In February 2008 I canceled my subscription to the Washington Post after sending them a letter explaining why. A briefer version of that letter follows:

"The process of coming to complete despair about my country was surprisingly long and complex. But with your help, dear Washington Post, the process is now complete.

"For the cynic, I suppose, no dramatic final moment of anguish is ever faced. The cynic ‘knows’ from the outset that the race is never won by the decent or the fair. Neither, of course, is it won by the simply brazenly brutal. No, in a great democracy such as ours, it is the cynic who convincingly feigns honesty who gains the prize.

"Gentlemen, I raise my glass to you. You pretend to protest the executive branch’s treatment of its detainees, you pretend to be concerned about the loss of such fundamental legal rights as habeas corpus, but because your protests lead to no concrete consequences for the guilty--in other words, for the President—all this is nothing but a pretense.

"Ridicule is your favorite strategy. You used it to good effect to shut up Mr Conyers when, while still in the minority, he held impassioned impeachment hearings in small basement offices. How silly of him! He had no power! He had no big room! But now that Conyers is in the majority and has the power, you are stone silent on the matter.

"What amateurs they were at Pravda! Why baldly toe the party line when it is so much more effective to simply pretend to critique it, while always, when push comes to shove, supporting it at every step?

"Yes, go ahead and publish, two years too late, Mr. McGovern’s factual and even painfully obvious (though for all that still statesmanlike and humane) essay on the travesty which is the Bush-Cheney administration. Very democratic! Then, two days later, you can publish a single letter from good old Mr. Donahoe (funder of the Republican Party’s LeadersPac) dismissing Mr. McGovern as merely ‘bitter.’ The public has spoken! That’s the ticket! Oh, Pravda, Pravda. Why were you so naïve?"