March 30, 2006
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Another of Rudyard Kipling's enchanted stories, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi isn't much of an allegory except in a single, profound abstraction: the more compassionate the animal, the more human-like it is and vice-versa. Thus the big black cobra, "with the wicked snake's eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may be thinking of", the snake who says, "Who is Nag?... I am Nag ...Look, and be afraid!" Rikki, of course, kills the snake.
March 29, 2006
A Very Short Comment
I mean to write on the demonstrations in France over labor laws and in the US over immigration, and have been pulling material together for about a week. This morning, however, I saw this article by the redoubtable William Pfaff, with whom I very often agree on many issues. It merits immediate attention, thus this link and post.
March 22, 2006
Moyers Scores
I have no idea how much work Bill Moyers puts into writing something like this, but it's brilliant. A must read for anyone who cares about this country. And I think we all owe him a great debt of gratitude for continuing to churn out such wisdom on a regular basis.
March 21, 2006
It's The Economics, Stupid!
If you stop and think for a moment about the third of the population who still support W, and ask where that support is most vulnerable, several things spring to mind. The Iraq war for one, except that those who would be dissuaded by facts have been, for the most part, by now. The president breaking the law in various ways—well, that would pull some out but again, at the margin there aren't many left. The single big issue would seem to be the economy; it will hurt that third pretty much across the board (excepting the super rich). When the collapse begins to be noticed, however, is nearly impossible to predict and shouldn't be relied upon. Probably the correct answer is one that's less obvious, and that won't be included in any polling data because pollsters aren't equipped to understand how the question should be framed. It is: is our economic model for growth the right one? And, does 'free-market' economics really make sense? Or more bluntly, is a 'free-market' what you really want? If unalloyed support for 'free-market' policies were shaken, even just a little, my guess is that W's numbers would tank into the twenties and Republicans could be put on the run for years.
March 13, 2006
"Where Do We Get Such Men?"
By Werther*
The question posed in our title rings historical and true, and nine out of ten readers might surmise it refers to the Marines at Khe Sanh, or perhaps the boys of Pointe du Hoc, or possibly the lost battalion almost 90 summers ago in the fields of France.
But it is artifice, a quote from a movie based on a commercially successful novel (The Bridges of Toko-ri) by James Michener. It rings true because we think it ought to be true: because it tidies up the sordid and disjointed reality of violence in the name of a cause. Actually to witness the Siege of Troy would probably have been a poor show: a chaotic gang fight by unwashed brigands possessing Bronze-Age weapons, intermittently halted by the usual lethal epidemic. But in Homer’s sonorous iambic pentameter, the whole bloody mess gained a bogus transcendent meaning that it lacked in reality.
March 11, 2006
A Premature Death
For five hours in mid-August 2004, I met with Slobodan Milosevic in a cramped, improvised office, cluttered with papers and books, in a UN detention area within the huge Dutch prison at Scheveningen, a seaside suburb of the Hague. Outside, spotless townhouses provide normality; cyclists blithely cruise the flats past the prison's gates. Always known for posh mansions, a favorite of foreign diplomats, today Scheveningen's boardwalk and casinos are its big draws, elbowing aside the glittering sea.
March 7, 2006
A Broken System
A couple years ago I published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, How to Fix Politics? Believe It or Not, More Politicians, which was recirculated by and is still archived at Common Dreams (note that the email at the bottom of that link is no longer valid). It's not a trivial argument but it's not at all well known. Before I get to a brief recap/further comment here let me just say a few words about its obscurity—because the fact that it's not known says a very great deal about our understanding today, or lack thereof, of what representative democratic institutions are supposed to be like.
March 5, 2006
Half a Trillion Dollars
By Werther*
Ever since President Eisenhower's farewell address, there have been sporadic warnings about the Military Industrial Complex. Over the last couple of decades, critics like Ernest Fitzgerald and Chuck Spinney have performed a valuable public service by uncovering the Pentagon's lunatic potlatch schemes and dragging them before the bar of public opinion. Lately, organizations such as the Project on Government Oversight, the Center for Defense Information, and Citizens Against Government Waste have been in a continuous pother about the riot of pork-barrel spending in the military budget.
March 4, 2006
Toy Soldier
It's so difficult to think what might happen in Iraq and, clearly, the Iraqis themselves have no idea where things are headed. It's possible they may yet avoid a full-blown civil war. I don't know. Nobody does. Nor, if it happens, how far sectarian fighting might then spread throughout the region.
March 1, 2006
The Nixon Meme
If it hadn't been for Vietnam, and Watergate, we might remember Nixon as the last liberal President we've had... given how far politics has subsequently shifted to the right. But because of Vietnam and Watergate, as it stands we remember Nixon for his deeply antagonistic relationship with the public—and this territory is being explored all over again by W. The important thing to notice, I think, in W's recent 34% approval found by CBS, is not the level itself but the trend. Despite a wide-spread, almost universal presumption that, as some headlines put it, "Bush has hit rock-bottom," I don't think "rock-bottom" is anywhere in sight. While there may be a small part of the population that suffers irreparable cognitive impairment which prevents them from understanding how W is waging a class war of the most wealthy against everybody else, I doubt whether that defective minority could be very large—no, the rest of W's backers have always been fair weather friends along for the ride for diverse, loosely related reasons. As he increasingly demonstrates his contempt for the public through his actions on such matters as Katrina, Iraq, and the ports' priorities, and as the economy continues to go down the drain (for almost all of us), the wheels inevitably will come off this clown car. W is now easily within striking distance of Nixon's ratings before he resigned—thus it seems reasonable to suppose the question to ask, the thing to prepare for, and what we should be demanding of the Democratic leadership (so-called) is how to handle W's removal from office.
