- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I'm a shit kicker from Kansas who began announcing myself as a proud elitist around the time Junior the Decider started threatening Iraq. The idea seemed half-baked and there's no shame in thinking things through. In fact, that appears to be what many of the War Czar candidates are doing. Of course, it's easy for Junior to surround himself with these marginal Christians - they're plentiful and no one else wants them. Obviously, no one with all their marbles would want to be connected with this administration, so there we are.
Cheney is pathologically paranoid, Junior spends half of his time trying to complete a sentence and the other half subconsciously looking for constitutional battles just to prove that he's better and smarter than the old man - and gosh darn it, people like him. Or, they did. Not so much now.
When Newt Gingrich becomes what passes as an intellectual in Republican circles, it should be clear to everyone that, indeed, mediocrity has won the day in America.
We've had years of myth building in this country around ideas like deregulation, a trickle down economy, privatization working better than government, etc. The only good that has emerged is that we've been dealing with the consequenses of these conceits for over 25 years and the net result is that the rich are richer, primary education is in shambles, higher education is getting out of reach for more people, we're in an ill-advised war with no end in sight and it's costing us a lot of money - the degree to which most people who can't even comprehend how it will end up affecting them and their children.
Time to deconstruct. You're right - everyone should proudly proclaim themselves an elitist. And a populist.
