Letters to the Editor
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I wonder...
ever since this madness began..this war..this dismantling of our Constitution, I have wondered if Bush is just a cynical opportunist, using a primitive view of reality as cover for his political Base of likeminded primitives...or if he really just plain crazy.
After reading this article, I'm really wondering if the latter is reality: that he's just plain nuts.
Anyone here ever wonder what kind of diagnosis he'd get if he could be examined by a good shrink? I know books have been written on the subject..but, really. Is he crazy? This article suggests that the man is mad. 'round the bend.
Maybe he was a cynic once..maybe he still is, when it suits him, but perhaps his cynicism and his madness now reinforce each other in some weird way.
Wild. A president who makes Nixon look like Lincoln. 35 years ago when Nixon was driven from office, would any of us have predicted this? We probably should have. The Right would have its day. And now it has, Providence help us all.
(and Lincoln is Bush's favorite. That would be intensely funny if it wasn't so completely surreal.)
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Don't blame Jack Bauer ...
Blame the idiots in the White House who think he's real. Hell, I enjoy the show and Bauer couldn't hurt me enough to vote for a Republican from President to dog catcher.
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A couple of artistic notes
The art that Bush chooses, as mentioned in the Blumenthal piece, is clearly an indication of what's on his shallow little mind. But I'd like to lodge an objection to the inclusion of Norman Rockwell in the indictment. Yes, he's the first artist you associate with the Saturday Evening Post and its middlebrow comfort -- but his work, rather than illustrating the go-it-alone macho posturing of the cowboy paintings in the Oval Office, was usually a celebration of populism. His series illustrating "The Four Freedoms" is a good example of this. Further, Rockwell's work for the SatEvePost became most famous in the FDR era and beyond. His first cover for the magazine was contemporary with the paintings Blumenthal mentions, but his most famous and memorable work came decades later. Using his name in the headline (which may be an editorial rather than an authorial decision, I'm guessing), magnifies the injustice of associating him with the lowbrow, fascist tastes of Dear Leader.
The Wikipedia entry on Rockwell at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Rockwell has a typical illustration, his famous "Freedom of Speech." I doubt that's a picture that George W. holds dear to his heart.
A really scary example of what Bush does like to see on his walls is mentioned in this current entry at the SteveAudio blog: http://steveaudio.blogspot.com/2007/04/get-you-room-at-rhythm-ranch.html.
Taking off from the ridiculous media feeding frenzy about John Edwards' haircut, it offers jaw-dropping details about the obscenely expensive tastelessness of Bush's so-called "ranch" (which, I learned from this post, was built for Bush by members of a fundamentalist cult!) -- and one of those details is this amazing, though hardly unbelievable, fact... from Time magazine, yet:
Other walls have a few touches of humor: a framed likeness of President Bush dressed as an oil sheik greets you as you walk out of the bathroom.
Read the whole SteveAudio post... It takes Blumenthal's descriptions into an even scarier third dimension.
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Norman Rockwell
Interesting article. But a word in defense of Norman Rockwell: Although he painted kitsch/Americana, it is important not to misunderstand who he was and where he was coming from. He was a big supporter of Roosevelt and the New Deal. He did paintings in support of civil rights. One of his most important projects, late in his life was a cover for the (then) very leftist Ramparts magazine in the sixties, a portrait of "red" philosopher Bertrand Russell.
It's always useful to remember that people are often more complicated than we think.
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The ticking bomb myth
"What if, as the popular Fox television program '24' recently portrayed, a high-level terrorist leader is caught who knows the location of a nuclear weapon?"
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Quite simply, catching someone who knows the location of a nuclear weapon is useless.
If the weapon is set to go off within a short period of time, then it's impossible to get accurate information from the subject in time.
Torture doesn't somehow prevent the person from giving false information, and all the suspect has to do is buy time.
If the weapon is not set to go off soon, then the suspects associates have time to move the weapon.
Torturing terrorist doesn't provide that kind of information. While torture can provide useful information, gaining that same information is done more efficiently via means that do not violate international laws and subject or troops to illegal torture in kind.
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On Torture and The Bush Administration
Perhaps it is simply because, as Charles Taylor so succinctly put it, "There has been no other period in my life . . . when picking up a morning newspaper seemed like such an invitation to begin your day in a state of crippling rage," but every time I read one of these articles on the Bush Administration and torture, I think of the same things:
I remember that these Bushies, almost to a man (or woman), did not serve in combat. I remember that they are classic bullies, bemoaning "trial lawyers," but quick to sue you (or simply declare you an "enemy combatant" and slap you in jail) if you badmouth them; growling at "rogue regimes," but quick to send in the Marines simply to prove their muscle; fast at accusing you of treason for questioning their motives, but perfectly happy to question yours.
And then my thoughts turn dark, and I wonder just what would happen if John Yoo were held in a cell for several weeks, subjected to hypothermia, and forced to endure physical pain in intensity up to but not including organ failure? Would he consider it "quaint?" Would Dick Cheney be tough under a beating of rubber hoses filled with ball bearings, which don't break the skin, but do pulp the bones underneath, but certainly don't bring you to "organ failure" nor do they kill you? Would Alberto Gonzales hold out long stripped to his underwear, tied to a chair, with snarling dogs snapping at his genitalia after having been kept in solitary for several weeks? Or would he consider that "obsolete?"
Perhaps it is uncharitable of me. Perhaps it is my residual anger at having these people hijack my constitution and my country and the laws that I live by and the principals that have governed my country--and indeed Western civilization--for hundreds of years. Perhaps it is simply the desire for revenge. I don't know. But every time I read an article like Mr. Blumenthal's, I wonder how "vague" President Bush would find Article 3 if he were put it in a hood with electrodes on his hands and forced to stand barefoot on a metal plate, at the mercy of Shiite militants. Somehow, I don't think he would find it "vague" at all.