Enough is Enough...

The following rant by Ezra Klein of Pandagon is dead on,

"Enough. Fucking enough. I am so goddamn tired of talking about the Swiftvets. This last week has been the Dean scream or Dole fall for our body politic -- it has shone light on everything corrosive, everything vile, everything that turns off Americans not just from voting but from civic participation. It has ripped our veneer of idealism and high-mindedness and exposed many of us as bottom-feeding predators whose primary political instinct is to dash towards the blood, skirting and evading the actual hurdles and obstacles holding back our society.

Our media has led the way with its rendition of A Beautiful Mind, schizophrenically fighting its better instincts and leaving the editorialists and truth-finders to snipe and attack the stenographers for mindlessly pounding their keys in the newsroom. We've seen Chris Matthews turn to virtue and O'Reilly come to the rescue. We've watched the Dionnes and the Krugmans of the world lower their anti-media cannons while the Malkens and Barones have desperately clung to the inaccuracies, begging Americans to believe the discrepancy equates with deviancy. In short, we've watched the election dig up an old war, some partisans spin it, and significant portions of the media realize that business-as-usual reporting will render a disservice to the republic. And so they, like everyone else, have gone to war against their misguided colleagues and brethren, lining up on the side of common sense just as many in politics have lined up on the side of elevated discourse. But such company also highlights the size of the forces arrayed on the sides of ignorant stenography and political mud, those who continue to do wrong because they're not sure what'll happen to them if the game changes.

What is this? What sort of mindless utopia do we inhabit that the headline story for weeks could boil down to 1) was a war-hero badly injured and 2) was he in Cambodia on Christmas or did he risk his life there a few weeks later? How many of our people are employed that we can ask this? How many of our children are healthy and covered in case of disaster? How many of our soldiers are safe and returned home to their families? How many of our voters are voting? And how many of our students are learning, or do they struggle in dilapidated schools and overcrowded classrooms? How many of our poor are advancing, gaining the requisite skills and training to improve their lives? How many of our veterans are sheltered and off the streets? How many of our ports are secured? For that matter, how many of our warfields are restabilized, our jobs returned, and our energy renewable?

From the first, John Kerry should have stepped onto a stage, pointed his finger forward and asked these hate-mongers and smear-artists "Have you no decency?" And when the inevitable silence yawned and the ads kept running and the claims kept unraveling, it was for the media to step forward, as one, and give them the A12 billing they deserved, right where they stuck contrary evidence during the Iraq War and the mea culpas relating to their performance in those shameful days. But no -- like children to the sweet or idiots to the explosion, they couldn't avert their eyes from the political drama unraveling before them. And that meant we couldn't avert our eyes either, forced to immerse ourselves in insipid games of telephone, third-person hearsay, and spot the liar. Forced to hear a long-time Republican attack dog and contributor claim to be a Democrat, forced to value the testimony of those who served near Kerry rather than with him, forced to watch George smirk as his minions attacked and his cowardice and entitlement lay entirely outside the realm of civilized discourse.

Whoever wins this election, the American people will have lost it. That's because they're sorry enough to have participated in and encouraged a realm where the venerable parties controlling the nation will dwell on the attack that works rather than the criticism that matters, where deceivers prosper and misdirection is appreciated, where a square jaw and a steady voice means more for honesty than the words spoken, where partisan lies mean more than navy medals, where minor discrepancies scream liar and not human, where the press finds their ratings in war and not information, where the only thing able to knock an election's hatred off the front page would be the folly of a celebrity, and where a low-life aristocrat who spent his life dodging responsibility, failing at ventures, and trading on his name avoided the war only to become president after sliming a POW and ignoring the will of America. And where this man, as president, squandered our surpluses, destroyed our standing, overextended our armies, let our jobs flee and left our people lacking health care. And where a media who knows better and a people who deserve better might let the incompetent brat win again because he looks better in plaid, seems more likely a fisher and has a more effective and merciless attack machine
The truth that our media won't admit and our people don't want to hear is that this election should revolve around one refrain, repeated every time this ad airs, every time the job numbers drop and every time a soldier dies. And it goes: "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" "

Well said...