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Saturday, July 16, 2005

Cackles from the Balcony: ArmandoWatch

I have commented before that a prolific and prominently front-paged dKos diarist named Armando has managed to transform the Daily Kos website for me from an indispensable resource to a well-nigh unbearable unreadable and utterly dispensable one.

Eric has commented that Kos himself clearly recognizes the threat Armando poses to the credibility of his site, since Kos posts some uncharacteristically and unapologetically true-left comment, usually on a topic perpendicular to Armando's so as not to seem to attack him explicitly, but almost inevitably later in the same day or on the morning just following Armando's latest affront so as to bolster the progressives who still read his site and keep it alive.

If Eric is right in his hunch this is doubly promising, first, because it means we can expect something genuinely progressive to appear quite soon from Kos (Kos is in general less reliably progressive than are the proprietors of Eschaton, Liberal Oasis, Hullaballoo, and the like) and, second, because it keeps alive my earnest hope that Armando might soon be encouraged to eclipse himself altogether and go wherever it is that DLC-types finally do go to languish and smugly contemplate the damage they have done.

Oh, the comment of Armando's that provoked this little fit of pique on my part?

In a post under the title "Mainstream Values" -- a phrase delusive DLC-types love to conjure with, fancying themselves the "face of America" despite the fact that they can't raise a dollar from Americans, win a single election in America, or move the imaginations of actually existing Americans outside the beltway -- Armando writes: "If Bush is to keep his word [namely, to nominate to the Supreme Court a 'fair-minded individual who represents the mainstream of American law and American values'], that means the Extremists of the GOP must get stiff-armed."

That's a throwaway bit of obviousness to lure in your average reality-based liberal type, which then sets the scene for the odious gravy which is the real reason for Armando's post: "Many folks see Attorney General Gonzales as such a p[r]ick. I do not."

Yes, Armando rises above the benighted masses of the "many folks" of the dKos readership who might be tempted to locate torture-memo writin' Geneva-Convention deridin' "Abu Gonzales" among "the Extremists of the GOP" rather than the Armando approved "mainstream."

Again, I have already said that one expects Armando to spew shit. What is depressing in the extreme is to read the comments that follow from one of these Armando postings, expecting that surely within a handful of replies at the most one will encounter a chorus of righteous outrage and fact-based critique that will demolish and deflate this Reagan-democrat-Clinton-republican-pod-person or whatever he is.

But reply after reply comes and goes with nary a peep of protest. As with his smug suggestion that queers should stop bellyaching about marriage, or that we should all kiss Judith Miller's corn-encrusted toesies, or that we should be glad that the Kelo decision nudged America one step further along the road that says only corporations can own property, this disgusting effort to "mainstream torture" inspired protest only dozens and dozens and dozens of comments deep. Whereupon, one finds, one "fightorleave" finally raising his hand in a perplexed bid for sanity:
Does anybody really believe that Shrub will select somebody who represents the mainstream? Does anyone really believe that Gonzales is mainstream?

He is by definition extreme. He is the man who says that Shrub can suspend the Geneva Convention. He is the man who says that Shrub can hold people indefinitely, and torture (oops sorry abuse) people to his heart's content.

If any Democrat or Liberal thinks that this would be a good or compromise choice is, respectfully, insane. This man has no business on the Court. He belongs in jail.

The more important point is that there are hundreds if not thousands of qualified people, and Shrub could, if he really cared about this country, nominate someone who would unite rather than divide this country. Is he the pres. of the u.s.a. or the pres. of the republican party. And, for Shrub, to nominate him is actually a slap in the face to us (not them).

Quite so. How depressing how long it took anybody to say this. Armando is not just awful, but he attracts awfulness, awful fistfuls of offal. I fear dKos cannot long survive intact a spot-lit Armando there.

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