Letters to the Editor
-
Training vs. Education
Thanks for the excellent comments on the "lessons" for Bush from the necons.
I find the distinction between training and education useful. Training is imparted, usually at a corporate session, and what is learned decreases over time. Consider a graph which starts out at a high level and goes down over time.
In contrast, education provides concepts and skills to continue learning as you do the work. Consider a graph which starts out low but increases over time.
It sounds like Bush got another training session from his neocon luminaries. The problem is that the training does not work in the real world. So he needs refresher courses to keep him on track and to help him deny the external reality.
At least in the usual corporate training sessions, such as leadership training, they don't deny reality. They usually have platitudes to make it seem that people are dealing with real issues, but they don't explicitly deny reality. They may be misguided, and use their quarterly results and other numbers as a seeming reality, but in Bush's case he relies on a right wing media to provide propoganda to reinforce his agenda and assure him that part of the world is still on board.
-
Neo-con Sunday School
Stelzer may be right, after a fashion, In claiming that it doesn't matter what any of the rest of us believe, or hope for in our own lifetimes. This is the child-President of the United States (le etat, c'est moi and all that)--reciting the catechism of our nation's foremost death cult to the deepest approval of its high priests. This is the trajectory of our empire. And this is the scariest thing I've ever read from GG.
-
History
"History will judge . . ."
"History will vindicate . . ."
This is pure Hegel, conflating history with God (or "the Absolute"). This is standard Neocon dogma.
It also presumes the participants can read the mind of God.
For a Christian, this kind of talk is at best presumptuous and at worst blasphemy.
-
The Boy King
Q: What’s the difference between al-Qaeda training camps and Bush’s “book club” lessons?
A: Better food at the White House?
Seriously, while we know all this is going on, every time I read it I just get sick to my stomach. And for all this time I thought the Almighty had long flowing white robes and a majestic beard, not bad comb-overs, glasses and paunches. The lack of empathy for the suffering both in the Middle East and here that these policies have wrought is chilling – an ignorant child impassively throwing matches on his family’s rug and staring blankly at the flames as they rise. I don’t know if we can survive two more years … literally.
-
At the end of the last thread
someone calling his self jewhad Jewspiracy castigates us for our silly conspiracy theories. I couldn't help laughing out loud when reading his description of us as the paranoid 20-25% of Salon's readership who think that:
...Jews are Running the World from the Deck of their Orbital Nuclear Battlestation...
When I stopped laughing, I wondered, given the available evidence, and Glenn's fairly comprehensive condensation of it here over the past several months, how anyone -- even those who disagree with us -- could honestly reduce our concerns about the neocon agenda to this kind of unintentionally hilarious parody.
Then, of course, I came here, and read about GWB's book club. All I can say is that if you substitute neoconservative for Jew in Mr. Jewspiracy's formulation, it pretty much sums up not what we fear or believe, but what these folks actually aspire to for themselves. It's not a joke at all, not to them. Their own statements convict them of a world view that's very nearly impossible either to believe or to parody.
As for Mr. Jewspiracy's clumsy attempt at calling us anti-semites, it's pretty clear that the fact that many prominent neoconservatives are Jewish, while not exactly a coincidence, is also not what is driving them. GWB's millennial Christianity serves as well as their concern for Israel in excusing what is, after all, a much simpler motivation, one which the world has suffered many times in the past. No matter how you slice it, these folks are plumb crazy, and the only person who can truly understand what they're up to is one who can laugh and cry at the same time.
-
I Hope The Neocons Had A Nice Luncheon
Today, Associated Press.....
Heavily armed soldiers trudge through the fetid streets of Sadr City, gagging from the stench of open sewage, eyes warily scanning ahead for trouble. Suddenly, a middle-aged man approaches — and begs for a job.
U.S. soldiers rolled into Sadr City on March 4 primed and pumped for a fight with the notorious Mahdi Army militia of radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Instead of snipers and roadside bombs, the Americans found an even bigger problem — a vast, crowded slum where years of misery and government neglect have created conditions for the militias to thrive.
There are a lot of days when I’m like, ’It’s going to take a miracle to make this work,”’ said 1st Lt. Jacob Czekanski of the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment as he stared at a soccer field surrounded by trash. “We will always be viewed as outsiders here.”
Many U.S. soldiers were unprepared for what they found.
During a patrol last week, American troops brushed flies from their faces as they drove through rotting heaps of refuse and excrement piled outside houses. One soldier opened the door to his Humvee and vomited.
-
Nuclear Middle EAst
Roberts tells Bush "history will judge" him on whether he prevents the "nuclearization of the Middle East."
Earth to Roberts: the Middle East is already "nuclearized:" Israel has between 1 to 200 nuclear weapons.
When will Bush demand that Israel enter the NPT regime? Pray tell, Mr. Roberts.
-
Freudian slip
In my last comment, his self sould have been himself. I may not be an anti-semite, but it seems I do have a thing for rednecks. :-)
-
Link to other blog..
It's hard to read this description of Bush on the same day as Paglia's latest homage to the poor boy-king who hasn't been allowed to mature into his big cowboy boots by bad mister Cheney. She loves the man, cuz he's got a nice haircut and a deep voice. I'm sure she would have loved to be a tutor at the luncheon, to help Bush with some of her sage lessons ("Go with your gut, not what pointy-headed intellectuals think!").