Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 146 Editor's Choice: 12
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Refreshing
[Read the article: The Justice Department vs. Joe Conason]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Reading this column was surprisingly uplifting. As much as I try to be unattached and optimistic, having the Bush criminal regime in my daily attention can be a strain, creating an undertone of dread and disgust. A sense of lightness and jest about this gang of sociopaths is refreshing.
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An axiomatic approach
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn Greenwald is fast becoming one of the most insightful and vital analysts on the scene today. He is a perfect example of how an honorable person with sufficient resources can perform the duties of a journalist at the highest level.
With fewer resources, I take a slightly different approach. I start with a fundamental question: Is the Bush regime a criminal operation, with the political sphere its chosen arena for implementing its sociopathic schemes? The answer, based on over six years of evidence, is yes.
The criminality of the Bush regime then becomes a premise, an axiom. Given that this regime is essentially a criminal operation, anyone who supports it and alibis for it is an accessory to its crimes of negligence, deception, mass murder, kidnapping, torture, treason, theft, fraud, voyeurism, obstruction of justice, and extortion.
Thus, the "journalists" who provide cover for the Bush criminal operation are not just protecting their careers. They are doing felonious harm to humanity. For their crimes they should be prosecuted, and they should be breaking rocks in the hot sun for the rest of their lives. For a few pieces of silver they have betrayed their entire species, to say nothing of the myriad of other species that are directly threatened by this gang of cutthroats. Hmm. Cutthroat is a bit of an understatement.
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Carpentry skills
[Read the article: The Republican Party is the party of Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, I must raise my objection to referring to individual persons in the plural: "the Bruce Feins, Bob Barrs, even George Wills." This all started in the '60s, when there were actually two people high places with the same last name - McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, brothers (read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bundy). They were members of the Kennedy Administration, and were often referred to together, hence, the Bundys. Pundits ever since have referred to just about anyone in the plural, implying a type, an implicit brothers in arms.
We humans are herd animals. Ever since Ken Burns introduced the disembodied interview, it has been de rigeur on PBS and other venues to have "experts" expound great thoughts to anonymous inquisitors. It saves air time, and no doubt a chunk of pay.
But I digress, without gressing in the first place. Again, Glenn Greenwald has hit the nail on the head. I suggest taking the inquiry a step or two farther. The reason "Conservatism" has fallen into such disrepute is that it has always been a phony philosophy. Disguised as an advocacy of "freedom," what "Conservatism" really is is a syndrome of ego-aggrandizement, greed, lust for power, genuine racism and xenophobia, privilege, and deflection of responsibility to the lower classes.
This deflection of responsibility is most manifest in the drive for regressive taxation and the prison industrial complex. "Conservatives" have no problem whining over the pending fatherlessness of the children of Irv Lewis Libby, but care not a whit for the children of the millions locked up in our nation's prisons, in Guantanamo, in Abu Ghraib, and God knows what other prisons worldwide where the "CIA" renders people.
What "Conservatives" are really lamenting is that the fiasco of the Bush "presidency" has revealed their venality and sociopathy. What we really should be concerned about is how such a wealthy and supposedly advanced society could sink to a level where its ruling class is an extended gang of criminal sociopaths. A corollary question is what bodes for the future of a country with such a ruling class. Rather than wring our hands, we need to unmitigatingly, unforgivingly raise these issues. If we can call these criminals what they are, we can avoid getting sucked into their arguments, avoid letting them control the discussion, and move on to the next question. For instance, survival of the human species.
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Mistaken identity
[Read the article: Joe Lieberman, warmongering centrist]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are a couple of problems with this analysis. One, which I have noted before, is grammatical. Single individuals referred to in the plural, like "the Dick Cheneys and Joe Liebermans and Bill Kristols," inject rhetorical flourish where it isn't needed. There is only one Dick Cheney, thankfully. The same goes for the other two.
Another problem is in referring to Joe Lieberman as a "centrist." Mr. Greenwald argues that Lieberman is not a centrist but an ideologue of the "right wing" variety. This is all within the context that the mythical spectrum of "left" to "right" actually exists in physical reality. It doesn't. There is no "left" or "right," except in the minds of the model's adherents. The "left" to "right" linear spectrum is a model of physical and intellectual reality, not reality itself.
This is not an idle exercise in semantics. By pre-authorizing placement along a metaphor, perception and analysis is skewed to fit within the figure of speech.
For instance, Joe Lieberman. I don't see him as a "rightist," but as a corrupt and paranoid individual, obsessed with his identity as a "Jew." Again, the identity of "Jew" is a mere metaphor, a false identity imposed from within as well as from without. The attempted identity is based loosely on various factions of a "religion," roughly common ancestry, and historical experience. Because of this false identity, the world is at risk for nuclear war. What we really should be looking at are models of individual and group psychology, and how they fit the egomania and paranoia of politicians and mobs, and what we can do to detect and and treat these individuals before they become threats to life everywhere.