I forgot to copy and paste my friend's poem

Blake's Comfort

The hunger for a purity of purpose,

if not the harder purity of heart,

the fanatic stroll along the fringe with a clean

conscience, righteous anger ever at a surplus.

Such a small thing, to slaughter those between

ourselves and our enemies, who stroll their own part

of the playground ; our opposites, our twins.

All are made debtors to the sins

we blind men choose, in choosing death.

Laughing voices whisper from the Land of Nod

what we howl back in rude translation.

The cruel lamb tastes the dying falcon’s breath,

restraint is shown through silence and starvation

and a fool ascribes his coronation not to men but God.

Why is that far left shills such as yourself IMPLY that the war will end if the US pulls out (meaning, of course, ASAP). You know exactly what will happen if the US pulls out precipitously, but you really don't give a "bleep" because you can make a career out of blaming somebody else for the carnage. This is the same gross dishonesty and deceit that you beat up the administration for, yet you conveniently ignore the consequences of your own proposals, both real and implied.

Michellines, the poem is much appreciated. You're lucky to have such a friend, especially one who, like Jesus himself, has spent so much time in the wilderness.

I especially liked the recognition of our opposites, our twins. It reminds me of Eliot's mon semblable, mon frère, which is really the very heart of our shared humanity.

And so to bed....

I agree that change is in the wind. The Washington-based media hasn't 'gotten' it yet, but they have never been a leading indicator, and have become disgracefully complacent these last two decades. Yet even they will realize it at some point, possibly as a result of a family argument at Thanksgiving. My evidence is anecdotal, but I believe the bits and pieces add up to something. I work in a bank in a small town in Colorado. In the last year I can't recall a single one of my colleagues saying anything even slightly approving about the Bush administration. Instead I hear comments like "those bozos" and "what an effing disaster this thing in Iraq is" and so on. My mother drank the Republican Kool-aid in her cradle, and even she is disgusted with the conduct of the war. My youngest brother, who I never knew to be even slightly interested in politics, sent me an email on election night last November, crowing "We won! Not just the House but the Senate!" I didn't even know he voted until that email.

Then there are bloggers like John Cole, Greg Djerejian and Andrew Sullivan - all once fervent supporters of the invasion of Iraq; all of whom have turned away in disgust from the BA. (I know Sully in particular drives people crazy, but though I often disagree with him I think he writes well, and he has been a genuine hero in the fight against torture.)

Maybe you really can't fool all the people all the time?

I'm thrilled that some McClatchy reporters have been doing such a good job. I spent a lot of my life in Central California, where the McClatchy chain began, and I always thought they put out a decent, honest newspaper.

Mind you, it's not over. Bush (or do I mean Cheney?) is still president. They still can, and probably will, do a lot of damage. It will take a generation, perhaps longer, to clean up the mess they made, and our moral authority in the world may never fully recover. But I begin to have a glimmering of hope that a day will come when we'll at least make a solid, honest, reality-based effort to recoup our losses. It won't be perfect. But maybe I can stop feeling slimed by my government. That would be a big improvement.

PS to Nebuchadnezzar (you know who you are): Unlike you, I am convinced that GWB will be remembered as the absolute worst president the US has ever endured. But you go, girl. There's something very touching about blind faith.

I've avoided discussions involving Mona's Libertarianism since I first started reading Unclaimed Territory in late 2005. She tends to drag so much baggage from her years discussing these topics (in that closed community) that it's virtually impossible, in the short space available in comments, to make a dent in that hide. Her condescending tone here makes it tough to keep staying out of it, but even now I don't see much point. As she says, for now, we can use as many people as we can muster to oust Bush, and when that's done libertarians will go back to being who they always have been.

I've been immersed in these kinds of discussions my whole life as well. My dad joined the Air Force to to be a pilot, but an IQ test forced him into an intensive Russian language course, and they put him to code-breaking during the 1950's. He was in SE Asia during those heady days of nuclear weapons expansion. After he got out he got his doctorate in Russian philosophy.

I remember when the spooky guys in suits came to the house to talk to him about why he was getting journals (in the 60's) from the USSR when he'd been told not to. They wanted to make sure the former NSA guy wasn't switching sides. I remember getting into trouble in 6th grade after talking to a friend's folks about things we talked about at home, and it caused a rumor to go around the new town we'd moved into that my dad was a Red. Discretion became ingrained early on.

When I went to college in the late 70's, early 80's, I worked summers in Alaska and met some Russian defectors that had managed to leave the USSR. One had grown up in one of Stalin's prison camps. I spoke enough Russian to become good friends with several defectors who'd gone to Alaska to smuggle stuff into their old homeland (they believe in taking full advantage of every capitalist opportunity that liberty from intrusive policing allows, and the Bering Strait is very narrow.) From them I learned a whole new way of seeing Russian Communism.

Every time I read a post from Mona about American Stalinists, I'm hearing years of practiced anger, with no willingness to believe she might not have the subject covered. It's tempting to engage it, but in the end all I'd end up substantively saying would be much the same as Timberman, LWM, Rosenburg, and others have already said. It is true though, that most American communists had no idea what was really happening in the USSR, and though some ended up denouncing Stalin when they found out what he'd really been doing, those who didn't were no more in favor of it, even those who'd inadvertently helped. (I'd bet the percentage of American Communists that ended up being true Stalinists is less than the percentage of Libertarians that stockpile weapons, hand out None Dare Call It Conspiracy pamphlets, and put up Get US Out of the UN! signs on billboards.)

The ideas behind the theories are not the same as historical realities. The realities involve so many different factors that they are far too complex to reduce to rote judgments and convenient labels.

The philosophical discussion is far from over.

Mona, when you need health care, do you avoid medicine? The worst can kill you dead.