Ali v. Frazier

I've never been able to decide who is the best, most consistently intelligent blogger, Digby or Billmon, and I've been reading them since they got started. Normally I'd give the nod to Digby simply because he posts frequently and doesn't go off on personal hiatus the way Billmon is prone to. I especially like it when I find him affirming things I've thought or just posted myself, like this on the "poll" showing Americans accepting the latest NSA treason:

The key way to talk about this, I think, is to focus on the fact that they've been lying about it for no good reason. For instance, it's quite strange that they keep making the bizarre argument that terrorists didn't know their phones were being tapped. Is there anybody above the age of six who believes that? (And anyway, if they're that stupid, they'll reveal themselves in some other way and the FBI can just get a court order like they would with any other stupid criminal.) If this program is legal then there's really no logical reason why they didn't make it public. They must be hiding something.

That's something the public can understand. They don't trust this administration but they just haven't been shown a good reason why allowing the government to handle the same private information that Verizon and Bell South has is more dangerous to their health than the terrorist boogeyman coming to Topeka to kill them in their beds. You've got to raise their suspicions, not rely on principle. In this age of no privacy, they don't see why it's a big deal.

Yet . . . .

Billmon has a post up right now on Leviathan that should be required reading for everyone on our side who nevertheless is still trapped in old thinking that all it's going to take to protect the American Legacy is a favorable election and a few investigations. Too many writers think we're still living in a civics book world and that the old rules still apply, they've just been bent and broken by Bush and his human cancer cells. They don't see that we have never fixed the escalating threat that started with Watergate, then Iran-Contra, then Bush v. Gore, now the craphole that we have today. Each time, the moderates and the reasonables, counseling "let's not hurt the country any more, let's put the past behind us," have let the perpetrators off with handslaps, which means they come back from the slight stings more determined than ever, growing into the Leviathan that Billmon describes. To deal with it will take more than recognition of all its aspects, including Pravda-ing the media and politicizing the military and intelligence while delegitimating science and reason and building massive database and surveillance capacity and maintaining a democratic facade by controlling elections by controlling how votes are totalled. It will take dealing with Americans increasingly not knowing any better and/or believing that's a small price to pay for "freedom and security." Can that even be done at this point? It won't be done simply by playing civics again and "recapturing the House" or returning to FISA court review.

That's why Billmon's piece is so essential for everyone to read. He gets it.

Digby's playing catch-up now. I can hardly wait to see how he responds.