Re: Why Bush Should Be Impeached, #84

On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 05:11:04PM -0400, [email protected] wrote:
> I'm *not* pro-Bush, nor am I anti-Bush.  I think he's good some things,
> but bad at others.  

I'm genuinely curious: can you list some of the good things Bush has
accomplished? I can try... The tax credit was good for me, if I
construe my interests in the most narrow possible way. Overall, it was
a boondoggle for the rich, which is, frankly, evil. Uh... He didn't
actually provoke nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, as I
feared earlier this year. Let's see... I can't think of anything else.

> Nearly everything I read on this mailing list is
> about how Israel is bad, Bush is bad, etc.  

Hmm, I'm not sure how Israel is relevant, but I think this is a pretty
shortsighted comment. Given the massive and systematic distortion of
the Palestinian and Arab perspectives in the U.S. media, it's a little
weird to call *this* list biased for trying to offer fair and accurate
representations of what the corporate media neglects.

Does that matter at all, Jack? I'd really like to know: is it that you
don't know how distorted corporate media is about Israel and the
Middle East? Or is it that you *prefer* it that way? Or what?

The larger point, of course, is that Bush *is* very horrible, or, at
least, lots of us on this list spend time *arguing* for that point of
view. You are certainly free, as is anyone else here, to argue for a
different perspective. But you oughtn't to expect to do so free from
critical evaluation by the rest of us. Isn't that sorta the *point* of
a conversation?

Likewise, Israel (though likely not any more so than any other state
which insists on subjugating part of its population and occupying its
vassals) does things which rightly deserve criticism.

You are perfectly free to argue, for example, that the Palestinians
deserved to have civil society on the West Bank *totally destroyed*
during the spring. That, say, Palestinian women deserved to be
humliated by the televised broadcast of nonstop pornography during
that invasion. Or that Bush and Sharon have any right whatever to
dictate to the Palestinians who their political leaders will be.

In fact, I encourage you to *argue* for such things.

  Not a peep (from the usual
> contributors, anyway) about any other point of view.  

So it's a failing of mine, for example, to not represent points of
view I find wrong or unjust or harmful? That's interesting. If true,
you're as guilty of it as I am, so the complaint is trivial and
boring.

> So there *is* a
> bias here. 

Either you missed Bijan's point, which is hard to imagine, or you're
just being willfully perverse. Your claim about bias was originally
raised in the context of a *very narrow and technical point of
Constitutional hermeneutic*, yes? As Bijan pointed out, quite rightly,
you really need to *show* how our 'bias' affected our reading of the
Constitution. Simply moaning about bias is boring and dull, Jack. At
least piss and moan in an *interesting* way!

> I'd like to hear the other arguments so I *can* make my own judgement,
> and I obviously will not hear them here.

Blah, blah, blah. First, you won't hear the 'other side' about the
Constitutional question because no one else agrees with you that a
president may not be impeached, as a matter of procedural integrity,
for acts committed before she took office.

Now that you've piggybacked that very small issue into some sort of
general whining about this list, I can only say that I don't feel I
have any positive duty to represent points of view I find wrong or
harmful *on a list that I pay for*. I do have a duty to not
misrepresent, willfully, any point of view I purport to describe. But
that's different, and I don't believe I generally do that.

The point of having a list and having 150 contributors is for people
of various points of view to talk about their ideas. That doesn't
obligate frequent contributors to hold up all sides of the debate on
any particular issue.

That there are no people on this list who share *your* point of view
is just one of the many facts about which the universe is totally
indifferent.

Read a book, make up your mind, and *you* can be the official
not-like-the-rest-of-us person here.

> And I'd really appreciate it if you wouldn't insult me... I am, at
> least, *trying* to be reasonable and non-judgmental. 

Actually, that may well be true, but you've *seemed* petulant and lazy
today. Just so you know.

  The fact that I
> question some of what I read here should be enough to make that clear.
> Geez.

You still question the constitutional issue, or is this more of the
piggybacking onto bigger issues and complaints you have? I'm confused.

If the former, get over it, that horse is dead.

If the latter, I'm glad you question what you read here, but if you're
going to participate in the conversation of the list in a way that
edifies either yourself or the rest of us, it might help to bring
something more substantial to the table than general moaning about how
the list has a particular political orientation. That is, after all,
the whole *point*.

Kendall Clark