From an Andrew Sullivan reader:
Can someone remind me what it is the NIMBY crowd thinks these detainees are going to do once transferred to the U.S.? They act like these guys are half-MacGyver, half-Houdini, and half-Lecter. Do they think they're Transformers or X-Men or something, and that as soon as these mostly low-level terrorists touch U.S. soil they're going to shoot lasers from their eyes and throw cars at people?
If this proves anything, it's that the Bush-era scare tactics worked better than we thought. The Republican Party has gone from the party of fear to the party of being afraid. If the left ever acted like pansies about something the way the right has about this, they'd be taken to task and labeled "weak" or "soft".
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto
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1 comment:
The slide of the right in the US from "strong and proud" Americans to "frantic and panic" Americans, can be directly attributing to them buying hook, line, and sinker the concept that America's spine simply wasn't strong enough to withstand the attacks of 911.
The "everything has changed" meme may have sounded good to the neo-cons politically, but the message it really transmitted was that America's founding ideas were shallow and weak and had to go.
Less than 10 years later, you have those same souls in the streets with guns at rallies, looking for fascists in every corner, and fearful of a President who dares speak to school children.
They're afraid because they've been told they need to be afraid. The strong country they thought they were raised in, they've now been told, is just a stack of cards that will fold if faced with almost any threat, foreign or domestic.
They were never told that America's ideas were stronger than the belief's of the 911 hijackers and the terrorists. No, instead, they were told that all the beliefs they held dear, the ethereal faith in their bold democratic founding beliefs, was wrong. They were told it wasn't enough.
And they believe it, fearful now of anything and everything they think might be the final straw.
And, sadly, Republicans are willing to stoke that fire, not recognizing the long term risks and damage such a strategy holds.
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