Letters to the Editor
had_enough
Published Letters: 816 Editor's Choice: 48
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the right on the couch
[Read the article: Why has world opinion of the U.S. changed dramatically since 2000?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn, reading this latest post of yours, I was thinking about how increasingly vicious and deranged the Right is sounding these days...and it occured to me that this increasingly loony language from the Right may well be a manifestation of intense cognitive dissonance.
I suspect many on the Right know that, in some sense, arguments like yours are accurate. But they just cannot face the utter mess their ideology has made. They cannot face the possibility that *we* may love our country far more than they do. They cannot face the fact that they have spit on American ideals for many years. That they have made us all far more *un* safe; that they have destroyed utterly the goodwill the rest of the world had for America.
Very often, people in therapy go through violent perceptual swings, especially when they begin to grasp the enormity of their fault, or vulnerability..of their human-ness. They often quit therapy in the face of so much painful truth.
I think the Right is having something like the same experience now. Except, in the general case of the political Right-wing in this country, I suspect they'll learn nothing. They'll turn away from the pain, and the difficulty, and do everything they can to keep the truth from their consciousness.
The Right in this country has been doing that for over 200 years..no reason to think they'll suddenly see the light now.
This is why it was good that these people were kept on the fringes of our political life. They still could cause damage, but not disasterous damage..the way they have now.
Deeply neurotic people who border on sociopathic are sometimes quite dangerous and unpredictable. It's better to keep them well away from anything with which they can hurt themselves and others...like political power. Would that we can keep them from that power from now on.
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does anyone ever...
[Read the article: Khamenei: Don't mess with Islamic law]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...think about how different the world would be if, instead of fomenting a coup against a modern, secular, popularly elected leader in Iran in the 1950s, and putting the Shah in power, and propping him up for 25 years, we had supported Mossadegh, who knows? It wouldn't have been a perfect solution, but Iran would be a very different place now, that's for sure.
In a sense, we have no-one to blame for people like Khamenei but ourselves. We made the islamic revolution in Iran possible with our blind support of the Shah, who apparently could not see the risk right in front of him. Neither could we.
There is, of course, some evidence to suggest that Mossadegh was removed by the coup because he planned to nationalize all of Iran's oil. And that was unacceptable to the trans-national oil companies, who, even then were enormously powerful.
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Glenn...a question
[Read the article: Yesterday's ruling on NSA warrantless eavesdropping]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]maybe this has been covered already. I'll have to go back and read all the letters. Still, I'll ask anyway.
How could the circuit court rule on whether the plaintiffs had standing, if the Court itself does not--cannot--know if the plaintiffs were damaged by the government's actions?
Does the Court have any access to the classified eavesdropping? If not, how could the Court possibly have enough information to rule on the plaintiff's standing in the case?
The whole thing seems fishy on that ground alone. If classified documentation proves the plaintiffs had no standing, fine, but it's not clear from your blog posting if the Court has access to such documentation. If it didn't, how in hell can it rule on standing??
It is blatantly obvious to any reasonable person that the government's dismissal of the FISA process is illegal. This is an instance of the "law being an ass." If Congress had any balls at all, it would have fixed this long ago, and passed veto-proof legislation outlawing the eavesdropping. Although maybe a veto-proof majority on this question is impossible.
It's what we get when we let the small states have too damned much power. I was just saying to someone last night..based on population alone, California and New York should be running the fucking country, and dickwads like Bush and Cheney would NEVER get close to power.
Our system betrays its weaknesses in the gridlock in Congress caused by representatives from small states who have too much power.
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my word
[Read the article: Khamenei: Don't mess with Islamic law]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]the trolls are out in force this week.
Realname, as usual, you don't address the issues I raised, you just indulge in cheap sarcasm. Grow up.
Had we supported Mossadegh, Iran would not be a perfect place, but it would be a far more advanced place. He was already on the point of splitting with his radical islamist allies, and there were enough secularists in Iran at the time that Mossadegh probably wouldn't have had to make the same deal with the devil that the Saudis have.
But, we and the British fomented a coup against him, because he was going to nationalize the Iranian oil. Seems to me Iran controlling its own oil supplies, and being an advanced, first-world country controlled by technocrats and secularists (as it would have been by now, had more moderate forces prevailed, even moderate socialist forces), and, maybe, even an ally of the United States, would be a far better outcome than the one we helped create by propping up the Shah for too long.
C'mon, Realname, give me a convincing counter-argument. I'm willing to listen. As it stands now, we and the British had a big role in making Iran as it exists today. You can't argue that one away. Or maybe you can. Let's see what you have.
And try to avoid the non-sequiteurs. Focus on the point. You seem to imply that we had nothing to do with the current political situation in Iran. I say we had a LOT to do with it. Prove me wrong. And try to avoid the cheap sarcasm, hard as that may be for you to do.