The right-wing nut-job media machine has really been cranking overtime this past few weeks. One wonders how long the hair-on-fire outrage routine can possibly continue to work for them. When you sound the emergency broadcast system every day, 24 hours a day, doesn’t it reduce the effect … or, at least, the specialness? Maybe not in the context of today’s insatiable media culture. Perhaps there is no saturation point for this level of madness.
I confess, this Bergdahl-as-a-traitor obsession is simply astounding. Didn’t think they would go there, but apparently they have. The man spent five years as a captive of the Taliban, is finally released, and the reactionary pundits (and some of the centrists, as well) have been roasting him and his family alive ever since. This is trial by media, and they keep stoking the flame higher and higher, trotting out retired colonels and former Army comrades of Bergdahl who paint this craven picture of the young man, none of it based on demonstrable fact. My reliably conservative neighbor came out of his house the other day spouting this line about Bergdahl being a “deserter”; pretty much parroting what’s being said on Fox News.
Amazing. Really, people … can you give the guy a chance to recover, at least, and speak for himself? Of course, in actuality he is the projectile, not the target. The target is Obama and congressional Democrats. That will be the focus of everything the GOP does, every position they take, every word they say, from now until November. It should be lost on no one that at this point in the Clinton presidency, the impeachment process was well underway with an eye to the approaching mid-terms. This time around, I think they may be smart enough to avoid actual impeachment, opting instead for relentless, daily assaults on every breath Obama takes from a policy standpoint. That capability was in its infancy in 1998. Not anymore.
I will say this. If any of what they say about Bergdahl is true, it’s likely that he is actually a sensitive kid who was disillusioned by war. Hard to blame him for that. The rest is pure conjecture.
luv u,
jp
NEXT WEEK: The “other side” of the deal.
