Letters to the Editor

• I'll say Vladimir [I call him Vladimir by the way] you don't need to fear the missile shield

  [Read the article: This Modern World]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  They might be having their uncomfortable moments of oversight in the sun now that there are more Dems in the congress, but nothing will come of this, meanwhile in yet another distraction from the ongoing war in Oceania they have chosen to re-ignite the cold war and are picking a wholly unnecessary and highly dangerous fight with Putin . The American political system is inherently and essentially corrupt from top to bottom, GOP for being so vile and the Dems for being so easily bought off, intimidated, and quite simply for colluding. it's time for getting volcanically angry with these fascists and refuse to be intimidated, lied to or allowing the matter to drop.

  Tom Tomorrow: as usual, incisive like a laser scalpel...

  Permalink Monday, June 11, 2007 03:12 AM

• processing the soul out of everything

  [Read the article: Better to be Hamlet than President George]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I'm not an American, I'm a Brit living in the UK and it occurs to me that the American genius for mass production and the economies of scale is what lies behind the unfolding catastrophe that is the American political system in its current state.

  You have such a large country, it's a continent really rather than a country, you have such a diverse population drawn from many genetic pools that in good faith you feel bound to confect one myth after another of what it means to be an American and there is a necessary simplification in all that. The deification of business in America (as if simply nothing else matters) infected politics and then the media. Big Business has no time for nuance, it can't by definition even operate within the most optimal talent pools to get the right people, as interviewing people is down largely to luck. Dilbert pointed out, it can't be true as US businesses like to maintain, that they all have the best people. Think of the typical American cheese and the typical French or Italian one. or Mustard even. Philedelphia is to cheeses what Fox is to news. It sort of fills a hole but there's nothing there.

  America is a big country and impatient corporate-sponsored politicians have to do endless travel to deliver the same speeches again and again to get name or face recognition. There is no time for an authentic candidate, there's just no time. Everything has work to the clock of the simulacrum and instead of any doubt they indelibly stamp the hustings with self-aggrandizing certainty speaking to that base's most potent prejudices. It's as if the electoral process mitigates against a thinking candidate and genuine exchange between the candidate and the people in attendance.

  When Peter Oborne [uk journalist] did a tour of America just before the '04 election, he spoke to quite a few republicans at different hustings and he was astonished to find that their answers to his questions matched word for word the talking points of the endless advertising they were subjected to. Kerry? "he's just a flip-flopper"

  When I think of someone like Rove who is a very knowledgable and capable strategist, I always feel that he is stiffing his base, he has no real interest in what interests them, i.e the outcomes they want, he just wants the numbers.

  The lure of easy certainty, that's what as humans we should all be striving to avoid, but your inherent genius for process and mass reproduction and hard work as a nation and the stress that creates and the valuable human time that it eats up has managed to enshrine it as the greatest virtue. When you are so busy putting so much energy into something, wouldn't it just be devastating to find out that it was the wrong thing all along, wouldn't it just be better to not think about that? That's where you are now, you've backed the wrong horse in '00 and '04 [cheating or no cheating] and huge energy is being put in trying to convince you that the other horse is even worse [i.e you'll get attacked again]

  it's all about product and about standardisation of process and guarantees of outcomes [no contingency planning, afghanistan, iraq, katrina] and all of this driven through a deluded administration who thinks that saying it is so, makes it so.

  depressing doesn't even begin to describe this.

  also I agree with every word of 2-cent's contribution

  Permalink Monday, June 11, 2007 03:56 AM