they hide in the light

from erstwhile republican now democratic convert john cole @ balloon juice:

via alicublog, i see that the cornerites are taking the time today to celebrate vince foster's birthday as an excuse to bring up his suicide. you will have to read edroso's commentary to fully appreciate the right wing ability to raise "serious questions." [snip] i don't know if i will ever be a member of "the cause" again. on the eve of obama's inauguration, it is both funny and disturbing to look back to how things were eight years ago — i was so thrilled that a republican was about to be inaugurated. i was so excited to vote for bush in 2000 that i literally could not sleep, and, as always, was at the voting booth at 6:30 — 7:00 in the morning, the only person under 60 standing in line. now, today, i am so disgusted with the republican party that i don't think i will be able to vote for a national republican for twenty years. i wouldn't say my positions have changed completely, either. i really don't feel like there has been a dramatic shift in my opinions. on several issues, i am certainly more to the "left" than i was before. for example, i was never a proponent of gay marriage, and felt that civil unions were more than an acceptable compromise. not anymore — gay marriage is the future, it is the right thing to do, and those who can't cope with that reality one day will just have to deal with it when we finally get there. what has changed, however, is that i have seen a lot of the arguments that come from the republicans for what they are — just bullshit. i have watched over the past few years and seen how nonsense bubbles up into the mainstream, and how distorted versions of events designed to distract and queer the debate turn an upside down version of events into the "conventional wisdom." you don't have to look any farther than the recent attempts to blame the entire financial crisis on democrats, fannie mae and freddie mac and poor minority borrowers. we just spent an entire election season where prominent republicans thought they really had something with bill ayers and obama's birth certificate. of course, months could be spent documenting all the bullshit that has been churned up in the past eight years. the embrace by the right-wing of the idiotic tome "liberal fascism" could itself be the subject of lengthy study. you all know by now what a dork i am, so i am not outing myself when i state that one of my favorite all-time episodes of the x-files was a show called "folie a deux", in which scully and mulder investigate a man who thinks his boss is a monster. everyone thinks the man is insane because he insists that his boss is a zombie who eats people brains, and he is driven to madness that no one else can see his boss for the monster he is. he states frequently that the monster "hides in the light." eventually, fox is able to see the monster as the show comes to a conclusion. you see where this is going, don't you? i understand now why the dirty fucking hippies were driven to near madness by the gop and the election of bush. having watched things pan out the last few years and observed how truly perverted the beltway insiders who dominate our dysfunctional discourse are, i understand bob somersby and glenn greenwald and others. i don't know how much to "the left" i have actually moved on a lot of issues, but i do know one thing. when i see this nonsense from byron york and wideload doughpants, raising their "serious questions" about vince foster's suicide, i know clearly what i am seeing — i'm just watching the monsters hiding in the light, right where they always have been. this time, though, i see.