What ModFab Said.

He doesn't write about politics much (perhaps that's why he's more cheerful than I am), but when he does, he nails it:

Over at Modern Fabulousity Unlimited, I linked to an article today quoting the White House press office, where they are now arguing the unthinkable -- that waterboarding, an extreme, inhuman and brutal act of torture, is perfectly legal and just fine to perpetrate. And with that, Bush finishes the transformation of the United States from the land where freedom and liberty were intrinsic, into a craven nation willing to abuse people, deny humanity, and torture. We have, at last, become the monster we used to combat. We are the tormentors. We are the enemy of civilization. We are the ones using terror for our own political ends...and that, my friends, makes us terrorists, in the clearest definition of the word.

I am tearing up as I write this. It hurts me deeply to say these words and recognize their truth. I am soulfully sad at our nation's sorry, desperate state; we have, in the last eight years, lost our integrity and our goodness. Or rather, our leaders have, but the American people are complicit, because we are not demanding those leaders adhere to our values. We are abdicating our responsibility as citizens of the world, and we will pay a heavy price for that.

THIS is why I am voting for Barack Obama. Not for any other reason. Because I need America to change direction in a fundamental, serious, and substantial way. America is broken, and it will take someone very, very different to fix it. If even he can.

But hey, Sen. Obama, no pressure.

Sometimes I think the biggest mistake that the Democratic Party has made over the last seven years (and it's hard to come up with many things the party has done right) is to allow Republicans to redefine patriotism as blind obeisance to authority, unquestioning support of a president's actions, advocacy of unchecked bellicosity in the name of national security, and support for endless war without care of the effects of that war on the men and women who fight it.

After seven years of a president who regards the Constitution as "just a goddamn piece of paper", it would be nice if we had one who recognizes that this country didn't used to be about fear and loathing and could somehow manage to undo the mess that this president has created.