Pathos meets Loyalists

I recently viewed an exchange between Bill O'Reilly and Rocky Anderson. Rocky is the mayor of Salt Lake City and an outspoken critic of George Bush. Rocky is now calling for the impeachment of Bush as are many other people and with good reason.

O'Reilly was his regular self. He utilized his standard bag of tricks, blatant insults, cutting Rocky off in mid sentence, bringing up incorrect dubious information, and attempting to frame Rocky in a distorted light. Rocky fought back and raised the main point in that O'Reilly fails to advance the debate and discourse, he only polarizes it further, to the unfortunate chagrin of and with a psychological toll on the American people,

We see this approach frequently and predictably from the right. The framing of the opponent as being fundamentally insane and consequently not relevant. Doesn't matter if you are bringing factual information to the table. Facts have no value in this "discourse."

The same tactic is coming up in the defense of Gonzales as Attorney General. All evidence points to a partisan attack to remove perfectly fine Federal attorneys and replace them with "Bush loyalists." The loyalists would undertake the Bush agenda in going after Democrats and neglecting corrupt Republicans. Its a fine tactic for boosting your political power, the only problem is that it completely corrupts and subverts the judicial process. The judicial process is something which is fundamental to upholding the facade of democracy that Americans hold in high regard and expect.

Little wonder that Bush would have no problem subverting the judicial system, after all he has already subverted it plenty. A few of the key words to this would be the removal of habeus corpus, a fundamental right of civilization for the past thousand years or so - the right to know why you are being held, and applying this removal of habeus corpus to "the enemy combatant", a brand new Bush designation which disregards the international establishment of the Geneva Conventions. This last point paves the way for the "conservative compassionate" use of torture.

Lets be clear, if you support torture you have a long way to go to retrieve that little thing called humanity.

None of this has adversely affected the pundits and pundit sheep that continue to embrace Bush. The degree to which loyalty blurs the distinction between ideology and reality is mind boggling. You see it is mind boggling that O'Reilly and his cohorts would defend Bush from impeachment.

I have maintained all along that a major aspect of the political divide in this country has to do with loyalty versus reality and facts.

I appreciate loyalty. If I am hauled off, it would be nice to know that there are some people in my corner supporting me regardless of my guilt or innocence. At the personal level we want people who will hold us in good esteem regardless of our faults. As always, there are exceptions.

For me, when the stakes are the country and the direction of the country, the truth beats loyalty 100% of the time. George Bush is not the country. I agree with Rocky, the country needs to eject Bush. It is virtually impossible to get into a conversation where there is the notion that Bush is a real true role model and guiding light for America.

Its just the opposite. Bush is a drag on the American psyche, a massive drag. We are enabling someone who is unfit, and not up to the job in the best way. He has failed the exam. He has lost our energy and our support. We hold our breath and hope his future predictable failures will be smaller. We are certain that time will continue to reveal massive failures at all levels.

Loyalty is one thing but at this point we are witnessing the pathology of loyalty.