The Perfect Political Storm: The Crime at the Eye

You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.

- Generally attributed to Abraham Lincoln (undocumented). Also attributed to P.T. Barnum.

…here comes a raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail -- that is, I knowed it WAS the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human -- just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes.

…We asked some stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them.

- Mark Twain

There are times when one senses a moment of historical importance is at hand. Such a moment is upon the American political narrative.

The perfect storm has been raging at sea and is headed directly for the American political landscape. It roils with crime, espionage, intrigue, propaganda, patsies, corruption, revenge, conspiracy and deceit. It threatens a direct hit that would bring a revolutionary type of upheaval, a death to the status quo. It fuels endless speculation about when and where it may hit. It may even just spin furiously, but harmlessly, at sea.

But there is no doubt that it is there.

At the eye of the storm is the central crime or crimes committed when Valerie Plame’s CIA status was leaked to the media; the seriousness of the crime(s) fuels the entire storm.

While the grand jury investigation into the outing of a CIA officer has been admirably prosecuted without leaks, we do know the legal opinions of the judges who refused to lift contempt of court charges against Time’s Matthew Cooper and The New York Times’ Judith Miller, thereby ordering the reporters to testify to the grand jury:

In February, Circuit Judge David Tatel joined his colleagues’ order to Cooper and Miller despite his own, very lonely finding that indeed there is a federal privilege for reporters that can shield them from being compelled to testify to grand juries and give up sources. He based his finding on Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which authorizes federal courts to develop new privileges “in the light of reason and experience.” Tatel actually found that reason and experience “support recognition of a privilege for reporters’ confidential sources.” But Tatel still ordered Cooper and Miller to testify because he found that the privilege had to give way to “the gravity of the suspected crime.”

Judge Tatel’s opinion has eight blank pages in the middle of it where he discusses the secret information the prosecutor has supplied only to the judges to convince them that the testimony he is demanding is worth sending reporters to jail to get. The gravity of the suspected crime is presumably very well developed in those redacted pages. Later, Tatel refers to “[h]aving carefully scrutinized [the prosecutor’s] voluminous classified filings.”

Some of us have theorized that the prosecutor may have given up the leak case in favor of a perjury case, but Tatel still refers to it simply as a case “which involves the alleged exposure of a covert agent.” Tatel wrote a 41-page opinion in which he seemed eager to make new law -- a federal reporters’ shield law -- but in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to do it in this particular case. In his final paragraph, he says he “might have” let Cooper and Miller off the hook “[w]ere the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security.”

Tatel’s colleagues are at least as impressed with the prosecutor’s secret filings as he is. One simply said “Special Counsel’s showing decides the case.”

All the judges who have seen the prosecutor’s secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment.

Once the CIA had conducted an internal investigation into the crime(s) and referred the case to the Department of Justice, it was seriousness of said crime(s) that prompted Attorney General John Ashcroft to recuse himself (though not before notifying the White House first) and empower a special counsel with full prosecutorial leverage to investigate any other crimes or circumstances. As Deputy Attorney General James Comey said at the Department of Justice press conference announcing Mr. Fitzgerald’s appointment as special counsel:

I have today delegated to Mr. Fitzgerald all the approval authorities that will be necessary to ensure that he has the tools to conduct a completely independent investigation; that is, that he has the power and authority to make whatever prosecutive judgments he believes are appropriate, without having to come back to me or anybody else at the Justice Department for approvals. Mr. Fitzgerald alone will decide how to staff this matter, how to continue the investigation and what prosecutive decisions to make.

If the narrative of history were like a novel (and we know it is often that and more; why else would truth be stranger than fiction?) there would be no better foreshadowing of this climactic chapter than Hurricane Katrina, in which floodwaters horribly drowned New Orleans and cleansed American eyes of the false image of its leadership.

The levee of public trust has been breached, and Republican halls of power are taking on water. What impact will a direct hit from this grand jury investigation, and subsequent prosecutions, have? The question may significantly -- perhaps even historically -- alter no less than the president’s administration, the Republican leadership, the intelligence communities and the media.

