On jumping on the courage train

Okay, so far too much of my really good really bad material comes from Atrios. In this case, we hear tell of Congressional Republicans who intend to show up at tonight's SOTU with purple fingers to show solidarity with Iraqi voters.

Okay, Repubs, it's time to get off the freaking train. Off. Off! You've never figured it out before, so I don't know why I'd expect you to get it this time, but this is not your moment. You didn't and have never and would never need to face down the danger they did in order to do something as simple as vote, and you've never and most likely will never feel the fear that they live with every single day. They didn't do it so that you could congratulate yourself on a half-assed job well done and take credit for everything that they accomplished, or so that you could wave your purple fingers around and pretend that all of the American and Iraqi lives lost are suddenly hunky-dory.

As with so many other things, someone else has said it better than I could; in this case, it's Charles Pierce (also, of course, courtesy of Atrios):

You do not own their courage.

The people who stood in line Sunday did not stand in line to make Americans feel good about themselves.

You do not own their courage.

They did not stand in line to justify lies about Saddam and al-Qaeda, so you don't own their courage, Stephen Hayes. They did not stand in line to justify lies about weapons of mass destruction, or to justify the artful dodginess of Ahmad Chalabi, so you don't own their courage, Judith Miller. They did not stand in line to provide pretty pictures for vapid suits to fawn over, so you don't own their courage, Howard Fineman, and neither do you, Chris Matthews.

You do not own their courage.

Read the whole thing. It should make all of us, on both sides, at least a little ashamed and embarrassed about the way we've ridden this election for our own purposes. It's time to get off. This isn't our train.