Left, Right, What Difference Does it Make?

by Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers
by Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers

I think there's a good reason why so-called Liberals are easy targets for derision. I believe it has a lot to do with a serious problem in the analytical thought process department. I mean, it seems they have a problem in thinking seemingly simple things through logically. The Neo-cons, on the other hand, are just out-and-out crooks and masters of deceit. Being skilled in dishonesty – and getting away with it – requires years of practice as well as a very gullible audience. Here's where American Joe-Average – who is always readily taken advantage of – steps in along with his very dim Liberal friends. The combination of the two makes for, literally, an entire carnival of little kids to steal candy from.

In a recent article, Liberal writer Joe Conason counter-attacked Karl Rove because of Rove's attempts to divert American public attention away from the Downing Street memo, George Bush's lies, and the disastrous Iraq War. Up to his tried and true trickery, Karl Rove started pointing fingers at events of 9/11 and using them as justification for questioning the patriotism of Liberals in America. Mr. Conason writes:

In attacking liberals' reaction to Sept. 11, Bush's senior advisor once again resorts to McCarthy-style tactics. Karl Rove is a liar and a scoundrel. He is not a patriot but a pure partisan, as his own record proved long before now.

Well, I don’t have too many problems with this so far. Of course Rove is a liar and a scoundrel. He's involved with American politics isn't he? Of course he's not a patriot but a pure partisan – did you Liberals just figure that one out? If so, no wonder we're in the mess we're in. What planet have you guys been living on?

Here's where the problem for you, dear reader, and yours truly comes in; we have the liars and scoundrels on the one side; and the liars, scoundrels, and simpletons on the other. Take your pick.

Then Mr. Conason really drops my jaw when he writes:

The truth is that liberal New York – and the vast majority of American liberals and progressives – stood with the president in his decision to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban. On the day of the attacks, I wrote a column that endorsed "hunting down and punishing" those responsible because the dead deserved justice – and noted that when the culpability of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban was established, the United States "is fully capable of dealing with them."

You can't be serious here. On the day of the attacks?! You, Mr. Liberal, supposedly the guys who are to be sticking up for the little guys – you actually wrote a column condoning the bombing of innocent people in Afghanistan on the day of the attacks – before any proof was presented?! And you are boasting about it? You are bragging about being suckered? Astounding! Maybe I missed something here, but I seem to remember that Colin Powell promised proof that Osama bin Laden was responsible for Sept. 11, within 72 hours after the event. I don't ever remember when any proof was given yet to this day. Do you?

No wonder the so-called Liberals in America are so gutless and worthless. I can't believe that Liberals cannot see the crass hypocrisy and brainlessness of all this. How was bombing and murdering 20,000 innocent Afghani old men, women, and children to make up for – or compensate – 3,000 people who were murdered in a crime? That's right a crime – not an "act of war," Mr. Conason? I do not believe that there could be a single logically thinking person in the entire world who could come up with a suitable answer to that question.

Then he goes on to write:

Six weeks after 9/11 and two weeks after the United States started bombing the terrorist camps in Afghanistan, I appeared on CBS's "Early Show" to support the Bush administration's actions. Correspondent Lisa Birnbach made the point that liberals and Democrats who had once opposed the war in Vietnam were standing shoulder to shoulder with a president they didn't much like (and, although she didn't mention it, whose legitimacy they continued to doubt).

Noting the ubiquitous presence of American flags as we walked around the very liberal neighborhood where I live, Birnbach said, "This old lefty [Conason] is suddenly siding with the White House."

Pathetic. Simply pathetic. I do not wish to seem rude, but what is written here seems the apex of hypocrisy. What was it, Mr. Conason and the rest of you Liberals, that made you so blind to what was obviously going on? Was it a group "victim" complex? Or was it a savage primordial urge for revenge – an urge to show someone your powers of domination? No wonder right-wing drug addicts can go on the radio and make you guys look like flip-flopping idiots. We, the people, have the liars, cheaters, thieves, and war-criminals on the one side; and we have their flip-flopping enablers on the other. America, pick a card, any card.

If folks like Mr. Conason represent the typical Liberal view (which I suspect he does) – then they are accessory to Bush Administration mass-murder and war-crimes. Crying "foul" now seems a bit too late. You guys made your bed, sleep in it. Politics does make strange bedfellows, doesn’t it?

There can never be any excuse for starting a war, Mr. Lefty or Mr. Righty. The people cannot possibly be that stupid not to see through your games sooner or later. Perhaps this is one big reason for the explosive rise of Libertarianism: True Libertarians have a policy and they stick to it. And that policy is: Anti-state, anti-war, and pro-market. It's the only policy that consistently holds up under scrutiny and analysis rather than inflection. Whoever first said there's no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans should have patented that phrase – they could have been rich by now.

June 27, 2005

Mike (in Tokyo) Rogers [send him mail] was born and raised in the USA and moved to Japan in 1984. He has the distinction of being fired from every FM radio station in Tokyo – one of them three times. His first book, Schizophrenic in Japan, is now on sale.

Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com

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