{"id":14387,"date":"2013-02-05T21:15:17","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T02:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2013\/02\/05\/14387.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T00:05:00","slug":"wrong-wrong-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2013\/02\/05\/wrong-wrong-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrong, wrong, wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was going to write about Beyonce—how the attacks from Right Blogovia seem to have caused the denizens of Left Blogovia to rise to her defense, despite her celebrity persona being, one would think, very troubling and problematic from a feminist perspective. Because, you know, celebrities are interesting. And problematic. And because of our society and culture, women who are celebrities—women who craft or have crafted a celebrity persona—are always<\/i> interesting and problematic.\n

And then I saw that Michael Isikoff and NBC news had announced that they had obtained a Justice Department memo [that] reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans<\/a>. By legal<\/i>, I should point out that they mean grossly and obscenely illegal<\/i>. Nothing in there is surprising; everything is shocking.\n

Look—I make no bones about my support for Our Only President. He’s quite likely the best in my lifetime, and far better than anyone had a right to expect. This is the policy area where he most utterly departs from my own view—in my mind where he most utterly departs from moral sense. And where, I believe, he departs from Our Party’s basic ideas.\n

Actually, I think the past two Administrations have departed from their Party’s basic ideas on this matter. The Other Party believes, I would have said strongly, in the tremendous value of US Citizenship, in the exceptional nature of America and Americans, and in treating Citizens with distinction and preference, along with liberty and anti-tyranny and all that. And my Party believes, I would have said strongly, in open trials, in legal representation and the civil rights of the accused, and in, you know, not dropping bombs and shit. And having said that, I also<\/i> think that this policy, this obscenely illegal and wrong policy, is in fact supported by a majority of the people, probably quite a large majority.\n

How does that happen? How does something like this—and I should be clear, we’re talking about murdering US citizens based entirely on the President’s approval—become widely popular while being so obviously counter to each Party’s ideas? How is the restraint that Parties bring to bear on other issues so totally loosened on this one? Those questions are rhetorical: I know how it happens. So do you. Our Congress, decades ago, ceded the War Power to the Executive because it wanted nothing to do with restraining our baser natures in this area. And we, culturally, allowed our baser natures to prevail. We cheer for the deaths of our enemies, and we mock anyone who insists that there is another way. A better way. Or at least… if there isn’t a better way, that the lack of a better way is a reason for sadness and regret.\n

So. I’m happy to see Left Blogovia is largely taking a moment to criticize Our Only President on this. I don’t want people to think that we out here support this policy. The way the policy goes away (maybe someday) is if it is not supported, not by us, not by the Other Party, not by our elected Representatives (and by the way, if you have an open seat and an upcoming primary, say f’r’ex for a special election for the US Senate, this is exactly the sort of thing where pressure before the primary pays off after the general), not at all. It shouldn’t be a tribal thing, though.\n

Beyonce? That should be a tribal thing, the instinct to defend whoever the other side is attacking. Right. Awesome. Plenty of time to criticize Mrs. Carter next week, when the other side has forgotten about it. But murder? I think murder is different.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger is all cross and shit, what with all the killing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-item"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16723,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387\/revisions\/16723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}