GG:

The only logical constant in Iraq is that Things are Always Going Well for Us and We are Winning. Everything else -- even events that seem to be exact opposites in the narrow eyes of those who are tragically imprisoned by the suffocating constraints of logic -- actually constitutes evidence which proves that things are Great.

GO:

He had not stirred from his seat, but in his mind he was running, swiftly running, he was with the crowds outside, cheering himself deaf. He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain! He thought how ten minutes ago -- yes, only ten minutes -- there had still been equivocation in his heart as he wondered whether the news from the front would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed in him since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until this moment.

cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother,/i>

that one carries a functional snark detector when negotiating web-based informational landscapes. I have seen more than one intreped explorer fall into a raging vortex of negativity all due to an easily avoidable miscalibration.

To the Rocky Mountain News for carrying the article.

as one of the most important posts you've written for as long as I've been reading you.

While the essay you quote refers to "the paranoid" it actually reflects an attitude that can be brought to the fore among just about anybody. That's the sense that 911 did indeed change everything.

I have mentioned in prior comments that war-cheerleaders often appear to be looking in a mirror and I've always regarded it as a tragic failure of imagination, that the people who call for the death of their enemies can be recast as calling for their own elimination with just the slight shift of perspective that comes from applying the Golden Rule.

The tragedy is compounded further when you consider that some of these death-merchants self-identify as Christian.

Because they rely on stupid people to keep them in power.

This has been another edition...etc.

Yet they continue to believe that 'weakness is provocative.

If you think it through, it's really amazing that we humans can think about and discuss politics at all. Iran is an entity consisting of 68,688,433 separate individuals. The US consists of 298,444,215 yet we talk about these entities as if they were individuals, had personalities and were capable of responding to events in a coordinated (if not rational) manner. That we treat nations as if they were individuals means that how we respond to them depends on how we learned to respond to individuals. This learning is what takes place on playgrounds and schoolyards throughout the country.

So if Cheney happens to say that "weakness is provocative", he's just extrapolating from when he got his ass kicked in Jr. High.

As pathetic as that seems, I think that there's a lot of truth to it.

know this is somewhat pessimistic, but it's also the history of the world, every enlightened step forward, there are hands trying to pull people back into the muck for their own psychological reasons and power-hungry goal

But, if you pull back and look at it with a long enough view, we ARE making progress. Slavery is pretty thoroughly discredited. We're no longer decimating Native American populations. But it's like a rising tide. We notice the waves advancing and receding but fail to see the slow steady progress that the waves obscure.

Paul Rosenberg's fascinating analysis of the human psyche and WT's also insightful contribution to the conversation suddenly puctuated with We put our trust in a real God, they put theirs in a mirage, a delusion, an idol.

"My invisible friend can kick your invisible friend's butt" actually motivates people.

I personally would like to see more scholarship addressing the near universality of the invisible friend and what we can do to counter the most harmful aspects.

Daniel Denett's latest work constitutes a good starting point:

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/067003472X

My "cost of war" counter (I make no claims about its accuracy) reads $368,730,964,040. The number of troops currently deployed is ~150,000.

Dividing one into the other yields 2.48 MILLION dollars (of Gov't expenditures(taxes and bond sales)) per soldier.

You tell me if anyone's getting a windfall.....

That really is part of their mindset - that the terrorists can wipe this country, the most powerful nation ever to stride the globe, right off the map

The same mindset that drives the Islamofascist-under-every-bed fear also drives the War-on-Christmas meme. Ironically what appears to be driving it is a lack of faith.

After all, if one's diety is insufficienly powerful to actually be God to ALL mankind or insufficienly creative to create a 13.5 billion year old Universe but is constrained by an ancient text to be limited to a 6000 year old world or insuffiently REAL to stand up to all those scientists who can show how natural selection can lead to the biodiversity we observe, then its easy to see how it might be threatened by a competing diety.

As I said before, I think the fundemental problem is a profound lack of imagination.