I am tired of claims partisanship is somhow unsportsmanlike

If the spelling on this diary gets a little weird, I apologize but the iTouch keyboard makes hunt and peck typing into a crap shoot and my wireless connection is as iffy as it is free. I am not complaining, the iTouch really rocks its ability to lock onto open wireless networks for free can not be beat. The only drawback is the size of the screen which makes it hard to launch into a rant and keep track of what you have already written. Anyway, I thought I would spend a little time with this bizarre American obsession with non-partisanship and objectivity.

I am constantly amazed about how empty what passes for political discourse in America actually is. I chose to move to the United States in 1982 because my only alternatives were migrant labor in Europe or the dole in Thatcher's wonderland. I have done quite well here, I got a PhD from the University of Iowa, published a book on the Vietnam-era GI underground press, worked on the award winning film Sir! No Sir!, built the website for the film for which I collected thousands of primary source documents including photographs, pamphlets, cartoons, newspapers, reports and assorted memorabilia. So if anyone comes up to you and tries to claim the GIs were stabbed in the back by the antiwar movement send them to http://www.sirnosir.com.
I bring this up as a roundabout way of both blowing my own horn and to ask what the fuck is wrong with taking a partisan stance and defending it. In Many ways Americans are victims of the founding fathers timidity and brilliance. On the one hand Thomas Jefferson may have believed the only way to keep the government honest was to have a revolution every 20 years, but he ensured this would never happen because of the First Amendment. Do not get me wrong, I love the fact that I can sit here and pass judgement on god, the political system, the crap served up as entertainment on American Idol and the fact George Bush is a war criminal. But what does that change, squat!!!
The real problem with the first amendment, and one made worse by the fact writing at the computer is a solitary activity, is the act of getting it off your chest usually leaves one self-satisfied and the last thing you feel like doing is hitting the streets. Those who do decide to go out and make some noise are accused of being unreasonable or anarchists and marked as being partisan and somehow suspect.
if you think about it that is a weird response. Speech is acceptable, and mostly protected, but if you try to put what you write into public action you can be denied a permit and if you decide to go ahead without a permit and exercise your supposed right to petition the government you are quite likely to get maced, have the shit kicked out of you and arrested.
I spent four days last month with the Iraq Veterans Against the War, and what I found there was the true meaning of partisanship and it is a world view we could all learn from. Partisanship is not unreasonable, it means that you actually stand for something and are willing to take whatever shit comes your way.
We live in a time when the status quo will no longer do. We are faced with a very stark choice, we can vote for someone who hides his radical militarism and hatred of all that threatens what he believes to be his American way of life with the straight talk express. He exploits the desire of the media elites to gain access to power with a willingness to respond to whatever nonsensical babble they offer up as questions. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never in the sordid history of American journalism has so little been asked by so many to produce such a stream of bullshit.
The treatment of Hillary Clinton has been little better. Both McCain and Clinton play the same game only from opposite sides of the same coin. McCain's supposed expertise on military issues and foriegn affairs is based on his being shot down while dropping napalm and incendiary bombs over civilian targets in North Vietnam, which has been defined as a war crime since Guernica. After he was released from North Vietnam, he then embellished his foriegn policy credentials by moving to Washington and never leaving.
As I said at the start of the previous paragraph, Hillary is no better. She tries to have it both ways on everything. On the one hand, we are supposed to believe she will end the war because she says so and because she is the first credible female candidate for President if we dare question her we are accused of being sexist and somehow channeling Eldeidge Cleaver's claim that the only place for a woman in the movement is prone. Robin Goodman and her fellow journalists actually researched what they wrote about only to see it discarded as fluff. They did not become journalists because they wanted to cover their political asses for some kind of future viability. They actually did their research and when they made public pronouncements it was often done at great risk to themselves. Hillary did neither. She did not bother to do the basic research to be able to decide on the question of war and peace. She then made matters worse by believing White House Staffers who had a vested interest in f*****g the country so Hillary voluntarily fulfilled what Eldridge had insisted on 25 years earlier. What makes it doubly spineless is she did so to avoid appearing weak on defence and to protect her future viability for public office in spite of the fact she was not facing reelection for four more years. This leads me to believe that once the primaries are over and if the polls show any support for the war, she will drop her opposition like a lead overcoat to preserve her viability, especially if she loses to barack.
I will write more later when my batteries are not running down to red and I am in front of a real monitor.