I heard on the radio this a.m. that the Gov has about 1,400 people in custody, incommunicado. If there is another terrorist episode, it's hard to see what obstacles there would be to additional repression.
As for Bush & tolerance, I think this was totally dictated by the Administration's need to not throw the whole ME region into an uproar. They will be doing that later anyhow.
My despair stems from the display of left political ineptitude I see, both on this list and by a person I defended -- Cynthia McKinney (she did a recent speech that was pure black helicopter stuff). There seems to be a profound disinterest in persuasion. It is one thing to try and rally like-minded persons; it is another to just stew in one's juices. The anti- imperialist left seems to be building, but building a wall around itself at the same time. It reminds me of the Masada complex.
mbs
Now, now Yoshie -- surely you see I wasn't being literal here. What I object to, and am becoming increasingly impatient with, is this lefty despair about the US, how it's this Nazi state and any minute now the Gestapo's gonna kick down your door and throw you in a cell with John Walker Lindh. Doug has touched on this somewhat of late, but what pisses me off is that many lefties truly think that their efforts are for naught -- that no matter what they do, the Nazi state is there to cancel it.
Bullshit. The left (which supposedly doesn't exist according to Comrade Cox) has had tremendous success in shifting the mainstream view of events. The shift is slow but it is there. Right after 9/11 we had a right wing Republican president from Texas openly meeting with Muslim clerics and calling on citizens not to engage in racist violence. Now, this was all PR of course, but who inspired this gesture? What was it in the culture that made the Bush gang feel they had to do this? Twenty years ago you never would have seen such a thing. Carroll sniffs and says that there is no "left," but somebody was organizing around Middle East issues and helped to slowly turn the public's view in another and better direction. Same with the calls for a Palestinian state and Palestinian human rights -- used to be you couldn't say this out loud with either being ignored or defamed; and while the defamation still exists, it has a hysterical and desperate tone to it. Why? Because calling someone an anti-Semite or a Jew hater for considering the Palestinians as humans doesn't carry the weight it used to.
Did this change come from the heavens? Call it what you want to -- the left, progressives, a bunch of good people trying to make a difference, The Monkees, whatever -- there has been a shift to the better, and it's a waste of time pretending that we have no power at all.
DP