Molly, en fuego

Oh, Molly. You're on a roll. She spoke for many millions last week when she wrote in the Progressive, "I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there" and that she "can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight."

Today, she takes on "the long war" we're being force-fed, and the return of a certain Republican eminence who left the public eye a clown, and now returns as ... still, a clown:

As of Sept. 11, 2001, there were a few hundred people identified with al-Qaida’s ideology. Even then, it was unclear the American military was the right tool for the job. Now, Rumsfeld is apparently prepared to put the full might of the U.S. military into this fight indefinitely, backed by the full panoply of ever-more expensive weapons and the whole hoorah. I don’t think the people who got us into Iraq should be allowed to do this because, based on the evidence of Iraq, I don’t think they have the sense God gave a duck.

On top of everything else, Rumsfeld is now circulating a grand strategy for the Long War written by Newt Gingrich. Am I the only person covering politics who ever noticed that Newt Gingrich is actually a nincompoop? When Newt bestrode the political world like a colossus (Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1995), many people took him seriously—but he was a fool then, too. The Republicans were so thrilled to have someone on their side who had ideas, they never seemed to notice Newt’s were drivel.

From orphanages to space colonies, it was all shallow but endearingly enthusiastic futurism. Gingrich was the kind of person who read a book or two on something and would then be quite afire as to how this was going to fit into some shining future. Republicans are so amnesiac, they didn’t even snicker when Newt turned up recently posing as a respected party elder to give them advice on ethics. Ethics. Next, family values.

I have no idea whom this administration plans to talk into its Long War, but I’m sure they won’t roll out the new campaign in August. In order to sell this, they’ll have to scare us, assuming some obliging terrorists don’t do it for them.

I came across this quote in a recent obituary for George Gerbner, who headed the Annenberg School for Communication for 25 years: “Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures. ... They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities.”

Which of course brings to mind Ben Franklin's (and/or Jefferson's) apercu, more relevant than ever 200-something years later: "people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."