hahaha: a good one. Thank you for making me smile. I do love those presocratics.

you are the king of providing interesting links.

how you just get these flashes and glimpses of people and what they are thinking in these comments. I would love to be able to sit down in a group of all you folks and just talk for a while so I could come to a better understanding of what you are trying to say (especially the ones who bash on each other so much, with the back and forth stuff: so much passion and I think I could learn so much from both sides of the argument. I hear enough to sense that I cannot casually dismiss either side and would love to be able to engage the positions in depth so that I could learn what there is to learn). brightstar and adnoto, for example, so angry and almost hopeless; and those on the other side like LWM and others with their angry rejoinders; and folks like Patrick Morgan sort of in the middle, saying peace; etc. etc. I would love to see if adnoto and brightstar could really teach me that I am naive to hope change is yet possible because they system is well . . . the sytem(for there is much evidence on their side); and yet I see (as in the Chomsky quote earlier) that good things have indeed happened, and it makes me feel audacious, to allude to the famous Reverend W, and wonder if hope can make sense. And all you guys and gals get so angry with one another it makes me wince, but if that is what it takes to get the arguments out, then what the heck, I guess it is part of it.

Though I will say that the ad hominems are truly irritating, like fingernails on a chalkboard: but hell, times are strange and terrifying, and it makes sense to me that folks are losing their tempers.

Thanks to all sides and commenters and shouters and screechers and poets and thinkers and angry folk and dispassionate observers of whatever persuasion (and especially Glenn of course) for helping in my continuing education.

I'm not sure you take Glenn's point. When I was an Army officer, I was loyal to my oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States. In no way would that make me want to be spokesman for some political point the pentagon or any higher up would want to put out. I will admit that during my time in the military I would have conflicts with what I came to think of as the "politicals"--whether of the left or the right--by qua being an Army officer I viewed them as being confused or venal. The retired officers who agreed to carry the political water in the ways described dishonered their service. I was also called on quite a few occasions a naive idealist, but that is another matter. I take oaths seriously.

"by qua" becomes "but qua" !

didn't see your post before I posted mine (on taking the oath). You said it really well: so I could have said: What she said.

approaches Hunter Thompson levels:

"Those visits to the Pentagon are almost as depressing as the V.A. blogging-rap group I attend. Inside the Pentagon the War-Porn DVD rental shop is always packed with brass-officers that are dressed in yellow galoshes, three piece sear-sucker orange bib-overalls, and the conventional pink bow ties. The DOD embezzlers are overdosed on aspirin, and zombie-thorazine. They shuffle along... and keep making irritating dry-heaving upchuck sound in the hallways. The dry tongue is hung out. They military hacks pant in blood lust.... The kill-club is gag-elite. They buy Wimpy hamburgers snacks there, and bet on greyhound dog races with 'our' taxes. The Brass Band plays "Amazing Grace" the Americans are so happy. Wretches!"

Imagination and art are sometimes more exact than logic.

do your comments make me feel touchy? touchy like I'd like to shake your hand!

We are commanded by the civilians, yes: but if given an unlawful order are not supposed to follow it. This does not seem to relate to the point Glenn is making: officers were asked to do illegal things, thus compromising their oath. I myself always refused what I took to be an unlawful order, which sometimes got me into rather strange confrontations (and ultimately, yes, I did leave, because it seemed to me the higher in rank you went the more corrupt it became, so that it began to seem that a life of continual confrontation would be the result). But that the military is under the control of the civilian politicians does not negate an oath to uphold and defend the constitution, and that seems to me to be the key point.

when I said "this does not seem to relate to the point Glenn is makeing" I meant that "the point you made in your post does not seem to relate to the point Glenn is making."

I think bucky1 meant by his title to his comment that it was the possibilities of sex that are the reason for folks not continuing to educate themselves (he was not calling Aych a name)