Site Presented By
Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
nerdnam
Published Letters: 563 Editor's Choice: 61
The real problem is that there are no good options in Iraq.
The most moral thing we could do would be to draft every kid in America and put them in Iraq until every citzen of Iraq is safe and secure. We screwed up their country and by all rights we owe them that much. But Americans no longer have any moral sense and won't tolerate this.
The most practical thing we could do would be to simply give the country back to Saddam. All kidding aside, when we finally do leave, Iraq will almost certainly be taken over by a strongman little better than Saddam and possibly worse. And it might even be a strongman from the insurgent side. Thus the whole point of the war will have been in vain.
Since it is impossible to do either the moral thing or the practical thing in Iraq, we have no good options. Every choice we could make is either disgraceful or ruinous. Or both.
What we should REALLY do is demand the resignation of Bush and Cheney. They put us in an impossible situation and there is no way they can lead us out.
Bush should appoint someone like Colin Powell or General Schwarzkopf as vice-president and then resign. We need a fresh start and we need leaders who have served in war and understand it. Then Bush can get back to his all important bike rides.
Interestingly, P. J. O'Rourke used the same term, 'sanctimonious,' to describe Mark Twain. (He did refrain from calling Twain an 'assclown,' IIRC.)
What's the beef here? Well, sanctimonious means feigning piety or righteousness. But who would see Twain or Garrison Keillor as feigning piety or righteousness? Answer: whiny people.
P.J. O'Rouke's humor is all about whining: whining about liberals and burdensome taxes and European ways and whatever. But Twain is always about trying to do the right thing, even if doing the right thing means you could go to hell. And even if you fall short of doing the right thing.
Since P.J. O'Rouke begins with the presumption that he is always right, and that America is always right, and that Republicans are almost always right, and that anyone who doesn't agree with him is not just wrong but a misbegotten being, no wonder he finds Twain 'sanctimonious.' Any shill would.
Garrison Keillor is less morally pointed than Twain and is more about escaping the burdens of being whiny. Because what in the world can you do about other people's failings? Where is the end to counting the failings of your father? As Keillor suggests, sometimes you need to just drop the burdens and step outside of yourself and get out onto the ice.
...that so called 'progressive' Democrats can't seem to come up with their own alternative to Joe Lieberman. Hoping that a 75 year old former Republican running in a DIFFERENT party might in some stroke of luck take him out? That's just lame.
The problem is that the left has bought into an entirely negative ideology: the baleful Chomisky notion that corporations run everything and all the poor leftist can do about it is stand in the street and wave his pathetic sign begging the corporations to treat people nicer. No wonder a wish and a prayer seems like a viable alternative to Joe Lieberman.
The left needs to get itself off the street and back into the swing of American democratic politics: they need to put up actual candidates and start making arguments to the voters (and not to corporations). The left needs to form an actual, defensible ideology that can inspire voters and guide politicians. Then there would be no question of an alternative to Joe Lieberman--there would just simply be a candidate.
Sadly as it exists now, the left has no idea what it thinks or what it stands for, and thus there is no alternative to Lieberman--or to Clinton, Biden, Kerry, or anyone else.
"His thoughts and memories seem so specific, so classified, that I simply cannot relate."
This is a very sad statement. If no one is allowed to be specific, or to be different, than no one can relate to anyone else, ever. If no one can be a specific age, a specific gender, or have specific and unique thoughts, then there is no way to cross the divides between us.
What you're really saying that you don't think Mr. Keillor should be allowed to be who he is, just because he isn't like you.
The truth is that EVERYONE has very specific memories and thoughts, even people we imagine are just like us. Finding out those differences is what makes the human race bigger. Trying to cram those differences down just makes us smaller.
"Why did I write any of my books, after all? For the sake of pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions."
This could just be more artifice. Nabokov might have more readily sneered at Barra than at Nafisi.
He may not have intended a message, but that doesn't mean one doesn't come out.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
Once one obtains Seriousness credentials in the Washington media, they are irrevocable no matter one's conduct.
Salon headlines in your mailbox
