the moon, yes: we like the moon.

http://www.rathergood.com/moon_song/

while the donkeys look on wistfully and hope to one day do the same. A kind of Laurel and Hardy affair, our politicians are. After the elephants destroy the forest, enabled by the donkeys, the elephants turn and say: well this is another fine mess you've gotten us into.

There is a reason I read the comments every day, and this image is the one for today.

you wrote: "One can say that it does take some courage to do what McClellan did -- he had to have known the intense scorn he would provoke by the right-wing/media two-headed monster. Not everyone would have been willing to do that. But the fact that he did the job he did for so long and waited years to speak out precludes any admiration for him."

I've been listening to the guy talk on tv, however, and in all fairness the account he gives of why it took him so long rings true. He presents the idea that he was then a true believer, totally sucked in, and that only slowly, after leaving that atmosphere, had he been able to come to terms with what he experienced and did. That it took him a lot of time to work all that out. I think we can give him that credit, that benefit of the doubt: he is doing more than any of the others, admitting that he was bamboozled, admitting he was fooled, and trying to come clean and tell the truth. The fact that he couldn't see all this then shouldn't preclude some kind of personal growth and insight so that now he has things to say about it. Unlike Colin Powell and others, who just stay silent, he has apparently decided to, well, repent. More power to him.

Did you ever see the footage (which the "news" did not show) of people pelting Bush's limo with eggs and fruit and veggies at the last presidential inaugaral? It was a glorious sight. I wish I had been there to throw an egg or two at the limo of that dishonorable person. The office should not serve as a ring of gyges, making the holder invisible to public outrage. Its all a matter of symbols: the symbolic role of the president, the symbolism of booing the man in that office when he dishoners that office. Really, its all the symbolism we had left, since they cheated away even our rather symbolic votes.

And I had not heard the news about Bucky1 until reading the thread today. I will miss his voice here, and talking with him about the neoplatonists. Peace, Bucky1. I hope your soul ascended quickly to the One.

what would happen if I could really talk with someone like Broder--to really ask them what they meant and to press them on it in a circumstance that was non-threatening so they could know I had no motive other than trying to understand them. Like when on of my students in class says some amazing thing that seems so out of touch, and I get to talk with them and quiz them and let them talk back to me and we get a dialogue going. Does Broder know he is so inconsistent and is aware of his role as a propagandist? Would he admit that it is about the money and all it gives him? Or is he one of those stranger folk who live in a full time fantasy? I wish I could talk with him. I would ask him if he realizes he is going to die one day, and that in the moment he is dying all that he will have to hold on to will be the life he has lived. To explore the strangeness of self-deception, or maybe conscious deception, to try to understand the sophist. And then to take a long hard cold look at myself so that I don't find myself one day in his circumstances, for whatever reason. Self-knowledge. Compassion. Any way to help Broder wake up?

You wrote that There you have it. We live in a nation of laws, or we live in a Kafkaesque nightmare.

Alas, my logical skills kicked in upon reading your dilemma. I formulated the argument as follows:

Either we live in a nation of laws, or we live in a Kafkaesque nightmare.

We do not live a nation of laws. [this has became clear]

Therefore, we live in . . .

Well, you make a guess at the conclusion of this disjunctive syllogism.

Just wanted to second your seconding (third it?). The real horror in the last 7 years has been the innocent lives shattered by our military blunders. People talk about out troops being killed (and I empathize with that and find it a horror: I spent 18 years in the military): but the real tragedy is the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (how terrible to type that figure) at a minimum who have died for no good reason, not to mention the vast numbers of displaced, etc. etc.; and then there are those who my government has tortured (can't believe I am typing those words still: seems like a dream). I view our casualties among our troops as the collateral damage, so to speak: the heart of the damage is the horror done to the Iraqi, and yes, Afghani, innocents. That is the emergency. That is the horror. That is why it is important to elect someone with some modicum of reason.