Scornful Writing So Good It Leaves Joe Claus in Awe!

All right, everybody, get your tail over to The Anchoress pronto and savor the best written piece of scathing political rhetoric I've read in many a moon. Put away your Ann Coulters and Michele Malkins. They do it professionally, so they are jaded whether they say so or not, and they do it to cultivate the sweet taste of their own venom. See what someone who is morally good, can genuinely write, and feels utterly betrayed (she is largely right) can do with the great and ever fecund English tongue.


UPDATE: Here is some of my backchat about it:

Wow. If the price for having an empty pants rise is being obliterated by a long, wonderful, and luminious rhetorical B-52 bombing run like this, I solemly promise never to abandon the courage of my convictions in your presence again!

Unfortunately, our dear majority and its leaders (whether in one whited sephulcre or another, on Pennsylvania Avenue, under the Dome, or at Blair House) are finally discovering that in America you cannot rule. You must govern.

To govern you have to acknowledge that the citizens of the minority at least exist, and have something to say, even if they didn’t “win” the election.

Those neither in the “majority” or the “minority” were scared into propping up the “majority” mostly by a highly effective political advertising smear, and partially by an inept Democratic Party that nominated a world-class dweeb. They gave the “majority” a razor-edged margin, not a “mandate.”

They really didn’t believe in the “agenda” that the noisy Republican base would bring to Congress, and they wanted to see somethiing like tangible results [beyond pictures of smiling Iraqis voting, recycled over and over] from our foreign adventures.

They’ve seen results, all right. In Amman. Courtesy of the new generation of bomb makers whose skills we are honing to perfection in Bagdhad. Too bad we can’t conduct one of the endless Operation Mop-Em-Ups in Amman. Or in the British subway system. Or and or and or.

Too bad we’ve demoralized and betrayed our real first line of defense against terrorism: the Central Intelligence Agency.

Too bad we’ve tied up all our serious military options, which will soon be needed elsewhere. I’ll let you guess where. But, keep fighting, Anchoress. I’d much rather have you as an adversary then Bill Frist as an ally any day of the week. Start naming some names of the gutless wonders with the American Flags in their lapels, and quit bothering with impotent journalists, febrile ex-ambassadors, and nameless Islamic hordes overruning Western Civilization. Your writing is too good to waste on such targets.

Your writing is very good indeed.

Then, after the dust had settled:

As to whether my anger here is edifyingly Christian?

Even if you are imitating Christ driving the moneychangers from the temple, you are still imitating Christ.

I’m perfectly sure that you would be willing to pray for the repose of the souls of those who are angering you, so I see no reason why you shouldn’t be perfectly forthright about their actions, if they annoy you.

If you think majority dems plan to “govern” when they get back in power, you’re not paying attention.

If they want to get anything done they will. Bill Clinton found this out early in his first term with his health insurance debacle. You spend too much time looking at the frothys like me that you find on the blogs who will never have the responsiblity of governing anything, even themselves.

Look rather, if you are interested, at characters like Michael Coleman, mayor of my town, who has about a 40% chance, at the moment, of becoming the next governor of Ohio, if you want to see Democratic government in action. I doubt he’ll be nominated for President, but he is the epitome of “politics as the art of the possible”. We actually have a lot like him among Democrats.

I don’t want to be Europe, thanks very much.

What on earth makes you think you will be? If there is one outstanding lesson to be learned from all the elections since 1978, and the consistent percentage of party self-identification, or lack of it, in this great land, is that nobody is going to push the country very far one way or the other. That is my point. Nobody will “rule”. Everybody must govern.

I favored term limits because ALL politicians lose all touch with reality if they are there too long.

This is simply not true. I have watched my state government totally degenerate under term limits. Why? Because no one in our legislature has to face the long term consequences of any bill that passes. If it makes them immediately popular, they will pass it. If it doesn’t they won’t. They will be gone from office anyway.

The fine career politicians [mostly Republican, by the way] who used to run Ohio would never have even contemplated some of the extraordinary pieces of short term expediency with long term disasters attached that now routinely pass in Ohio’s Legislature.

but there are some things that are non-negotiable. One of those things is the life of the unborn

I hate to disappoint you, but this is exactly the issue where the party in power is betraying you the most. As long as Roe v. Wade stands they will have the “values” vote glued to them.

And with every passing year that decision stands, the possibility that the Supreme Court will reverse it diminishes, no matter how many “conservatives” the court is packed with. Just recently Judge Alito made some quite illuminating remarks about this. Anyone who is actively anti-abortion should read them very carefully.

The party in power has consistently steered you away from a Constitutional change (which just might pass under the right circumstances with the right effort) and toward mere legislative sniping (”not under 18″, “not without parental knowledge”) that merely cements the court precedents more deeply into the fabric of our law as these pieces of legislative guerilla warfare are successively (and succesfully) challenged.

A character like Karl Rove is perfectly willing to string you along forever on this one. Since you will vote your values above all else, he has your votes for good.

Find better Republicans in the primaries and vote for them.

You won’t find them. You will have to make them by getting involved and making a nuisance of yourself within your own party.

This is the message that Howard Dean brought to those of us on the other side of the fence: The most important Democrat to elect right now might just be a young County Commisioner or a School Board Member, because they are your party’s future. You don’t have to wait for Washington to do that.

If you look into it, you will find that DFA and DNC are putting the money and the effort right there, into that principle.

I’ll give you two tips about the immediate future of Democratic politics. Ignore anything Howard Dean says and watch what he does. And ignore anything Harry Reid does and listen to what he says.

If you do these two things, the long term Democratic strategy will be quite plain, if you have eyes to see.

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