Glenn Greenwald Asks: "Is there anything the Right isn’t afraid of?"
This was an aspect of the debate over Guantanamo prisoners that I hadn’t considered:
The “debate” over all the bad and scary things that will happen if Obama closes Guantanamo and we then incarcerate those detainees in American prisons is so painfully stupid even by the standards of our political discourse that it’s hard to put into words…
And the money quote:
Rather than scoff at the inane fear-mongering or point out simple facts to reveal its idiocy, Democratic “leaders” such as Harry Reid echo the right-wing fears in order to prove how Serious and Tough they are — in our political debates, the more frightened one is, the more Serious and Tough one is — and/or because they are genuinely frightened of being called mean names by Sean Hannity (“Harry Reid isn’t as scared of this as I am, which shows that he’s weak”);
I listen to portions of Rush, Hannity, and Glenn Beck probably 4 times a week, and I don’t think I have ever heard any of them even once give even a nod to the possibility that any of the people being held at “Club Gitmo” might be innocent. It would be unfair to say, “Apparently they think that just because some Marines grabbed a guy, he therefore is a terrorist,” because their train of thought never even gets in the same ZIP code as that type of thought. It’s possible that it never even occurred to them to wonder.
