hope.

Minds are being changed; just not those of your family, and your family's immediate friends.

They really really really believe that George Bush and Co. are doing what's best for the US.

Since I put the "Bush Lied" bumper sticker on my car, several of my neighbors have become markedly cooler towards me, and (wonder of wonders) their kids no longer try to climb the tree in my yard when they think I'm not looking. Well, shoot, if I'd have known I could get rid of those kids that easily, I'd have plastered my whole house with anti-Bush slogans years ago.

OTOH, several other neighbors have started chatting politics with me, in the sly way undercover agents have of trying to ID each other in enemy territory. Maybe we can start a secret club or something.

--from the cadmium red Shenandoah Valley, Virginia

Running up to the '04 election I had a bumper sticker that read "Regime Change USA 2004". One day on the road, a beat-up pickup truck pulled up alongside and the driver -- a scruffy blond guy in shades with a mullet and whiskers -- started shouting at me. Startled and a little apprehensive, I opened my window and turned down All Things Considered so I could hear him, and he called over, "Great bumper sticker! Where'd you get it?"

I appreciate that y'all are trying to cheer me up, but the guy who quoted the WKRP turkey line over in another thread beat you to it. (Funniest line ever uttered on TV)

Teresa: I thought I was elliptical -- is there a secret message conveyed by playing the blues in Westchester? And, by the way, the box with address of the next Whisperado gig is overlying part of the column below and rendering both illegible in my browser (Mozilla 1.6 for Macs)

MKK

Two indecipherable URLs, no text at all: yep, that's spam all right.

Randolph: IIRC a great many veterans already opposed the war for common-sense reasons. It's the chicken hawk non-veterans who are the problem, who think that "war is cool".

Mary Kay: I feel the same way about my family in East Central IN. Not my mother and her husband, they're true-blue Quaker-derivative liberals in Richmond. But my father and my sister are both Republicans, and my father's wife and my sister's husband -- not stupid people, mind you, either one -- have said the most astoundingly hateful and insane things to me and to my wife since the start of the Recent Unpleasantness. Not hating me or my wife, I hasten to add, but certainly hating our ability to believe that Iraqis and other sundry foreigners are human and thus have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and all that. And given that my wife is a Hungarian citizen still, professing American exceptionalism to her is a foolhardy thing indeed if one doesn't want to be incinerated on the spot by her monumental disdain. (And such a small woman she is, too.)

Anyway, there's an impenetrable wall of smugness that basically just can't be breached. You're entirely right. (Not smugness, precisely, but that American insularity, the inability to realize that they're manipulated and not seeing reality -- and in fact a willing closing of the eyes, really.) It's like a sickening miasma across Indiana, very hard to take, and it's the main reason I've been first in Puerto Rico, now in Hungary, for a year now. I just can't bring myself to go back. Yeah, the free WiFi at the public library is great. (Public libraries! There are none in Ponce, PR, and none worthy of the name in Budapest -- the US has a long way to fall indeed.) But putting up with the damned infernal ignorance is grinding.

Anarch: it is profoundly wrong to think of this divide as geographical, even though it's always presented that way. An "evangelical mission" "from us" "to the red states" misses the point. I am a Red-stater; IN voted 65% Bush or so. The fact that some New York City slicker (without loss of generality) thinks that's bad is seen as a positive thing among the populace. This us-and-them is the very thing driving the conservative propaganda machine.

No, instead I believe it's just plain a matter of getting reality out into the culture. How this would be done in America, the place I've always thought of as thinking in movie scripts, I have no idea, but at least some effort should be made to project some propaganda which isn't conservative. It took the Republicans twenty years to construct their juggernaut, so it ain't going to be easy -- although lots of dead soldiers and $200 billion down the drain should make it easy to start waking people up. As BartCop says, though, it's not like there's an opposition party to give a expletive censored, excuse my freedom.

PNH: I think Anarch is being very measured in this exchange. Calling him JVP isn't. Just my two bits.

Now back to work for me.

[from Leo Weingarten@68] - Not sure which is worse, exploiting a natural disaster which killed thousands of people to sell diet aids, or using quadruple exclamation marks...

...ah. Zapped in the seconds between Preview and Post...

Jack @ 20:

"I think that if things were to remain as they are right now, America would eventually return to where it was before, maybe on 5-10 year time scales. Websites and blogs and media attention will eventually force the current government to revise its behavior - or be replaced by a government that will.

If, however, another WTC or equivalent event occurs, we are in this for the long haul. We will become everything we claim America is not, and we may not even bother with the veneer. We may actually just call it revenge, without trying to justify it to the rest of the world."

Would you want to revise that timeframe, at this point? (If you're still around!)

About Scrabble.

Or maybe it's babble about scram. Hard to say, hard to tell.