to me is that they seem to feel no need or desire to hide all this. If you are educated enough to see it either you are one of the ruling class and approve, or you are powerless, I suppose, and so either way they don't care if you know it.

Obama is obviously a man after their own heart, a perfect figure-head, with great mass appeal (and enough smarts to save the sinking ship . . . and as one of the passengers on the ship--down in the lower decks-- who would undoubtedly not have been given space in the life boats, I suppose I can be grateful for that).

Reading your column has been quite an experience over the past few years, Glenn. I appreciate it.

in my class tomorrow (this is our week for reading the Qur'an in a Freshman course on great ideas and texts which I am teaching this semester). Your lucid summary of the issues will make for a better discussion with my students, I am sure. Thanks.

between a competent leader of the empire(Obama)or an incompetent one (like Bush was, like McCain seemingly would have been)? Because it seems we are an empire, and only those committed to the empire are allowed to be elected as its leader. And has it ever been different than this? The New York Times reminds me of that French officer in Casablanca who was shocked to find gambling going on in Rick's--or maybe someone like me wrote it, before the realities of America had sunk in. One day you wake up and find you are that angel Walter Benjamin wrote about being blown backwards through history, and everyone is claiming its progress, and all the angel sees are the ruins. The Obama candidacy has turned out to be just an extra-powerful burst of wind in that backblast through time, making even more evident the ruins:

"Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward."

They call it progress. Do they really believe it? I imagine they think it better to do what they do, this maintenance of empire. But better for who and what? Does everyone attracted to rule have a blindness to all this? As Plato said, the only rulers we could ever really trust to rule us would have to be those we drafted and forced to rule us for the common good. Someone who wants to rule empire must of course be committed to maintaining it. Obama is now exhibit A of this thesis.

The quote from the RAWA, Pedinska. It sums up so much:

RAWA strongly believes that there should be no expectation of either the US or any other country to present us with democracy, peace and prosperity. Our freedom is only achievable at the hands of our people. It is the duty of all the intellectuals, all the democratic forces and progressive and independence-seeking people to rise in a constant and decisive struggle for independence and democracy by taking the support of our wounded people as the independent force, against the presence of the US and its allies and the domination of Jehadi and Taliban criminals..

The Jehadi, the Taliban, and America and its allies: all of them the enemies of freedom.

That quote goes well with the one Pindeh gave us from Bonhoeffer:

The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts. ...

It all looks so different from within the empire if you are one of even the marginally privileged classes of people, because the crumbs of empire loom large in our world. How hard it is it see outside our own interests and comforts! It takes a true intellectual/moral effort, and I am not surprised at how many don’t see it, since it took me so long to see it as well, even with (or despite?) all my advantages.

And how funny that someone has posted about Obama being a radical lefty! As if he were not a most excellent spokesman for the Imperium! When I am depressed, it makes me think of the arguments of the Grand Inquisitor in Doestoevesky’s The Brothers Karamazov: that most want to be dominated, to be told what to do by a great leader.

Thanks again to everyone here who manages to say a clear word now and then on all of this: one feels a little less alone!

for your beautiful review about the film. Here's one old white guy who appreciated it.

Thanks for your comment: I went and read the review, and you are right. I would have thought from the title of Leonard's review that Sanford had asked us all to come to Jesus, or had at least mentioned God, which he clearly did not. I am no fan of Rand or Republicans, or of the idea of God for that matter (leaning toward Marx in economic thought), but this is an execrable article.