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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: CYBERKEN who wrote (256920)	5/19/2002 10:54:10 PM
From: sandintoes	Respond to of 769670

Left's cries of vindication unfounded Cynthia McKinney's world -- loony then, loony now. Almost nothing that passes as outrage among partisans should arouse the plebes during the political season. So desperate are both sides for political leverage that President Bush acquiesces to spending profligacy and the Democrats are all atwitter that a photo of Bush taken on Sept. 11 is being given to campaign contributors. And yes, the greatest outrage of all is reserved for the president's failure to warn Americans of inspecific threats. Keep in mind the partisan ridicule that accompanied Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge's announcement in March of a five-level color-coded terrorism warning system. The intelligence system does convey threat information, but America is a very large place and it's impossible to make the precise leaps that identify the target. Fold a $20 bill in just the right way (for instructions, see www.allbrevard.net) and the entire plot becomes clear. But this is lunacy. Left-wing conspiracy kooks coming unglued. More frightening than the nonsensical prospect that the nation's leaders were frolicking in fantasyland while tossing aside credible threat warnings is this real prospect: McKinney and the conspiracy kooks who crown her feel vindicated. Her lemmings even call for an apology from U. S. Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) -- "It was a loony statement last month, and it is still a loony statement today," quite correctly says he. U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who can fall into nonjudgmental silence to rhetorical absurdities, now speaks. "I think she had some information that she was able to retain from some sources and, I hate to put it in this vein, but she may have the last laugh," said Lewis. This faux vindication of left-wing extremism could have interesting political ramifications. The bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the Clinton White House's success, entirely self-serving, in blaming talk radio for the environment that cultivated right-wing extremism, effectively changed the terms of debate. McKinney's March 25 commentary was so far out of bounds that even a fanatic would have discerned some boundaries from the public reaction, and from on-point condemnations from mainstream politicians. It was, then, an instructive lesson for McKinney and for others who are, or would wish to be, in the political sphere: Some wackiness that passes for insight in late-night gabfests with sycophants and unsophisticates should not be uttered in the mainstream morning. To suggest, for example, that the nation's leaders allowed people to be killed so their rich buddies could gather financial windfalls is schoolyard cynicism, the spouted babble of a campus revolutionary whose words are uttered to no import or reality. Most, however, grow to maturity and look back with some comprehension as to the limits they breached. Not McKinney. She sees validation. Aha! There was a conspiracy, spoken or not! And here, then, is the parallel to Oklahoma City: Clinton's success in associating extremism and talk radio effectively stymied the political right. The revelations that McKinney and Lewis see as "last-laugh" vindication, conversely, give sustenance to the conspiracy theorists of the extreme left who find malice and manipulation in everything from voting to environmental protection to banking to, most assuredly, the war on terrorism. It's a veritable industry, this fascination by the Democratic left with conspiracies. It's so real to them, so absolutely certain, that among the true believers, the absurd passes as rational. It's no surprise, therefore, that McKinney retreats into denial when her conspiracies are challenged, and Lewis dashes in to give her conspiracy his credence. The absurd validated. No barriers to the left's rhetorical excess still stand. accessatlanta.com