Yeah, But Not Before The Damage Is Done

This eloquent, smart and depressing essay by William Rivers Pitt, which amply demonstrates that "these people [the Republicans] will say anything" to get what they want, ends, for me, on a false note.

After the brilliant "Sun Hudson versus Terry Schiavo" point (the state of Texas just pulled the plug on a vegetative 5-month-old while the loonies in Florida were busy meddling in poor godforsaken Michael Schiavo's business), Pitt rages that "these people" will blithely engage in any degree of lying, any degree of hypocrisy, any degree of anything, because they want to have everything their own way. Very true.

And then it goes south. Stepping one rung higher up on the rhetorical ladder, Pitt goes on to say that this is the delusion of despots everywhere, that they can have everything their way. But, Pitt reminds us, they always fall. Sooner or later, they always fall.

Um--yeah, but not before they've gassed six million Jews, semi-intentionally starved a combined sixty million SOL peasants (China and Russia), gulaged how many tens of thousands more, made it an ironclad social custom for women in hot countries to wear black blankets outside, confined Native Americans to reservations and outlawed their religions and languages, and even stopped along their busy course to wreck the life and reputation of one single man who was already the victim of a tragedy. I could go on. When you're in the way of a bulldozer like that, it's pretty thin comfort to say "But someday they'll fall."