Abe Greenwald Badmouths Dungeons & Dragons

Before reading this, I have to echo greenwald's warning: If you have a beverage, put it down. Here's the transcript excerpt he posts:

SIMON JENKINS: What I think is extraordinary to people abroad, is that those of us who are enthusiasts for America and American liberties cannot see why you needed to do these things. You will never persuade the outside world that you have not restricted liberty in America. You will never persuade them that you have not taken out Muslims as a particular group, and you will never, and you never persuade them that you really needed to do these things.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: What things?

SIMON JENKINS: Because-

WILLIAM KRISTOL: What have we done to Muslims in America? What has happened?

SIMON JENKINS: Arrested them.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: We’ve arrested Muslims in America? [LAUGHTER]

SIMON JENKINS: Incarcerated them without trial.

WILLIAM KRISTOL: We’ve incarcerated-

KARL ROVE: Rounded them up?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: ...Muslims in America without trial?

KARL ROVE: Rounded, rounded them up? Name one?

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Nonsense.

KARL ROVE: Name one instance.

SIMON JENKINS: The, [UNCLEAR] belabor me all day with lists of people who have vanished. Vanished.

KARL ROVE: You know-

WILLIAM KRISTOL: Well, that-

KARL ROVE: This is on the border of lunacy, with all due respect.

SIMON JENKINS: But you didn’t need to do it, you didn’t need to do it-

KARL ROVE: We didn’t do it!

Excerpt from Greenwald's comments:

Bush-vilification, like all therapeutic mythologies, depends on fantasy for survival. With their vanishing Muslims, torture chambers, and evil corporate overlords, Bush haters are better suited to the Dungeons and Dragons, sci-fi convention circuit than to the political sphere. It’s clear that the delusional expectations placed on Barack Obama by his fans are a necessary counterpart to their own delusional indictments of George W. Bush. That’s why the enthusiasm about Obama is similarly not of a fact-based nature. His acolytes seek in him fake antidotes to fake problems.

Here's the entire transcript, if you really are masochistic.