A reply to my critics...

In order to respond adequetly to the comments my last post received, I felt it necessary to post a rebuttal in the form of another post.

First, foxxy your link works fine so, huh?

Second, I am glad I anticipated all of your arguments before I wrote that little entry. I too would have attacked the author's presumed racism and his class bias. Some of your arguments are well thought out, but I wasn't debating your fine points I was giving a strategic lesson on how to frame the issues. I too would have used the exact same arguments against the blog entry myself if I felt the position of that author reflected an agreement with any of the points both commentators made. It's not that author dismisses the commentators points...


It's just they all miss the point!

"We can't imprison or execute on general principle." I don't recall making a defense of such a proposition. I recall trying to identify why those who are undecided and in the middle are wary of the "extremist" positions those of us on the left make. Proposing a slowdown to the Prison Industrial Complex is extremist, and we need to make better arguments for doing so. Defending obvious criminals is a strategy that will get you 1% of the vote and a PETA bumper sticker on your Volkswagen. Great. Skinny chicks and shitty BBQ's do not make for an electorate that can take down the great political machine of the Republican right.

"I am so against the death penalty." Good, so am I , but I still don't go around defending convicted drug lords, and murderers. Why do you? Why not come out against the institutional incarceration of most crimes? Why not make an argument that says 2 million people in the US are wrongly imprisoned and silenced as part of the "surveilance society." Why not defend truly innocent people and get on the DNA bandwagon with that OJ lawyer?

No, no, no..instead lefties support idiots like Tookie. Tookie's defenders want to give him a funeral that "befits a statesman." That's fucking ludicrous. This guy is not Neslon Mandela, this guy is a thug. I say defend the common man. Defend the ordinary drug user in the ghettos. Attack the system that convicts and arrests more African-Americans than whites even as they commit the same crime. But go out of your way to defend this ass-hole? Why? The whole point to that blog entry was to give some strategy to a bunch clueless Dem's and liberals.

I was not sticking up for whitey, aka George Bush or the enormous "war crimes" wrought by American foreign policy. That's the kind of obsfucation by conflation I would expect from the right, not the left. I agree we should go and get "G.W.", but in what way do the war crimes of someone else (evil George) have to do with the guilt or innocence of another (Tookie)? By your logic since some people commit murder, we shouldn't lock up thieves or men who assault and batter their wives (their crimes aren't as heinous). Even if your illogic was true, why defend an obvious lightning rod like Tookie?

Of all the people out there to defend, we pick a creep like this Crip gangsta? Foolish. That's why the right always wins. They understand people's "gut reaction" to this kinda liberal nonsense.

And until the left figures this out, we will go a long way allowing those in the right-wing war machine to paint us as soft, pansy, cut and run- traitors. Let's take the fish out the barrel for 'em at least.