Monk

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I know you are dismayed at the results of last week's election. You've got to be freaking out about what this bunch of tree-hugging, latte-sipping, men-kissing-men advocates will do now that the country is in our hands. I don't blame you. We'd never admit it, but we secretly admire you because you know how to chop down a tree, take your coffee black and enjoy watching women kissing women. Good on you!

-- Michael Moore for The Los Angeles Times

This was a pleasant surprise this morning. Michael Moore gets in his kick in the ribs of the G.O.P. over the 2006 elections. What a surprise that he could not help rubbing it in! It's just one of the reasons why I love this country.

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For all the cheering and the relief over the prospect of leaving the nightmare of Iraq, there is a dark side. It is not a "get out of jail free" card. Mark Steyn hits that note pretty hard with his high-testosterone prose:

As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.

It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.

That is the way the Muslim radical militants have read past American set-backs, and I do not see any reason why they will not see this as a big celebratory triumph over the Great Satan. But that was the argument for going in in controlling force to effect conclusive order at the outset, if America was to go in at all.

After these years of failure, we seem to be without any credible remedy for the situation, having lost the upper hand. Although we presumably would like to leave Iraq with a real chance to maintain a progressive, non-militant political order, it is certainly sensible to just want to stop the hemorrhaging of American servicemen, especially when it does not look like we are getting anything for the terrible loss.

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Bloggorhea?! This is the first time I have come across that word, used by Frank Rich in his Sunday column. He was writing about the power of YouTube, particularly in helping to bring town George Allen's political prospects, noting the power of images and video over, well, bloggorhea.

I actually like the term. A diarrhea of the keyboard? I have been thinking anew about a title for my journal, and if I had a little more spirit, I think I may have found it: Bloggorhea. Ah, it would not be the MSM if there were not that arrogance, especially toward the little pajama-wearing guys.

Well, Frank Rich is good, as well as very liberal, and I will close this latest bit of bloggorhea with an excerpt from his celebration of the 2006 elections:

The macaca incident had resonance beyond Virginia not just because it was a hit on YouTube. It came to stand for 2006 as a whole because it was synergistic with a national Republican campaign that made a fetish of warning that a Congress run by Democrats would have committee chairmen who are black (Charles Rangel) or gay (Barney Frank), and a middle-aged woman not in the Stepford mold of Laura Bush as speaker. In this context, Mr. Allen’s defeat was poetic justice: the perfect epitaph for an era in which Mr. Rove systematically exploited the narrowest prejudices of the Republican base, pitting Americans of differing identities in cockfights for power and profit, all in the name of “faith.”

... What a week this was! Here’s to the voters of both parties who drove a stake into the heart of our political darkness. If you’ll forgive me for paraphrasing George Allen: Welcome back, everyone, to the world of real America.

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Watching "Scarborough Country" over dinner, I am reminded of today's news that al-Qaida and Iran are cheering the Democratic victories and the dismissal of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, like it is a victory for them as well. I just wanted to say that I think they are laboring under a misunderstanding. Not all Democrats are like Michael Moore. If they insist on carrying out jihadic terrorism against America and the West, I think they will learn that killing terrorists is a bipartisan policy. Rumsfeld just wasn't doing it efficiently enough.

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“Americans will always do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the alternatives.”

-- Winston Churchill

This is an apt quote for the 2006 elections, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan

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“So voters kicked out Republicans but did not swing to the left. For the most part they exchanged moderate Republicans for conservative Democrats. It was a great day for the centrist Joe Lieberman, who defeated the scion of the Daily Kos net roots, Ned Lamont. It was a great day for anti-abortion Democrats like Bob Casey and probably for pro-gun Democrats like Jim Webb. It was a great day for conservative Democrats like Heath Shuler in North Carolina and Brad Ellsworth in Indiana.”

-- David Brooks for The NY Times

I think this is a good sobering message for some of our liberal friends who ache to read the outcome of the 2006 elections as the harking of a new progressive era. That would be a good way for the Democrats to get trounced in 2008. Americans are not neo-conservatives, but they still are not inclined to label themselves as progressive liberals either.

By the way, the New York Times has put down its 'paid' wall this week. So, it is an opportunity to read some of their 'select' stuff. Maureen Dowd has a nice column today.

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Rumsfeld resigns today! It is amazing to see this Administration so responsive, finally. If they were only a fraction this open to opposing viewpoints before, this might be a different world today with respect to Iraq. I guess some people just have to be whacked across the forehead with a two-by-four.

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I suppose that one of the disadvantages of not having one-party rule is loss of full spin control. A little more reality pervades the Administration.

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It's cultural. It is not about Democrats and Republicans, as much as it is about Norman Rockwell's America and Nancy Pelosi's America. That's what a Republican said about the spiking of Republican numbers making tomorrow more of an interesting election.

I admit that I don't know much about what Nancy Pelosi's America would be like, except that they said it would mean the government would take away their guns and give amnesty to tens of millions of illegals, but certainly that Norman Rockwell stuff is an inane fantasy, an idealized, syrupy American dream. It is like wanting to live in Sheriff Griffith's Mayberry.

The problem is that maybe too many Americans do live in that fantasy world, in the same way that they look forward to the Rapture and the return of Jesus. What can you do about that?

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I was watching Fox News tonight for some of their coverage on the elections, thinking that I might feel sad for them as they put up a brave front. But it got really tiring hearing them say that it looks like the Democrats crested too soon, and the races are really tightening up, and there's a good chance that Tuesday will not be so black for Republicans, after all.

I refuse to believe that shit.

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