Orwell Is Alive And Well
"WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Pentagon on Wednesday said an eruption of violence in southern Iraq, where US-backed government forces were battling Shiite militias, was a "by-product of the success of the surge."
See, because the surge was so fucking successful, we have more violence. Makes perfect sense. And Cheney says, "So?"
Damn Cynical Americans
Came across this post on Boing Boing about a bunch of Texas college students protesting the location of an early polling place by peacable marching enmass to the location which was put seven miles off campus to place their vote (Hmmm, I remember the polling place at my college actually, you know, on campus). Awesome, I thought. Yet read some of the comments:
"Disrupting a public highway is a childish and mean way to 'protest' it."
"Seven miles? I drive almost 30 miles to work every single day. This was the EARLY polling place... it's not like they had to be there during business hours for one day. Sheesh. What a bunch of whiners. I hope they didn't prevent anyone from getting anywhere important with their stunt."
"This is a great idea. I need to renew my license soon and I'm going to march down the middle of the street all the way to the DMV office to protest it not being closer to me."
"I'm all for voting rights and stopping gerrymandering, and I don't doubt there are very real instances of this in Texas and elsewhere, but this seems like an extremely excessive reaction."
WTF? Is that what Americans of a certain generation believe? That this a bunch of "whiners" who are disrupting a comfortable ride on a highway for someone, you know just to uphold their right to access to vote?
Damn, the pussification of Americans has really taken hold, eh? No Spirit of '76 anywhere in evidence. Just Karl Rove Era Cynicism from here to the horizon. No wonder the Constitution is in the shitter...
Take Off That Rabbit Suit
A quick thought after finally, finally, finally getting around to watching the movie Donnie Darko (2001) for the first time:
A life must be lived passionately, joyously forward, and then only truly understood backward.
The other way around, or trying to do the two things at the same time probably accounts for a lot of sadness and lived untruths in the world.
I think that's ultimately pretty close to the kernel of truth at the heart of that movie. And damn, that rabbit is disturbing.
Taken, Never Given Back
Power given to the State is rarely, if ever, returned to the Citizens.
Everything in the last seven years has been a titanic land grab by the government for new powers. This is the sole reason why George W. Bush will be a villain in the history books of all Free Men.
"This had started out being a program to track or identify criminals," he said. "Now we're talking about large swaths of the population -- workers, volunteers in youth programs. Eventually, it's going to be everybody."
The Good Fight always needs to be fought. Be vigilant.
Yeah, What Orcinus Said
I wish I could say it better, but I can't so I'll quote liberally:
The problem we've had with our politicians in the past few years -- both Republican and Democrat -- is that they're managers in denial about the fact that the system they're ruling over is in total breakdown, and hurtling toward a fundamental reorganization. Take Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton, both of whom are running as seasoned, experienced corporate candidates who are savvy managers of the status quo. The fact that they're offering their management skills as a selling point tells you everything you need to know about just how out of touch they are with this particular historical moment. They haven't even admitted to themselves, let alone us, that the American life we've known for the past 60 years is collapsing underneath our feet: instead, they're still blithely making happy promises to take us back to the glory days of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, respectively.
Those promises, far from being reassuring, should terrify us. These candidates apparently haven't noticed yet that the world they want to take us back to doesn't even exist any more. They're still in denial, offering the benign security that comes with doing things they way they've always been done. (Pay no attention to those four horses. They're just there to tow our carriages back across that bridge to the past.)
And Mitt and Hillary, of course, aren't the only ones. There's no shortage of people still in denial about the magnitude of the changes we face -- and it's unnerving that most of them seem to be the people now in power. But one of the universal truths about these moments in history is that the center usually fails to hold because the managers in charge of sustaining it simply don't have what it takes to lead us through a transformation.
And so it's time for us to thank our nation's managers for their service, give them a gold watch, and escort them from public stage. What we need to be electing for this moment are leaders -- people with strong imaginations tied to an even stronger moral core, who know how to speak to our values, highlight our strengths, and move us through treacherous times. America has been beyond fortunate in the past that our best leaders have usually emerged and risen to the occasion at just these moments, when we needed them most.
When we think of the greatest presidents, we name the ones who were able to provide resolute strength and soaring vision through our years of deepest change. (Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover are remembered as two of the presidency's most tragic failures, in large part because both were highly skilled managers doomed to preside in a moment that required decisive leaders.) Last time things came apart this badly, FDR saw us through; the time before that, it was Lincoln. These days, a lot of people are wondering out loud where our "next FDR" is. We know intuitively that we're not going to find our way back to the center without someone like that to show the way.
- Via Orcinus
