Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 113 Editor's Choice: 3
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His legacy?
[Read the article: Bush's stairway to paradise]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My guess: It doesn't matter how much he sneers and swaggers, how often the people who serve him kiss his ass, post-mortem history will see people line up to spit on his grave, even pay an admission fee to do it (how about "6 Lungers Over Texas Amusement Park")
... starting with the brothers and sisters and orphaned children and grandchildren of those men and women he caused to be killed because he was so terrified of ever admitting he made a mistake.
Then the Texans, whose trust and affection he just used and abused.
Then the Muslims -- special visas will be given to Iraqi's so that they can fly to Texas and line up to spit (or piss) on his grave, led by the descendants of the Guantanamo prisoners.
The lines will stretch for miles.
His legacy?
People will compare him adversely to Benedict Arnold as a man who betrayed our country and caused immeasurable damage for greed and craven servility.
We're already comparing him adversely to Richard Nixon and Warren G Harding.
He's healthy and rich and should be able to live a long, long life, despite all the coke and booze, and I hope he does, and meets his ghosts every night.
I'm older than he is and probably won't live to see it happen -- but I have no doubt it will. And that gives me some comfort, a sense that justice still exists in our world.
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Ok, I got choked up
[Read the article: The courage of Mayor Jerry Sanders]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gives me the same feeling as "Amazing Grace" and would we spurn that song -- which also chokes me up -- because John Newton, the author, had sailed on slave ships? Or because it relates to a Christian God -- one doesn't have to be religious to appreciate the sentiment of "Amazing Grace" -- I'm basically anti-religious -- but Mr Newton's song makes me cry most times (that and another religious song -- "Simple gifts").
As to there being less integrity because of his daughter and staff, I have found that unless one is in contact with individuals that society views as a representative of one of the classes of people who are systematically denied access to the same civil liberties as others, the likelihood of having that sort of insight or revelation is less -- whether the class is gay, lesbian, African-American, Chicano, Asian, whatever. (Obviously I'm a white American, taught, as most white males, to have a derisive, even fearful attitude toward black males -- and it takes every day of the lives of those like me to recognize, transcend it, etc.)
So even more, in a country that is so sexually confused that males look at gay men in stark terror ("I don't mind shooting Ayrabs or getting blowed up, but what if one of THEM looks at me in the shower?") and look at lesbians only as a potential threesome just waiting for Mr Stud to come along, it's almost always ONLY the person who knows the "other" as a person who gets over the insanity.
In a political party like today's Republicans, so committed to MANLY virtues and only secretly going on the down low, it must be even harder to say those words -- to "come out," not for ones own sexuality but to come out as what those people like to say they are -- come out as an actual Christian and give (and therefore demand) respect for those "others."
Good for him.
(In reference to an earlier comment, I know there are people who are both Gay and Republicans. I just can't figure out why. Only ONE of those categories is a choice, and that one despises the reflection it sees in the other.
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Di-Di -- not corrupted by Washington -- was always that way
[Read the article: Former Clinton officials lobby for amnesty for FISA lawbreaking]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glen -- some say Washington did it to her ... others say the trauma & guilt of the Mosconi-Milk murders by Dan White -- she was the one who convinced George Mosconi to renege on his promise to Dan White when White resigned and Mosconi said that White should think about it and he would keep the seat open and if White decided to stick with it, his seat on the City Board of Supervisors would still be his -- Di-Di convinced Mosconi "But George, if we replace him, we'll have a liberal majority on the board."
Which was the flip-out trigger for Dan White.
And of course she became mayor after that.
It's possible she has some guilt over that.
Some say that she was sexually abused as a girl and that put her into terror-motivated completely armored mode (which, if true, would be completely understandable) I don't really do analytical psychology.
Whatever the reasons if there even are any -- liberal is a kind of weird word for her -- I interviewed a member of her staff when she was still a supervisor, who swore me to honor ETERNAL anonymity and at that time (1970's) this staff person said "I've never seen a fascist liberal before. But if she could dress us all up in little brown uniforms and make us march in step -- she would."
Perhaps people thought she was liberal because she stood up for gay rights -- which she did -- but was more because there were 200,000 Plus Gay Voters in San Francisco -- and she promised to represent the people who voted for her -- and she did. She was -- oxymoronically -- an honest politician who saw EVERYONE as a voter, and molded her agenda to the community, at least while on the local level when people in a city of 750,000 could take a bus to City Hall -- but somewhere along the line she got more and more obsessed with guns and more guns and more defense and protection and more rigidity.
Whatever the cause, my point is she's ALWAYS been like this, for all of her public life.