Wake up, America

I've been growing increasingly frustrated with the manufactured controversy of the Not-at-Ground Zero Not-Really-a-Mosque. But the right-wing nutjobs continually tell half-truths or outright lies about the Park51 community center project. Back in the late spring when the permitting process began there was no controversy over this. Then some of the crackpots on the reactionary extreme, like Pamela Gellar, got a hold of the issue and told lies about what exactly was being planned, and for where, and created a controversy.

Fact: Park51 will be two blocks uptown from the northeast corner of the WTC footprint (which actually was a plaza, as that was the side of the footprint that the "South Tower" sat on, so it was actually about a block west or south until you were actually at a building).

Fact: there are strip clubs closer to the "hallowed ground" of the WTC footprint than the Park51 project will be.

Fact: Park51 will have basketball courts, a swimming pool, a culinary institute; very little of the building will be given over to religious purposes. The project is best described as a Muslim YMCA.

Fact: the imam who is one of the people leading the effort to build Park51 was appointed by President Bush 43 as a special envoy to the Muslim world for the purposes of telling people how tolerant of other religions we are.

One of the leading mouthpieces in opposition to this project is Glenn Beck, who belongs to a religion that many right-wing Christians believe to be heretical. In fact, one sect goes so far as to go to Mormon events and pass out literature to people telling them how they're going to burn in Hell because they are Mormons, and therefore, are heretics.

Fact: the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection of the law to all Americans. If one were to limit building rights on a piece of property based on the religion of group building there, as some have suggested should be done to block Park51, it would violate this principle at a minimum. It would also be a Bill of Attainder, which is also unconstitutional. And it likely could be argued to be a law prohibiting the free exercise of Islam if the restriction were not extended to all religious groups.

The most aggravating part of all this is that the right has used this wedge to agitate the well-meaning 9/11 families and first responders. Their emotions and their senses of loss are being exploited to political advantage by people who have an agenda that centers around dividing moderates and liberals. They ignore the constitutional issues because they are inconvenient, and prefer to appeal to emotion. And it's in a situation such as this where emotion not only needs to be set aside, but demands to be, and that rational analysis of the laws and Constitution of this country MUST prevail. If we do not allow this, and we allow what emotion and "common sense" dictate to prevail, we cease to be the people that our Founders expected us to be.

This is not a Muslim group rubbing anyone's nose in the events of 9/11. It's taking a structurally unsound building that has been empty for 9 years and allowing a group to redevelop the site for the benefit of the community. It's really one of the ultimate goods of the free market, and all of these folks who line up at the alter of the Free Market when it comes to issues that shouldn't be left to the market, like public goods, are suddenly opposed to the market dictating who owns and develops land in a commercial neighborhood. And let's not even get into the desire to stifle the "free marketplace of ideas" in this case, while decrying the limitation of such when a right-wing commentator decides to, of her own free will, stop doing her radio show in the wake of repeatedly spewing racial slurs, without any pressure from advertisers or syndicators.

I'm sure that there are thoughts that I have that I'm not even broaching here, because my anger and outrage at the hypocrisy swirl from issue to issue. Hopefully I can come up with a coherent rant about the governor and senator races here in Ohio before too long. The hypocrisy there is also pretty startling. Especially from former Director of the OMB, Rob Portman. Although the most egregious of the ads isn't from his campaign, but instead from one of those corporately-funded PACs. But this is the issue that is first-and-foremost in my mind, and the one with the most cohesive thoughts.

Dear Robert Gibbs

Dear Mr. Press Secretary,

I know you dismissed the progressive left yesterday. I know that you trotted your deputy out today to take the flak. And to say that we, the people who won you the nomination, and built the momentum for your electoral victory, are not representative of the voters on the left. Sir, we ARE the voters on the left.

I've been a defender of the administration to my friends, on both the progressive left and on the reactionary right. I have made excuses about how the administration is constrained by a Senate that is trying to anchor us in the 20th century (at best) being the reason we can't get what we're after. But, you see, I've made those excuses hoping that it really was the GOP that was holding the administration back.

As a donor to the campaign, I get regular, near-daily, emails from "Organizing for America". And in the last week I received a message asking me for my opinions on the first 18 months (along with the usual donation request). I was brutally honest because, well, I believe in brutal honest when I'm asked for my opinion. I gave lower marks than I would have liked to have given because the administration has given too much away in an effort to get Republican vote which one knew would never come. And I berated the administration for that acquiescence to those who did not, will not and never will support the administration in the handy little "other comments" box at the end. I all but compared the actions of the administration to those of an abused wife trying to hold a doomed marriage together.

Well, Mr. Press Secretary, you slapped me in the face. You have told me that my opinions as a progressive American voter don't count because I'm a progressive American, and I apparently believe that everything would be rainbows and choirs of angels on 12:01 pm of 1/20/09. You know, Hillary's dismissal of what Obama's primary supporters were supposed to believe during the death throes of her campaign? But I never was that naive. I've been involved in politics on an active basis in this country for 20 years. Throw in the years of going to Democratic Party spaghetti dinners and pancake breakfasts in Connecticut in the 1970s (which led me to meet Chris Dodd when he was a representative from Norwalk, and to be offered a ride in Ella Grasso's ANG Huey at her offering when I wasn't even 5 years old), and I have been in the game for 35 of my 38 years. Democratic hayrides. Democratic booths at the "Big T" Fair every September.

Mr. Gibbs, if you didn't become active in politics until your college years, like most people, I dare say that I've been involved in Democratic politics longer than you have been. My parents were acquaintances of our US representative, who had been a Nader Raider. Our state rep was a family friend. My grandfather had been a member of both houses of the Ohio legislature (House 1932-36 and Senate 1944-48) as well as a primary candidate for governor. Democratic politics have run through my veins since I was born, which just happened to be Election Day, 1971.

So, I'd like to know, when a Democrat from the Democratic wing of the party says "stop letting the GOP push you around; you're disillusioning the next generation of Democratic voters", do you think that my nearly 39 years of life experience with the dysfunctional way in which our party leaders treat our party base in the effort to appear "bi-partisan" when the GOP has no interest in true bi-partisan government is off-base? Pollyanna wishing for things we will "never be able to achieve" in this country; things like health care as a fundamental right to all, civil rights protections for everyone, and a bit of judicious use of our military? I say that any individual within the present administration who is not committed to progressive values, and willing to suffer a few "no" votes, or bills that die due to failure to close debate in the Senate; any who is willing allow truly progressive legislation to be continually eroded into laws that George W. Bush would be proud of; I would ask you to resign your job NOW and get out of the way of progress.

Sincerely,

A "Professional Liberal"