Like coastal residents, key players in the unfolding drama are even hunkering into defensive positions, preparing for impact. “Former White House aids” are leaking stories selling vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis Libby up the river. The Washington Post reports that the administration is considering staff changes and that, ever mindful of image over substance, Republicans are bracing for the real danger:

Senior GOP officials are developing a public relations strategy to defend those accused of crimes and, more importantly, shield Bush from further damage, according to Republicans familiar with the plans.

Meanwhile, the thunder rolls and the tide swells. Who and what will be washed away? Who and what will be washed clean?

Houseguests

No posts until Thursday as I show some international houseguests around my city.

Welcome AMERICAblog readers!

Thank you for stopping by, fellow fans of John Aravosis. And a big thank you to John for allowing us to promote our "small " blogs.

Rats! The End of the Myth of Rove

The item that I think will carry the most impact when it comes to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the Valerie Plame leak is the CIA damage assessment report, which will detail the damage done to any CIA assets as a result of the leak. It was this report that, I believe, carried the heft to force then-Attorney General John Ashcroft -- a client of Senior Presidential Advisor Karl Rove’s political consultancy -- to recuse himself from the case.

Of course, we know nothing about the report. Not a word of it has leaked. We know that Valerie Plame worked for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a CIA front organization that was used to infiltrate organizations attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Not only did Chicago Tribune columnist Robert Novak “out” Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, he also exposed the front organization in an interview with CNN, in which he stated, “Wilson's wife, the CIA employee, gave $1,000 to (Vice President Al) Gore and she listed herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates. There is no such firm, I'm convinced."

All of Mr. Rove’s lawyer’s public tap dancing, any smearing of the special prosecutor and any other damage control methods will be unable to counter the potential damage done to CIA assets. We should all hope no one was hurt or killed as a result of the leak but someone, perhaps more than one, may have suffered such a fate as a consequence.

If Mr. Rove’s career isn’t similarly damaged, at least one result will be the death of the Myth of Rove.

Karl Rove isn’t the political genius the right thinks he is, nor is he the strategic mastermind the left fears (and craves). The secret to his success is a desire for absolute power, a weakness for strength that could be a Shakespearean character’s tragic flaw. His downfall will repeat one of history’s oldest lessons: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Mr. Rove may or may not be the pillar upon which much of today’s Republican Party rests. Yet when one examines his hold on power, it appears that a mighty vacuum will need filling. Many have believed that Vice President Dick Cheney is the real force behind the throne. As the shepherd of the neo-cons, Mr. Cheney has influenced -- and severely damaged -- American foreign policy. Meanwhile, Mr. Rove’s acolytes populate congress, the Supreme Court and the media.

They aren’t hard to identify. The most common traits are a lack of intellectual curiosity, a fierce loyalty to the White House and an ego that craves positions of power and prominence. Combine these three traits and you have an easily manipulated pawn.

Intellectual curiosity begets a tendency to debate thoughtfully; this is unacceptable when the White House has legislation it wishes to push through without public knowledge (Mr. Cheney’s energy policy, the PATRIOT Act, the Medicare bill and FCC deregulation, to name a few). A fierce loyalty to the White House is required to stifle dissent within the ranks. People who aren’t fiercely loyal tend to squawk (Senator John McCain and the recent military appropriation bill’s torture amendment), publish books (former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill) or testify before independent panels (former security czar Richard Clarke). They cause problems.

Better to have someone who owes his position to Mr. Rove. Often, these positions were attained using another valued Rovian tactic, character assassination. Anyone who remembers the Swift Boat slanders need look no further for an example (but just in case, there’s the Max Cleland and the John McCain smears, plus more here).

This isn’t genius. These are the lessons in dirty tricks – affectionately termed “rat-fucking” by Richard Nixon’s operatives – that Mr. Rove learned from Donald Segretti. His way is to dive deeper into the dumpster than anyone else.

Mr. Rove reached his zenith of power after the 2002 elections, which ushered many of his loyal troops into positions of leadership in congress. At the moment, his hold on power is tenuous -- as is the structure upon which it rests. If Mr. Rove is indicted, he faces the delicious irony of having rat-fucked himself.

UPDATE: I couldn't resist adding this eloquent comment from Billmon, writing about the Harriett Miers and conservative movementarians squabble:

The Rovian game plan is, in all its essentials, the same sleazy blend of double speak, half-truths, non sequiturs, demagogic appeals and knees-to-the-groin smears that were used to sell the invasion of Iraq.

The Silence Of The New York Times Is Deafening

One of the difficulties inherent with being a journalist is that frequently, one must write on a subject from a largely uninformed view as though one were an expert. That is, often journalists are required to be “an inch deep and a mile wide.”

It is rare enough when journalists are able to report on a subject about which they are the undisputed experts; namely, journalism itself. It is rarer still when a newspaper finds itself as an actor in the landmark political events of our time.

So why won’t The New York Times report on itself?

By journalistic obligation -- indeed, because of the newspaper’s status, for the integrity of the profession itself -- the Times must reveal what it knew and when regarding its and its reporter Judith Miller’s role in the Valerie Plame leak that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating.

The Times has made many statements about this, ranging from the promise of a full disclosure to essentially stating the paper would publish an account when it felt good and ready. Perhaps there are justifiable legal reasons for the Times’ reticence. If so, why not tell us?

One senses something much larger is going on here, perhaps something bigger than even the Times itself. Bigger even than the Times’ role in disseminating weapons of mass destruction propaganda which it knew to be, at best, questionable. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Ms. Miller’s dubious reporting created a self-perpetuating echo that rang throughout the American media: “The New York Times reported that…”

It was an echo the Bush administration used as part of its masterful but dastardly manipulation of the Iraq debate. The administration’s war hawks would leak a story to Ms. Miller regarding aluminum tubes, for example, to be published on a Sunday morning. Administration officials -- Vice President Dick Cheney, to name one -- would then fan out to the Sunday chat shows using the Times story as corroboration: “Just this morning, the New York Times reported on aluminum tubes…”

It is embarrassing enough for a media outlet to be duped into advancing a partisan agenda. Perhaps in the rush not to be scooped, the Times may have let slip their usual standards of fact-checking. The paper itself admitted as much, apologizing for six stories -- four of which were written by Ms. Miller, but oddly, not singling out the reporter herself (as it had done in the Jayson Blair fiasco).

In so doing, the Times is protecting itself in a way that would make any senate whitewash committee proud. Journalists should certainly know that the cover-up is almost always worse than the crime. If the Times won’t publicly investigate itself -- committing the unpardonable journalistic sin of letting other papers scoop it on its own story -- others certainly will.

The larger question we deserve to see answered from all of this is: Was there a quid pro quo between “big media” and the administration?

In referring to the Iraq campaign in September of 2002, White House Chief of staff Andrew Card told the Times, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." The Bush administration knew full well that the most critical battle for Iraq was the battle of public opinion.

Members of the administration -- led most notably by Mr. Cheney -- had envisioned a war with Iraq as far back as 1997. Had this been made public knowledge in a full and open debate on Iraq in 2002 and early 2003, the battle of public opinion may well have been lost; investigative journalists for the major media outlets could use this stated objective as a premise, investigating each of the administration’s claims about Iraq in this context.

It was absolutely critical to throw the media off the scent.

Which brings us to the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) deregulation hearings. Under cover of the successfully launched Iraq war, the FCC, led by Michael Powell, attempted to push through deregulation laws that would allow further media consolidation. As Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) put it at the time:

A majority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intends to ratify a sweeping plan to weaken or eliminate rules that limit the size and power of media companies. Among other things, the FCC's three Republican commissioners hope to revoke the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule, which prevents a company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same market, and to significantly increase the number of TV stations one company can own.

With virtually no one paying attention, it was thought that Mr. Powell would be able to enact the law with no debate:

Before the FCC voted to lift the media ownership limits in June 2003, Powell refused to make public the 250-page FCC document that justified the move, convening only one hastily assembled public hearing on the media rules change. The Center for Public Integrity notes that during the months leading up to the vote, Powell and his commissioners held 71 off-the-record meetings with broadcast industry executives, while only meeting five times with public advocates.

Fortunately, in a triumph of democracy, this abominable act was exposed and opposed to by interest groups on the left and the right (one of the rare moments when groups such as the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union agreed and joined forces). While it passed in committee, congress defeated the measure and in January of this year, the FCC at long last quietly gave up on the campaign.

But note the timing: June 2003, less than three months after the invasion of Iraq began. What was discussed in those “71 off-the-record meetings”? How many of these meetings were with, say, executives of the New York Times?

So: Was there a quid pro quo, positive war coverage in exchange for increased profits? The public has the right to know. But don’t bet on reading about it in the Times.

The Deadliest Game of Chicken

There is an old story about Stalin. As it goes, he was illustrating his approach to governance with a young chicken. He plucked all the chick’s feathers – after which, trembling from cold and fright, the bird huddled closely to the dictator’s leg.

“That’s how you rule the people,” Stalin said.

Make people feel vulnerable and they will cling to you for protection. It’s an old political formula the Bush administration has exploited to its advantage since September 11. It may have even been the primary reason Mr. Bush was elected in 2004.

Fear was the centerpiece of the administration’s misguided and illegal war in Iraq. Our brave soldiers are dying in Iraq because of a manufactured, artificial fear. Even today the president gave a speech that simply attempts to remind Americans how afraid we should all be of another September 11 (and of an Islamic empire from Spain to Indonesia).

The president needs fear more now than ever before. Rumors are flying that Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will hand down indictments in the Valerie Plame leak investigation and that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s senior advisor, will be on the receiving end of a felony count. The president’s approval ratings are in a post-Katrina tailspin (37 percent, according to this CBS News poll). Speaker of the House Tom DeLay has been indicted. The Jack Abramoff investigation inches closer and closer to the White House. The administration desperately needs something to knock all of this bad news off the front page.

So – how to pluck the chick?

How about a terrorist threat in New York City? It worked so well after the Democrats’ national convention. How about a nuclear threat from Iran? It worked to get us into Iraq.

Or how about the avian flu?

In his recent press conference, Mr. Bush elaborated on a response to a potential H5N1 outbreak. Certainly, there is potential for a pandemic. National Geographic felt it important enough to merit front-page coverage. It could be a threat – if it evolves to the point that it can jump from birds to humans, perhaps through an intermediary host (such as pigs). At the moment, the virus isn’t effective enough to make that jump – yet.

Heightening awareness about such a possibility is certainly the duty of public officials. Was this Mr. Bush’s objective – or is just more cynical fear mongering?

H5N1 has been a potential threat since before Mr. Bush became president. Yet a quick visit to the United States Department of Health and Human Services website reveals not one word about the avian flu. Likewise, the Surgeon General’s website is mum on the issue (we are in the beginning of flu season, but as of today, the site’s last update was September 10). That would seem to discount the notion that Mr. Bush’s administration is preparing the public; the government doesn’t even seem prepared.

In fact, the only proposed response to such an outbreak was Mr. Bush’s mini-speech on the subject, in which he implied that martial law would be required to enforce a quarantine. There are even questions regarding the qualifications of the government’s point-man, Stewart Simonson, should the avian flu break out here. Mr. Simonson is a lawyer, with no medical experience. He’s yet another example of Mr. Bush’s cronyism.

All signs seem to indicate that the federal government is at least as prepared to respond to a deadly influenza outbreak as it was to hurricane Katrina. And that should strike fear into the heart of every American.

UPDATE: Plutonium Page over at Daily Kos has more on the subject from the National Center for Disaster Preparedness -- and even from the Cato Institute.

A Lockstep Head Fake

In relation to my last essay, I’d like to speculate on the recent “rebellion” within the Republican media’s ranks. Many commenters on the left are taking some delight in watching this mini-revolt over Mr. Bush’s choice of Harriett Miers for the Supreme Court. And, indeed, it does appear on the surface as if there is some break within the conservative media’s unending sycophancy for Mr. Bush. Kevin Drum provides a roundup of quotes:

BUSH BASHING....We already know that lots of conservative are skeptical about Harriet Miers, but what's more interesting is the number of conservatives who are turning their guns on George Bush himself. Here's a sampler:

• Steve Dillard: I am done with President Bush.
• John Podhoretz: I think this was a pick made out of droit de seigneur — an "I am the president and this is what I want" arrogance.
• Peter Robinson: What people see in this is the Bush of the first debate, the Bad Bush, the peevish rich boy who expects to get his way because it's his way.
• Andrew Sullivan: Boy, does this pick remind us of who GWB is: about as arrogant a person as anyone who has ever held his office. Now the base knows how the rest of us have felt for close to five years.
• Stephen Bainbridge: I got a lot of criticism for saying that George Bush was pissing away the conservative moment via his Iraq policies....With this appointment, I'd echo Andrew's sentiment with something a tad more off color: Bush is now peeing on the movement.
• Rod Dreher: As for me, I am really, really disappointed in the president.
• Bill Kristol: It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy.
• Pat Buchanan: What is depressing here is not what the nomination tells us of her, but what it tells us of the president who appointed her....In picking her, Bush ran from a fight. The conservative movement has been had — and not for the first time by a president by the name of Bush.
• David Frum: The record shows I fear that the president's judgment has always been at its worst on personnel matters.
• Michelle Malkin: Message to the White House: Don't get stuck on stupid.
• Jonah Goldberg: Bush's instincts about where his principles should be are often right. But in this case the principle seems to be that Bush's instincts are principle enough.

Appearing to lend the revolt some kind of intellectual legitimacy is George Will’s column, in which he takes Mr. Bush to task for his failure as a “custodian of the Constitution.” To be sure, it’s an awful lot of bluster and some of it may even be genuine outrage.

However, the single most important objective for movement conservatives over the last 20 years has been the takeover of the Supreme Court. This may be one of the most important and under-reported issues in modern political history. It is because of this that many conservatives swallowed all doubts about Mr. Bush’s experience, intelligence and competence over the last five years; a two-term Republican president would have a historic chance to tilt the court to the right and undo all the perceived injustices of 1960s liberalism (which, personified by the Clintons and the Kennedys, tops the list of conservatives’ irrational hatreds).

But the Republicans’ most powerful weapon – masterfully wielded by the president’s handlers – is, as I wrote yesterday, the ideology of the lockstep. Viewing the Miers reaction through this prism, it seems less likely that this is an appointment from weakness; rather, I think we are all in the midst of a massive deception.

For the conservative media, the message filters down from on high (the RNC, the White House, etc.) and is rapidly circulated among all conservative media outlets. As an example, one only needs to look back at the coordinated and shameful attack on Louisiana’s local politicians. Once the president’s staff returned from vacation and realized the political disaster they had wrought, the response was a coordinated attack. Literally overnight, conservative media opinion shifted from uncomfortably questioning the president’s leadership (as every other American was doing) to their more accustomed mode of attacking others to protect the president.

Unlike the aftermath of Katrina, in which no one from the president’s strategic circle was minding the helm of the monolithic messaging mechanism, the Miers appointment began with a carefully coordinated media campaign – Vice President Cheney was on Rush Limbaugh’s almost immediately after the nomination was announced.

Did the administration miscalculate the conservative base’s reaction? Did they underestimate the importance of the Supreme Court to the right wing of the last 20 years? Hardly.

As per usual, the Bush administration’s modus operandi is to protect its own hold on power. Right now, the gravest threat to that power is its own legal troubles – troubles that could potentially lead to indictments and even impeachment proceedings as the Valerie Plame grand jury winds down.

Subsequently, there is nothing the president needs more right now than to have a few friends on the Supreme Court who are fiercely loyal to him and who owe him favors. Perhaps Ms. Miers would recuse herself from any such cases; however, given how reluctantly former Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the Plame investigation in the first place, it seems unlikely that she would recuse herself without strong public and political pressure.

