..there is almost no mention of, let alone focus on, the sheer radicalism and extremism of the last eight years. During that time, our Government has systematically tortured people using sadistic techniques ordered by the White House; illegally and secretly spied on its own citizens; broken more laws than can be counted based on the twisted theory that the President has that power; asserted the authority to arrest and detain even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and hold them for years without charges; abolished habeas corpus; created secret prisons in Eastern Europe and a black hole of lawlessness in Guantanamo; and explicitly abandoned and destroyed virtually every political value the U.S. has long claimed to embrace.
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Even our unprovoked and indescribably destructive attack on Iraq, based on purely false pretenses, has received little attention. Those things simply don't exist, even as part of the itemized laundry list of Democratic grievances about the Bush administration. The overriding impression one has is that the only things really wrong during the last eight years in this country are that gas prices are high and not everyone has health insurance. Those are obviously very significant problems, but they are garden-variety political issues which don't begin to capture the extremism that has predominated in this country under GOP rule, and don't remotely approach conveying the crises on numerous fronts the country faces.
What's missing from the Democratic convention? -Glenn Greenwald
I'm not sure about everyone else but i'm not behind the dems because of their take on the economy or health care (though I often prefer their positions and the term 'liberal' doesn't scare me). I'm behind them this time because everything is so messed up and i'm not up for more of the same. But it's becoming harder and harder to get behind any of these political charlatans (not that it wasn't hard to begin with) when they often refuse to even talk about the most important issues or take good stands on the most important issues (FISA) because of "political realities". Real change is probably going to have to come from a social movement, that's probably the best place to put energy. Vote well but if you want something to be done about the issues you care about you have to try to tackle them as directly as possible.
Accountability Now -Greenwald
Change Congress -Lessig
The Eternal Value of Privacy -Bruce Schneier blog
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