Centrists still suck

Blogger ate the first version of this post, which I spent much time on. I wrote it again, but it didn't turn out nearly as well. I hate blogger.

First.. go read this. Read the whole thing to get the proper flavor.

"I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq," retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in remarks prepared for a hearing by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

A second witness, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically ...."

"Mr. Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making," he added in testimony prepared for the hearing, held six weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections in which the war is a central issue.
[...]
He said Rumsfeld at one point threatened to fire the next person who mentioned the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.

Before you skip the reading assignment.. just go read it..

What is the implication of “threatened to fire the next person”? If you are not completely outraged by that, you’re either a far right winger, or more relevant to this discussion, a “centrist”, and lack the ability to follow a sequence of events. If Rumsfeld forbade post-war planning, going so far as to threaten to fire anyone who “mentioned the need for a postwar plan”, that would naturally lead to the postwar disaster we’ve seen, as well as the death of American soldiers. Therefore, logic would dictate that Rumsfeld is directly responsible for American solider deaths – and the proper punishment for that is prison.

Now.. go read this. Read the whole thing..

Substantively, it means gerrymandering evidence so that inconvenient facts don’t make it onto the map. And aesthetically, it means speaking in a compromising and not wholly credible tone.
[...]
The left has often complained that what it needs isn’t polite speech, but voices as pungent as those on the right. Maybe so. But even the angriest people on the right tend to be funny. Books like this one are a depressing reminder of how important it is for writers to have a slight sense of humor about themselves, if they want to be taken at all seriously.

How do you reconcile the first with the second? This is the issue that I'm talking about when I say centrist's suck ass.

On one hand, we have military generals pointing out the monumental failure that has been the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The evidence and opinion of the military generals is overwhelming. It's not a point of view. It's not unsubstantiated.

Exactly what is the our nation's intelligence services saying?

Since he spoke, a government-produced National Intelligence Estimate became public that concluded the war has helped create a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

What have the Republicans staked their entire party's platform on? Making us "safer". Well, guess what.. they monumentally fucked that up, and that's not just my opinion. That's the opinion of the NIE.

How do centrists react? They behave as if this is something along the line of bad tax policy, or a bad energy initiative. They are so focused on "balance" that they can't seem to grasp that the administration has brought on us the greatest horror in a generation in the lives of dead American soldiers, dead innocent civilians, and torture, resulting in a GREATER threat to America.

What could possibly be more important than that? Read this for a better explanation than I can give.

The centrist NY Times writer bemoans the fact that Blumenthal is not "funny" in the book. Can you believe that? He actually wrote; "But even the angriest people on the right tend to be funny." He derides Blumenthal for being "depressing", as if a writer is supposed to be cheerful or uplifting while writing non-fiction describing the worst failures in a generation. He actually said that a non-fiction political book must not be "depressing", and must be "funny" in order for the writer to be taken seriously. If I were a NY Times editor, I would not have allowed that review to be printed, and if I had it in my authority, I'd fire the writer.

The "centrist" editors of the Times will do neither. Apparently they think it's okay to criticize non-fiction in that manner.

Centrists are unable to understand why we are so "angry", and why we are so "extreme" and why being "nice and polite" is bullshit. In light of the obviousness of this, a centrist might say "Okay then, I understand the anger and partisanship, but you will not change the minds of mainstream Americans by acting so angry."

The centrist doesn't really understand what "mainstream" America is anyway. By not presenting a clear and convincing alternative to the treasonous acts of the current administration, we give it tacit approval. Calm voices are lost in the din. That's why people like Sullivan are stupid fucks. He may have a genuine revulsion to government sanctioned torture, but he lacks any real passion for combating it. His mealy mouthed words are weak and ignored. He is meaningless.

What a centrist is not, is someone that has political views from both the right and the left. For instance, somebody could be pro-torture, or advocate the use of warrentless wiretaps. That person could also support gay marriage. They have views on the right and the left - that doesn't make them a centrist. A centrist is a person that would advocate for giving the government actual legal authority to do "harsh" interrogation techniques, such as waterbording, so that they are no longer committing illegal acts, and at the same time granting amnesty for past criminal acts. The centrist would advocate for civil unions in order to give gay couples some rights, but not give them marriage, thus keeping the religious people happy.

In other words, a centrist always tries to pull black and white political issues into the gray area.

See the difference?