One Nation Working Together march in Washington, DC, 10-2-2010!

Pat Buchanan was right. There is a battle going on for the soul of this country. Pat's on the wrong side, of course.

I'm lucky to live in the Washington DC area, and I will be attending the One Nation Working Together march on October 2. I've been looking over the list of sponsoring organizations, and it reminds me of all the wonderful things that liberals have done, and continue to do, for this country.

List of march sponsors

What do these organizations stand for? So many things that make me proud to be a Democrat.

Decent treatment of working people

Support for education

Respect for the environment and nature

Human rights and equality for all

Medical care for all

Free speech

Freedom of religion

Peace

Economic security for all

Rationality

Recognition that our nation was built on 18th century Enlightenment principles

Separation of church and state

Real science

Immigration reform

Respect and support for the arts

Respect for international law

Preference for individuals over corporations

I plan to take lots of pictures at the march, and I hope to highlight as many kinds of organizations as I can. I know which party has the big tent.

May this heathen rage a minute?

Every once in a while, I get so fucking depressed. I seem to live in a world in which so many people are... what, post-rational? pre-rational? just plain irrational? just plain liars? They are impervious to logic, but somehow they are able to use logic to turn black into white and vice versa.

People who try to view the world rationally certainly have more facts on their side than mere believers in superstition, and yet the true believers cling tightly to their beliefs. Why do they do that? And why misuse the tools of science to advance the unscientific? One could say that this is their last desperate cry, but sometimes I'm the one who feels desperate.

In which I draw your attention to a Daily Kos diary by Michael Moore, and make additional comments...

Michael Moore makes the case that it was the political cowardice and/or gullibility of liberals in the media and in government that allowed George W. Bush to lie us into the war in Iraq. He is right, of course.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/15/902221/-Never-Forget:-Bad-Wars-Arent-Possible-Unless-Good-People-Back-Them

Now, of course, we know that, when we go to war, we are all supposed to band together behind the president and help him fight the war. Therefore, in cases when the war is uncalled for, people, politicians especially, need great courage to go against the tide. If we look back to Viet Nam, even though the anti-war position ended up being the conventional wisdom at that time, historical revisionism has bitten politicians who did not serve in that war in the ass.

I have mentioned before that Bush betrayed America by using our grief and anger from 9/11 to trick us into supporting his war in Iraq. We had been wounded by Al Qaeda, and we obviously needed to take some action. President Bush used this opportunity to engage in a war that he wanted an excuse to get into before 9/11 even happened.

I don't claim to be a political genius, but the Bush administration's lies always seemed to me to be so clumsy and transparent that anyone could see through them. After 9/11, we went into Afghanistan, which is where Osama bin Laden was hiding. So far, so good. Then, George W. Bush announced that, far from limiting our actions to punishing Al Qaeda, we would fight terror world-wide, wherever it was to be found. I immediately thought to myself, "Oh, so this is how he gets into Iraq."

So, if your average Joe (me) could see through that ruse, you know that there were professional politicians and pundits who recognized it immediately. Yet, very few had the courage to speak up, with the result that we lost more soldiers in Iraq (in a war justified by events that had nothing to do with Iraq) than there were deaths in the 9/11 attack.

As a tangent to all of this, I have a theory about the media's vehement response to George W. Bush's bungled response to hurricane Katrina. Bungled it was, but the hurricane was huge, affecting the city as much as a war would have. We know that FEMA, under Bill Clinton, would have done a better job, but the task would have been a daunting one in any case. I believe that the media, and others who might have stood up against our going into Iraq, experienced a growing rage as the case for the war unraveled, and they realized how they had been bamboozled. The rage that could not be expressed over Iraq exploded over Katrina.