Spreading a Sloppily "Borrowed" Lie

Every so often, I pick up the North Shelby Times, the little paper that could. It hovers between being a real, if shoestring, newspaper and being a Shopper's Guide rag.

The Editor is a gentleman named Frank Holland, who makes no bones about his partisan Democrat, anti-Bush leanings. His editorials are always on the front page, bottom-right corner. They are rants, really, bordering on the incoherent at times. But, it's his paper and he can do what he wants with it. That's the beauty of America.

Today, I happened to glance at a copy in the Pig on Madison while grocery shopping. What caught my eye -- and frankly almost stopped my heart -- was a picture of senior Shelby County Democrat, chairman of the County Democratic Party, Kathryn Bowers. Above her picture was the large headline "A Call to Arms."

Was she going to repeat the carefully constructed misrepresentations of Roger Easson in the party's newspaper, The Democrat? I've already shown how his article has suspicious borrowings from an Internet email making the rounds earlier this year. Substantial borrowings (half his article) Easson claims to know nothing about. He denies ever having seen it.

Bowers is smart enough to use her own words, but she repeats the same untruth: that a second Bush administration means an automatic return to the draft for men and women from 18 - 26. Of course, I don't think this is true and have been documenting why for a while now. You can also read Rev. Don Sensing's blog, where he has also clearly explained why this isn't likely to happen.

Her stuff is pernicious in repeating assumptions and bias and outright partisan propaganda as fact.

To top this off, this administration plans -- should the American people be so unwise as to elect it in November for another four years -- to restart the draft. Thousands of young men and women will be summoned to participate in military adventures planned by the Neoconservatives who have brought us this quagmire called Iraq.

Thi is not a call to artms about some distant threat. This is a call to arms fro the defense of the future of all our young men and women 18-26. During the next 12 months, their young lives are going to be disrupted by a universal call to military service. they will be conscripted by a government zealous to send you into the Middle East on another pre-emptive attack on Iran or Syria....

The volunteer army, the peace divident we harvested with the end of the Cold War, is no longer capable of providing enough blood or body bas required for this president's adventures in pre-emptive war....

That's enough. You get the idea.

I feel a bit like Alice through the looking glass here. It is simply passed over as irrelevant, so beneath concern it is never mentioned any more, that the draft bills were introduced by Democrats! They did it as a political taunt to the President and as a way to try to stir up young people, much as Bowers does here.

The fundamental dishonesty and distortion doesn't even concern these people. That leaves me so disoriented I don't see how I can talk to people who can hold such a 1984-ish doublethink in their heads. It's, to me, a sign of such driven, malicious delusion as to render them beyond the pale.

Honest debate can be had regarding a potential draft. You can look at figures and needs, look at the situation in the Middle East, make reasonable assumptions, and see how it's a possibility. I can have a discussion with someone like that. But when you encounter a Bowers or Easson or Holland, who will not even be honest, how can you get anywhere?

Frankly, you can't. But neither can you push them aside. One edits the local party paper and the other edits a local newspaper; the third is the doyen of the local party. I would hope that reasonable, intelligent people would disavow them and walk away.

I suspect that won't happen. Whole swathes of the Democrat party are heading in furious foment for the cliffs, aware of their passing from the scene and yet unable to see it. You can only stand aside and watch the destruction and waste with great sorrow.