In Damn Right We’re Angry, Paul Waldman lets loose with a long list of why pro­gres­sives are jus­ti­fi­ably angry with what’s happened to the US over the last few years:

We’re angry because of what has happened to our country, because of how we’ve been treated, and because of the in­nu­mer­able crimes the con­ser­v­a­tives have committed. We’re angry at the president, we’re angry at the Congress, we’re angry at the news media. And we have every right to be.

Yes, we’re angry at George W. Bush. We’re not angry at him because of who he sleeps with, and we’re not angry at him because we think he represents some socio-cultural movement we didn’t like 40 years ago, or because he hung out with a different crowd than we did in high school. We’re angry at him because of what he’s done.

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Yes, we’re angry about Iraq, and we may be for the rest of our lives. …

We’re angry that when we talk about ending this monstrous war, the soulless hypocrites who are glad to send more and more men and women to be scarred and maimed and killed in Iraq have the gall to accuse us of not “sup­port­ing the troops.” We’re angry that people whose actions exhibit nothing but contempt for freedom and liberty and justice, who wouldn’t know real patriotism if it came up and smacked them across the face, pin a little flag on their lapel and say that we’re the ones who hate America.

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We’re angry that America may now be the only country in the world in which torture is an officially sanctioned policy, proclaimed proudly in public. …

And we’re angry that Bush has made our nation so hated around the world. We’re angry that the next time a Democrat gets elected, most of their time will be spent cleaning up the god-awful mess Bush has made of everything.

We’re angry that we and our children and our grand­chil­dren will have to keep paying off the nation’s debt, which now stands at nearly $9 trillion. We’re angry because every other in­dus­tri­al­ized country in the world has a single-payer health care system that works, and we pay more for ours than any of them, yet we have 45 million people with no health insurance. We’re angry that the insurance companies have convinced their obedient servants in Congress that the Rube Goldberg perpetual paperwork machine we have now is somehow “the best health care in the world” and preferable to a system in which you go to your doctor, get treated and go home, without having to fill out 10 forms and get down on your knees before the gods of the HMO bu­reau­cra­cy to get a partial repayment minus your deductible and your co-pay.

We’re angry that the federal government is brimming with people fun­da­men­tal­ly opposed to the mission of the agencies over which they preside, the anti-en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists who run the Interior department, the mining company lobbyists in charge of mine safety and the union-busters in charge of worker safety.

Read it for yourself.