I hear you like a Greek chorus in a play (say, one of those in the Oresteia), pointing out the inevitable truths of hubris and grim necessity the we can see but the actors apparently cannot. What an education reading you has been for me, Glenn, though the end result may simply me being back where I started, reading the ancient Greeks for lessons on how to live. One thing you have made crystal clear to me is the nature of our system of governance as being a corporate affair, as it were; I also take from you the small hope that the democratic wing of the one corporate party is better for folks the further down you go on the economic scale, and so it is still worthwhile to work for a democratic victory--though I have to admit I am not yet fully convinced of that. "Studying" with you puts me in mind of something my own students have charged me with: your classes are just depressing, Doc. I just can't believe all that stuff I used to.

Sigh.

I'm glad you got the book and enjoyed it. And I'm glad you are out of the hospital and posting here. For the interest of all, a nice passage from the commentary in our moment of financial crisis:

"At the beginning of each meal, I recommend that you look at your plate and silently recite, 'My plate is empty now, but I know that it is going to be filled with delicious food in just a moment.' While waiting to be served or to serve yourself, I suggest you breathe three times and look at it even more deeply. 'At this very moment many, many people around the world are also holding a plate, but their plate is going to be empty for a long time.' Forty thousand children die each day because of the lack of food. Children alone. We can be very happy to have such wonderful food, but we also suffer because we are capable of seeing. But when we see in this way, it makes us sane, because the way in front of us is clear--the way to live so that we can make peace with ourselves and with the world. When we see the good and the bad, the wondrous and the deep suffering, we have to live in a way that we can make peace between ourselves and the world. Understanding is the fruit of meditation. Understanding is the basis of everything."

--Thich Nhat Hanh

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

O/T message over and out.

from when I was in the National Guard. We trained extensively in disaster response and crowd control scenarios, with careful lectures about the limits imposed by posse comitatus and so forth. When I went through basic training (which we did with the regular army), in fact, there was a whole module where we were separated out and briefed on the implications of posse comitatus and so forth, and it was taken very seriously. The things they want to use the brigade for would have been the things my national guard unit trained for and spent a lot of time on. It seems so strange to me that all these distinctions have been abolished, as if I were a Roman soldier from the early Roman republic who had lived to see it begin to all come apart.

or oligarchy, or however you want to put it, and that is the reality of the situation (regardless of who is in power, though granted the democrats would make marginally better bosses): what is a sane strategy for living in this world? Is this the point where we start considering acts of conscience and bearing witness as all we have left? That all we have is to care for our integrity and the safety and welfare of our friends and loved ones within integrity's limits? Reading your column, Glenn, for the past year and a half, and reading so many of the good commentators here, has been a real education into current political realities. It has made the current power structures and dilemmas much clearer to me. Alas, what I have come to see ever more clearly is how few options we all have. Thanks to a link one commenter sent me off on I ended up reading several things that led me to the conclusion that democracy signed it death warrant when the courts ruled that corporations were people with rights and so forth. We have been seeing that play out in so many ways that last century, and now it has become so plain there is no denying it. I think I will now look for people who share with me the idea of living with conscience and honor in such an environment. Now is the time to think of resistance in the deepest sense, as finding ways to act with true humanity and bear witness to what is important. Thanks, Glenn, for being such a clear thinker about all this and helping me see my way through it.