Through a rear window, darkly

Mark Steyn captures the parlous state of our politics is this incisive passage:
“We warmongers didn’t start the nitpicking, but somehow the entire landscape of U.S. politics has tilted so that a nation supposedly at war is spending most of its time looking through the rear window sniping about what was said and done in 2002, 2001, 2000, like the falling calendar leaves in a Hollywood flashback. The Democrats will always win on this playing field because, like some third-rate soap opera, their characters are not required to have any internal consistency.”
Steyn’s last sentence is spot-on, but my concern is less about whether the Democrats will “win” than with whether the U.S. can win the war against terrorism in this climate (I acknowledge, though, that the two issues are probably not unrelated). I guess it depends on the calibre of the opposition because I don’t see how we can prevail against a determined, intelligent, and well-organized opponent when we devote this much energy to “looking through the rear window,” much less to looking through it in the partisan and dishonest fashion of the day.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses