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(Cross-posted at dailykos.com.)

In 2008, let’s take back our language, too.

As far as I can tell, the first time the USA was widely referred to as the “Homeland” was when the Bush Administration created the Department of Homeland Security. I thought it sounded creepy then, and, what with events since, it sounds even creepier now. Among the many other things that need to be fixed after Bush finally goes, we need to fix that name.

The greatness of America is precisely that it is not a Homeland. America is an idea, an idea that draws people from other places around the world. They come, and always have, because that idea is better and more powerful than any nativist myth about any physical piece of territory.

Yes, the land of the USA is spectacularly beautiful and bountiful. And yes, of course, it’s our home, and we should defend it if and when it’s attacked. But as much as we love it, our land is not what defines us, and the fact that it happens to be our home does not begin to suggest America’s true value.

What defines us is democracy, and what is best about us is democracy.

That’s the reason that terms like “fatherland” or “motherland” or indeed “homeland” have always sounded foreign to American ears. They sounded foreign not just because they were used in other countries. They sounded foreign because they are foreign to the idea of America. Because America is, first of all, an idea, not a “homeland”.

By creating legislation like the “PATRIOT Act”, turning our enemies into cartoon “evildoers” and by claiming to defend “Homeland Security”, the Bush administration has tried to shift the way we talk, and therefore think, about America. And that is a great threat to the security that matters most.

Our true homeland is freedom.

(Cross-posted at dailykos.com.)

I’m sure it happens to you, too: the latest outrage from the Bush administration hits the news — Cheneygate, Gonzalesgate, Torturegate, etc etc etc gate – and your fingers start itching to fire off an outraged email, phone call, blog post or whatever. But just as you’re framing the phrases, here comes another outrage!

It’s just like your email inbox: impossible to keep up with. We now, thanks to the Bush Administration, have Outrage Spam.

And so with the commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence. Of course his sentence was commuted, his name is Scooter! That’s all he needs, and it says all you need to know about Bushworld: he’s one of our people, so he does well. The other people, like say Katrina survivors, well they did rather nicely living in the Superdome, didn’t they?

But why bother even saying it? The next outrage will be here any second. And there’s still so much work to be done digging through the details of the previous pile, as in the Washington Post’s series on just how dastardly Dick Cheney is. Kind of late, as many have pointed out, but in the Post’s defense, look at the backlog.

As with other forms of spam, Outrage Spam is enabled by the removal of friction from the process. Email is free – hence email spam. With the degradation of our public sphere – including but not limited to the distraction of our media by money and celebrity – outrage is now virtually free too. There is less and less real cost to the perpetrator, and in many cases, there are rich rewards (viz. CEO pay).

And, as with some other forms of spam, it sometimes seems to be a deliberate attack on the system itself. Could it be that the Bush administration, contemptuous of democracy as it obviously is, is staging a DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) attack on democracy?

Nah, that’s crazy. Isn’t it?