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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Ballsee
Published Letters: 482 Editor's Choice: 21
What a sad day for the nation when the U.S. Congress agrees, right out in the open, to condone torture. That is the ultimate reality of this Senatorial act. We have become our enemies. The country's moral fiber is unraveling and it's the neo-cons, those who preach the loudest about "morals", that are leading the way. The five Democratic senators who voted for this travesty should be thrown out of the Party. Ultimately, this horror that has become the law of the land is on the Democrats' heads. They had the opportunity to repudidate the lawlessness and outrage of this Administration but AGAIN they supported it! On that one score, the right-wing is correct. The Democrats are a bunch of spineless twits.
Couldn't Cheney also be impeached as an "accomplice"? All of this was his idea anyway. His and Rummy's. Surely no one believes GWB is capable of coming up with this policy. He's a moron. Yes, the buck stops with him and he's got to go, but Cheney too. You gotta get Cheney. He's the mind behind all this horror. Any Constitutional scholars in the audience? Could Cheney also be put on trail? Rove would be irrelevant and so would Rummy. They're just hired guns.
The Canadian guy has it right. We DON'T live in a democracy. We live in a police state. There are cameras and listening devices everywhere, stores, banks, public highways, public parks, your local bar, your schools, your churches, your houses. Everybody is spying and watching each other. The walls have ears. There is no privacy. Your most personal information is for sale and under constant surveillance and scrutiny either by private industry and/or the government they've bought off. The government and their right-wing cabal are making sure you don't get out of the consumer line. "Thou shalt not become a citizen but remain a good consumer, or else."
Franklin said that anyone who exchanged their liberties for security, deserved neither.
Gore Vidal says that one of Americans' charms is that we never learn.
Simple why Brokeback is doing so well out in the great unwashed redness of America. It's a story told so perfectly, so authentically, to absolutley correctly that everyone gets it! It's a freakin' miracle that this movie was made my a U.S. film crew. Americans generally make god awful movies with homosexual themes or homosexual characters. Most American movies with gay or homosexual themes are either outright dumb and insulting (Alexander The Great) or utterly silly (Julie Newmar). Usually what passes for a "gay movie" isn't a "gay movie" at all (The Philadelphia Story.) Hollywood is either wallowing in homophobia by presenting the worst stereotypes as the sole definition of "gay" or their preaching at us. In either case, the characters are completely removed from anything approximating social realities. Europeans, the Asians, Australians, Canadians, Latin Americans all do much better at presenting gay realities, homosexual characters and homosexual situations with much more integrity and authenticity because they don't divorce them from the real world in which the participate and help form. "Brokeback Mountain" breaks the American mold. One can only hope forever. Every single frame of this movie is right on target. There isn't a false note in it. It's organic and natural and powerful and overwhelming in the same way that the earth is, that the sky is, that love is. I only wish the freakin' media (gay and straight) would stop referring to it as the "gay cowboy movie." These characters are not "gay". Gay is a culture, a great deal of which a great many homosexuals don't like. Homosexual is a behavior. People choose to be gay. They don't choose to be homosexual. These characters had a love affair that lasted twenty years. They were also full of homophobia, Ennis at least is. Jack not so much. This is also completely accurate. This movie and Annie Poulux's story are amazing works of truthfulness and integrity, told with such keen sensitivity and awareness, without prejudice, about how many, many thousands of men live their lives, then and now. Everyone gets it 'cause it breaks our hearts. It just blows me away that it was made by a U.S. film crew.
If the Baby Boomers are so freakin' great, why in God's holy name is George W. Bush President? The concept of some "generational" mindset is pure fantasy, total made up media and ivory tower crap. The values and mores of the "Hippie Generation" was always mostly a figment of the imagination of East and West Coast liberal media people, reflected, shallowly as it turned out, in the various causes taken up by their own priviledged and spoiled children out of adolescent and post-adolescent peek. As soon as it was time to have to actually sacrifice anything or actually do something, the causes were dropped by most of them like hot potatoes. When it was time to go to work instead of depending on Dad and Mom, what few there were in reality sold out, in a flash. The truth is that the children who came of age from about 1955 to 1975 never marched in lock step. Most of them voted for Ronald Reagan in the belief that their material interests would best be served by a fence post only to be bested by the moron they voted for in the last two Presidental elections. OK, so there were 20 true believers, but that's about it as the largest generation in U.S. history goes sliding into the dustbin of history. Good riddiance. The Baby Boom generation, of which I am a ground zero member, is an utter failure. What a miserable, self-involved, pigheaded generation, presiding over the death of the American Republic. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reily, Sean Hannanity, Don Imus, George Will, Chris Matthews and all the other blathering shitheads on TV, the President of the United States and most of the U.S. Congress...Baby Boomers. Fuck the Baby Boom generation.
The Democratic Party has become the Whig Party. Save yourself.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
