Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Time for new leadership
Atrios writes:
But we would have recovered. And if our efforts had been effective--if we had really aimed the rhetoric squarely at Ground Zero (just like the terrorists, and the Republican/terrorists after them)--we might have recovered and found ourselves in a shared reality. Some semblance of a level ontological playing field.
But the work wasn't done. And now it can't be.
posted by Blicero : 9/29/2004 02:10:00 AM
It's impossible for Democrats and other people who are actually living in this world and not the one which the Bush administration has erected around the CNN studios to break through this. It's one thing to challenge errors, or provide a different spin, or reframe an issue. It's another thing to have to tear down the very fabric of this alternate reality.It's not impossible. It was the responsibility of the leaders of the Democratic Party--the money people, the strategists, the media cognoscenti, the candidates themselves--to start tearing at the fabric. The work of destroying the myth of Bush's 9/11 "leadership" and of the entire 9/11 metanarrative should have begun at least as early as the summer of 2003. It would have incurred backlash. It would have whipped up a hornets' nest. It would have given the Republicans ammunition. It would have brought on a dreadful time for Democrats.
But we would have recovered. And if our efforts had been effective--if we had really aimed the rhetoric squarely at Ground Zero (just like the terrorists, and the Republican/terrorists after them)--we might have recovered and found ourselves in a shared reality. Some semblance of a level ontological playing field.
But the work wasn't done. And now it can't be.
posted by Blicero : 9/29/2004 02:10:00 AM
