Don't Cry For Me, Nicholas Kristof

New York Times op-ed columnist Nick Kristof is again bemoaning the decline of civic discourse in America. This time he's weeping about how people call Bush a liar. Kristof, like a few of his fellow columnists in the Times, seems to have a split personality. One week he'll be doing great and important reporting on location on topics like sex trafficking in Southeast Asia or genocide in Sudan, and the next week he'll be writing about how secular Americans should be taking the time to get to know and understand fundamentalist Christians rather than calling them out for their bankrupt medieval worldview. Or, in today's case, writing about how all the popular liberal books with the words "Bush" and "Lies" or "Liar" in the title, and now Fahrenheit 9/11, are dragging mainstream political discourse down to the level established by fanatical conservatives during the Clinton years. First of all, to suggest that mainstream political discourse could even be more vapid than it is is like suggesting that a corpse could be more dead. Secondly, my specific response to Kristof's "point" that "liberals love subtlety and describe the world in a palette of grays — yet many have now dropped all nuance about this president," is that a) though probably the most accurate description of the president and his administration is "pathologically dishonest," that takes longer to write than "liar," and the difference ain't that great; and b) how exactly can one have a nuanced view of a one-dimensional walking caricature like Bush, even if one is an authority-loving liberal?

Civic discourse should not fundamentally be about "getting along" until a level of basic equality and democracy has been achieved around the world. And that goes for this country as well.