So, how would one ensure such a friendly appointment? Given the potential ideological confirmation battles that go with a Supreme Court nomination – and the ever-looming threat of a Democrat filibuster – it makes strategic sense to nominate someone who would appear to infuriate the right. Why in the world would Democrats filibuster someone who seems to divide the opposition?

It even helps the president’s cause to have a nominee who in past donated the maximum amount to Al Gore’s presidential bid, sought support from gay rights groups and even appears iffy on abortion. This seems to provide just enough ideological cover to make Democrats appear hypocritical for opposing her nomination.

Ideology has never been a serious concern for this administration – if it were, why would Mr. Bush have run as a “moderate” in 2000? – but the hold on power is. And that is why this entire exercise is another example of the deployment of the ideology of the lockstep. Perhaps this is why James Dobson, he of the Focus on the Family fringe group, told the New York Times, "Some of what I know I am not at liberty to talk about."

In his egotistical attempt to boast of his connections to power, he has tipped the administration’s hand: This is all just so much political theatre. The lockstep march continues.

The Ideology of the Lockstep

Here in Atlanta, there’s a conservative talk radio station promoting itself with billboards boasting, “Liberals hate it!” Speaking as a liberal myself, I don’t hate it; I am indifferent to it.

But that isn’t the point. Granted, conservative talk radio poses as “entertainment” so it makes little difference how they promote themselves. Only it isn’t simply entertainment. And these garish billboards represent the hollowness of the modern conservative movement. They have nothing to promote about conservatism itself, so they simply attack the opposition.

To some degree, perhaps conservatism is less about ideas per se than it is about regressing to some perceived version of an idyllic America that neither existed nor is sustainable. As a result, modern conservatism is bereft of any ideas at all. Where it once had visionaries like Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater, conservatism has now degenerated into a snipe hunt for conservative bogeymen.

In so doing, conservatives are becoming a parody of themselves. The general disdain for anything smacking of intellectualism (in favor of the simpleton equation of “guts” over “brains”) has effectively quashed any real critical analysis in conservatism.

There are reasons why so many conservative commentators do not invite guests with opposing viewpoints. It is much easier to attack straw men and cartoonish images of the opposition than to confront someone who can viably debate your viewpoint. As a former conservative (up until about ten years ago), I frequently listened to AM conservative talk show hosts and punched the air in agreement. I stayed in a permanent state of anger, even hate. Arguments with liberals frequently ended with me name-calling in frustration (“feminazis” is not an argument).

Conservative hosts feed the ego; they tell their listeners exactly what they want to hear. The world is black and white, our side versus their side. While they don’t do subtlety or nuance in modern conservatism, there is nonetheless one subtle idea behind it all: You, dear conservative media consumer, should never question your beliefs. Instead, you should believe that you (and we conservatives) are always right. Anyone who threatens to open the door for debate is openly ridiculed and assailed with names.

They tell you that you should be angry. They share with the conservative listener an anger and hatred. And the fact that there are millions of other listeners just like you legitimizes your anger and hatred and, as voters, even institutionalizes it.

Conservatives, it seems, are always angry.

With no debate, no ideas to enlarge their movement and no room for critical thought, conservatism today depends on a coordinated messaging mechanism. Truth only gets in the way because you know in your gut you are always right. There is no need for any kind of self-examination.

And when the truth does makes the brain question the gut, then it is time to attack. That’s why conservatives love to keep trotting out that tired trope of the “liberal media.” This is, of course, a logical fallacy that does not hold up to a simple critical analysis. Ask a conservative to prove the media is liberal. It is simply astonishing how simple-minded the responses are. “The New York Times is owned by a liberal” is one of my favorite actual facile responses; however, more often they cite a sentence or two out of the vast amount of media information to prove their assertion.

But it does make a nice bogeyman for the conservative media types to blast. To belong to the movement, one must accept certain things as a given. No need to attempt to prove it for yourself – no, the conservative media is here to tell you that your baser instincts have always been correct.

And your anger and hatred are correct. After all, the billboard’s message is clear: Liberals hate you, so you must hate back.