Dennis Kucinich and “wackiness” By Glenn Greenwald

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Credit: AP Photo/Harry Hamburg, File)

The Prospect article also praises as “great” a snide, derisive Washington Post piece which purports to “highlight some of the particularly bizarre facts about” Kucinich. Among those is the fact that “he introduced impeachment articles against former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Cheney for their roles in the Iraq war” and “proposed a Cabinet-level agency devoted to peace.” What a weirdo and a loser. Even more predictably, a team of four interns at The New Republic – the magazine that spent years crusading for the attack on Iraq, smearing Israel critics as anti-Semites, and defining its editorial mission as re-making the Democratic Party in the image of Joe Lieberman – denounced the anti-war Kucinich as “ludicrous,” citing most of the same accusations as the Prospect and the Post.

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So let’s recap the state of mental health in establishment Democratic circles: the President who claims (and exercises) the power to target American citizens for execution-by-CIA in total secrecy and with no charges — as well as those who dutifully follow him — are sane, sober and Serious, meriting great respect. By contrast, one of the very few members of Congress who stands up and vehemently objects to this most radical power — “The idea that the United States has the ability to summarily execute a US citizen ought to send chills racing up and down the spines of every person of conscience” — is a total wackjob, meriting patronizing mockery.


Meanwhile, the crazy wacko, Dennis Kucinich, has been an outspoken opponent of all of that. In a rational world, that would make him sane and those he opposed crazy. But in the world of Washington’s political and media class, it’s Kucinich who is the crazy one and those who did all of that are sane and Serious. Put another way, the chickenhawk warmongers at The New Republic are normal, while the anti-war Kucinich is “among the wackiest.”

One criticism of Kucinich that is not unreasonable per se is that he has no real legislative accomplishments to show for his 9 terms in Congress. Citing that criticism, Andrew Sullivan this week branded him “A Forgettable Ideologue”and quoted from an anti-Kucinich post in The New Yorker (yet another Serious, Sane magazine that played a key role in fueling the flames of war against Iraq). The New Yorker post is entitled “Why Kucinich Won’t be Missed,” in which Alex Koppelman argues:

I find this unpersuasive on multiple levels. For one, enacting legislation is not the only way to have an important impact on our political culture. Shining light on otherwise-ignored issues, advocating rarely-heard political positions, using one’s platform to highlight the corruption of those in power and to challenge their warped belief systems are all vitally important functions. Advocacy of that sort may not produce immediate, tangible successes, but it is a prerequisite for changing prevailing political mores and persuading citizens to think differently. “Talking a lot” is a synonym for persuasion, advocacy and debate. It’s far from “doing very little.” Those are all critical steps in changing a political system. It’s true that Kucinich cannot point to any law he passed that, say, guts the National Security State or corporate-lobbyist control over Washington, but that hardly means his work was inconsequential. Those types of changes often take years, even decades, of advocacy, and urgently need those with public platforms to amplify the underlying views to change how citizens think.

read full article:

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/10/dennis_kucinich_and_wackiness/singleton/