Policy Roundtable (with a complimentary aperitif of piss and vinegar)

Thanks again, Dick Durbin.

As soon as Durbin found a handywipe to clean off the human waste that McCarthyite demagogues were dumping on him for a week, Karl Rove announced to a crowd of right-wing donors that only Republicans understand 9/11. The White House has since endorsed this view. Understandably, the families of September 11 victims are unhappy. Because, really, if you lost your wife or your dad in one of the most gruesome tragedies in American history, knowing that a presidential adviser hauls around her or his legacy as a political trophy does not comport with traditional ideas of mourning.

Choice Rove commments: "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.'' Conservatives, he said, ''saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war.''

Not a single fucking person called for indictments, therapy, or understanding, literal or metaphorical. As Mike Malloy often asks, what does it take for millions of us to take to the streets and demand the resignation of this regime?

Here is what we have learned this week: criticize torture and you hate America. Explicitly claim dead terrorism victims as your political sled dogs, and get a pat on the back from the White House.

In the latest, painfully ironic twist, the "outrage" of Democratic senators sounds completely neutered. You'd think that Rove's comments would be enough for the Democrats to (as Tessio or Clemenza might say) go to the metaphorical mattresses. Sadly, you live in an alternative universe. As the AP reports (via the Times):

New York Sen. Charles Schumer said Rove ''took something that is virtually sacred to New Yorkers'' -- the tragedy of the Sept. 11 attacks -- ''and politicized it for political, opportunistic purposes.''

Dude, you just made a statement of fact, not a counterargument. When a political thug accuses you of coddling terrorists and, essentially, not respecting the loss of life at the World Trade Center, a sniffle mixed with a whiff of muted indignation doesn't do the trick. Instead, you end up looking like the sensitive, mealymouthed caricature that was part of the initial slander. You make yourselves a pack of weak sisters.

The Congressional Democrats are getting ripped to shreds by a great white shark. When a shark tears off your leg and eats a bunch of swimmers, you don't appeal to its sense of decency. You haul out Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and a crazy ship captain, and take the fight to the shark.

But Dick Durbin is scared to stand up to torture because it angers neo-McCarthyites. And the Senate caucus presents Karl Rove with a revised edition of Everything I Need to Know I Learned In Kindergartenand 90 pursed lips. And the rhetorical excess on the right snowballs, building from McCarthyism to fascism. And the Democrats break out in twitters and hives when Sean Hannity says something mean about them. And no one in public life has the courage to speak against this. Not even future senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

At least there's Yeats, and, on a really bad day like today, Barry McGuire.