Monday, December 10, 2007

Vanquishing The Beast

Regarding this post by publius, I can't help but feel like a better metaphor for The Beast Who Must Be Destroyed is Michael Myers instead of Darth Vader:



Because it seems like every time we feel like we KILLED it, it just KEEPS COMING BACK! As publius notes:
To the extent the Dems have a strategy, it seems to be duck, bob, and weave until they can be saved by the 2008 election bell. They are avoiding a high-level security battle (i.e., a game of chicken) in the hopes that a Democratic President is just around the bend. This strategy, however, is short-sighted. It won’t work even if it works. That is, even if a Dem wins in 2008, the Congressional leadership won’t “win,” they will simply postpone the fight for another day.
and also:
The Dems can’t make the Cheney worldview go away by dodging it and winning an election. It will come back. The Imperial Forces will retreat to AEI for four or eight or twelve years – however long they must. But eventually, they’ll be back. They always come back.
This gets right to the heart of something that I have tried to say several times before (but never this well) which is that it is not ENOUGH for the Democrats to win the next Presidential election. Until the Beast is vanquished, he'll keep coming back.

3 comments:

Mike Thomas said...

Ironically, Starve the beast is the policy incorporated by movement conservatives today to bring down what they deem to be "the beast" which is the U.S. government.
They will always fail in that sense, but then so will we as far as "vanquishing the beast" you refer to.
And I'm not sure we would want to vanquish it entirely, although I wouldn't mind defanging and containing it for a period (a century or two?). But I think you always want an opposition out there to keep you on your toes, ere you lapse into noncomplacency and corruption as happened with the GOP this time.

AnnPW said...

Aw, don't get me wrong, Mike - not that I'm being all crystal clear. But I know you've seen me make the point before that I fully support a two-party system, and that the destruction of the Republicn Party has been bad for our country. It's not "opposition" per se that I'm, heh, opposed to. The "beast" that publius refers to in his post is what he calls "the Cheney world view" and I think that's a good way to put it, because the "Cheney world view" is one that includes Rovian no-holds-barred politics and pandering to the basest, most destructive elements in our society, i.e., racism, bigotry, stupidity and fear. THAT'S the "beast" that must be vanquished. And in order to do that, the Democrats have to call it out and confront it - and it doesn't look like they have the will to do so, probably because it would require them to confront the "beast" also in their own midst.

capmconnundrum said...

Michael Myers
Chucky
herpes