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Little Brother

Published Letters: 1825
Editor's Choice: 3

Sunday, June 10, 2007 11:33 AM

AIPAC of Lies

HoJo Lieberman belongs in the Knesset, not the US Senate.

I'd started to write that HoJo is the Ultimate DINO-- the DINO's DINO. But sadly, I believe that he's actually the ultimate DLC Democrat, by which I meantersay the kind of "Democrat" for whom party affiliation is a marriage of convenience. With unerring self-absorption and cynicism, HoJo proved that one can retain power and membership in the political elite class in spite of party affiliation as well as because of it.

HoJo is indeed dangerously narcissistic and treacherous. But he's not really at odds with Democratic leadership. Even though the Dems must pay lip service to populist, progressive opinion-- because We the People is supposedly their base or core constituency, as the Vested Interests and reactionary yahoos are to the Republics-- it's obvious that the Democratic leadership buys into the pernicious myth of American exceptionalism and militarism. Moreover, the leadership espouses the AIPAC-endorsed view of Israel as a permanently-embattled victim nation deserving of uncritical support. Thus, insidious rascal though he has proven to be, HoJo is still treated with respect and deference by the party leaders he copiously pissed on.

This scoundrel is indeed a rotten egg who is coddled by corporate media infotainwhores when he should be crushed. But I don't think his perspective is very far from the top-tier Mod Squad of Democratic presidential candidates. HoJo's double-dealing and warmongery still resonates with the double-dealing and hypocrisy of the soft-warmongering party who continues to embrace him despite the knife he thrust into its back.

Monday, June 18, 2007 03:59 PM

Hope the Book Gets the Success It Deserves!

You truly are a voice of clarity, reason, and integrity, Glenn. And you do your damn homework.

I could watch you work all day.

I'm not sure if there's "jinx" etiquette extant which precludes optimistic wishes and predictions, so I'll simply refer you to the subject headline. ;)

You're like the beam from a lighthouse lamp cutting through the fog and darkness. Thanks much, and don't stop. You're addictive, like peanuts.

Friday, June 22, 2007 11:08 AM
Original article: Notes on "A Tragic Legacy"

A Crystalline Mineral

Meta-comment: I wish there were a way to magically keep up with Glenn's prolific comments and the associated, and generally engaging, comments discussions. Alas! I find that I am unable to hew to my preferred approach of catching up on all of the comments before adding one. I may be so far behind as it is that no one will see this dead-thread contribution... c'est la vie.

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I fully concur with Glenn's perspective on whether the Unitard's religious faith is genuine, or a conscious fraud to manipulate the Christian wingnut conspiracy; it's not necessarily an either-or, there are epistemological barriers to discerning the truth of the matter, and it's ultimately secondary to the issue of the War Criminal-in-Chief's public conduct and actions.

I'm put in mind of an imperfectly-remembered bit from Mark Crispin Miller's "Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order". [http://www2.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring05/032678.htm] I apologize for my lack of precision, but I'm recalling an interview with Bush before 9/11 in which he was asked to describe or define qualities of (presidential) leadership.

Bush replied that he saw the office of the president as being like calcium in bones-- the material that ensured that bones remained strong and straight. If the Unitard was later to pronounce himself The Decider, here he might've characterized himself as The Stiffener. Miller remarked drily that this was the first time a president had ever characterized the ideal of presidential leadership in terms of a "crystalline mineral".

Chesterton famously remarked: "'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'"

The Unitard's view of himself as that absolutely and righteously rigid and inflexible Leader, the Man of Calcium who Decides in accordance with a Heavenly Father, and would lash the rest of us to the mast of his divinely guided Decisions regardless of consequences, is the monomania, drunk or sober, that animates this Abomination.

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