Prof. Krugman, writing in his New York Times blog:
What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer "therapy and understanding" to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.
And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was "shrill."
Pretty much.
I watched CNN's morning-after coverage this morning.
News personality after news personality attempted to belittle the Obama victory. They tried to style it as a civil rights victory for black people -- which, of course, it was -- and not an ideological victory for the left. They kept asking, over and over, "But isn't America really a center-right country, no matter what the results?"
They kept laughing it off, implying that this is "all just politics," which is just a game anyway and, "Even though we all have differences of opinion, we're all real, true patriotic Americans."
The problem is.
What separates us from Cheney, Rove, Delay and -- yes -- Bush is not just a difference of opinion.
Unlike them, we are not monsters.
We did not sign off on torture. We didn't let New Orleans drown. We didn't blow up the economy. We didn't give money to the rich, while letting one fifth of Americans go hungry. We didn't enable a theft so huge that it is right now rocking the entire global financial and monetary systems.
This wasn't just a difference of opinion.
And to call Cheney's problem a "character problem" would be a very mild way to put it.
Our country was focked up by extremely evil people.
These aren't good Americans just like us who preferred to think a different way.