Sweet Mary

I worry this whole Swift boat thing might be corroding my stomach lining. The mind-bending rage which has built up over several days of reading charlatans and hacks gloat about how far they've been able to push a vicious dirty trick into the national conciousness may be starting to take its toll. Hewitt, Malkin, Reynolds, Oxblog, NRO...the list of fake media impresarios masquerading as journalists, academics, and legitmate political commentators goes on and on. Matthew Yglesias and Atrios appear also to be feeling the burn.

Why is this thing so wretchedly maddening? Because we're supposed to have a mechanism in our system for ensuring that flagrantly false allegations do not have undue impact on the political consenus. That this controversy has advanced so far, and that figures supposedly at the center of the establishment continue to advance it means this system is utterly broken. Abandoning all logic, scruple, and legitimacy, the conservative movement has figured out how to break it. And for anyone who still had a shred of faith in reasoned debate, the world on the other side of that precipice is terrifying indeed.