Letters to the Editor
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3
Paul R... There Are Two Types Of People In The World
Those who believe there are two types of people in the world.
And those who don't.
I think there are three types.
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Re: Karl Rove
FWIW:
Simplistic moralistic and conspiratorial explanations cast the illusion that it can be easily understood and navigated ("Karl Rove controls all the voting machines so everything is hopeless").
While such an explanation for the behaviour of others is facile and simplistic, I don't think it's going too far to say that, on the face of it, Karl Rove is a deeply amoral character, and that his biggest motivations seem to be "winning" ... and power. I don't know what went wrong with him, but he's a very disturbed person ... a sociopath, actually. See Moore and Slater's book "Bush's Brain". U.S. soldiers are nothing more than those little coloured pieces of wood on a "Risk" board that Rove undoubtedly played as a kid.
Cheers,
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Post-Modern?
Why Glenn I never pegged you as a post-modernist. Your critiquing of simplistic binaries is at the heart of the post-modern critique on knowledge, which is to say you are skeptical of master narratives.
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quite brilliant
approaching masterpiece
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I agree with Glenn, but then I disagree -- or rather I wish he would apply this analysis to other issues
In particular the behavior of journalists and "MSM" like the Washington Post, the New York Times and others, or for that matter lobbying and campaign finance.
It is impossible to understand the emasculation of the the US media without understanding the economic milieu that modern journalists operate in. In general journalism pays well – crap. A few major media outlets pay well to senior reporters assigned to important “beats” like the White House. We can decry Broder and Cohen, fairly I believe, but in doing so we are implicitly recognising that they have reached a level of seniority and indeed wealth where they can do real journalism and not fear the consequences. But most of the by-lines we see in the MSM are by much more insecure hacks, men and women making a good, decent income in an industry that pays most of their peers poverty line wages. Is it any wonder that they won’t take risks with upsetting the White House, or that they look up to the “successful” in their profession like Broder, Klien and Cohen. We also ignore the impact that the formation of media conglomerates have, with entities like ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS, the Washington Post and NY Times exposed to government displeasure in areas that have nothing to do with news. How many people have had to tell 10s or 100s of people they just lost their job because we the management screwed-up; I have and they were some of the most unpleasant days of my life. Can you see how killing a story might not seem that big a deal if it means not laying someone off who has little savings and few prospects – I’d sooner have my teeth drilled than repeat that exercise – and so the shades of grey are slowly killing us.
Campaign contributions are another example. We may detest Karl Rove, but one has to recognise his skill. Those skills have been obtained in part by his involvement as a permanent campaign staff member over decades. Can we expect the democratic Karl Rove to live on beans and leftovers and get that skill as an unpaid volunteer. The reality is that campaign consultants need experience, and to get it most need to be paid. These same consultants form the higher reaches of both parties – no wonder they see problems in campaign finance control; but the alternative is to have rich trust-fund-babies do the work, and guess what, inherited wealth leans Republican. So we end up with a situation where we tolerate money in politics because, well, we hope the Dems can spend it better than the Republicans. Lobbying is yet another example, somewhat like campaign finance. Frankly, Hill pay is pretty crummy for the quality of some of the staff. If we cut off the opportunity to take lobbying jobs, who will that leave, again the children of the rich.
Of course the dirty little secret is that trust-fund-babies have been taking over journalism, particularly political journalism and political staff jobs, not to mention some types of Federal Government jobs for the last two decades. Too many of these jobs pay too little and, at least in journalism and political staff require people to “pay their dues” in unpaid internships and very poorly paid assistant jobs for a year or five before pay gets good. Sooner or later weariness at living in group homes, struggling to pay rent and student loans leaves only TFBs, the children of the well-off or rich, and this is distorting our political debate. Again, I am not saying TFBs are evil, but that simply do not “get it.” And the whole Bush family have been like that for 5+ generation of silver spoons in the newborn’s mouth – and without making someone a bad person, having no-one past your great-grandfathers generation of your family with even a mortgage to pay does make that person do bad things.
At the end of the day we need to understand why the public buy this manichean world view, while being willing to understand the greyness inherent in issues like abortion, or even the rationale for income tax.
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What "truly motivates" PoliticalRealityOnline?
The answer to all of these questions about Greenwald is that his columns are nothing more than a pathetic way to build his own self-image at the expense of a lame duck President with absolutely no regard for the fact that America's most ruthless enemies are countling on the Greenwald's of the world to help them destroy America from within.
Paranoid are we? Or is it just you talking to the mirror again?
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Excellent piece, as far as it goes...
...but, Glenn, you do not address the possibility, made by a number of posters, that GW Bush is psychologically disturbed. That we have, in essence, a crazy man running the country.
If you judge purely by his actions, GW Bush not only subscribes to a manichean view of the Universe, he also displays many symptoms of a deeply disturbed person, in a strict clinical sense.
Follow his entire career and you find a man who cannot admit error, who cannot tolerate ambiguity, nor dissent from his views. Period. None.
It is true that his manichean world-view, and that world-view as aped by the rest of the GOP, has caused enormous harm. But it is also worth considering just where this craziness originated. Partly, from the authoritarian mindset of the corporate wing of the GOP, but also straight out of the mind of GW Bush, who--again, based purely on his actions--shows all the signs of someone with constantly worsening narcissistic personality disorder.
Hitler probably had it...many nut-case leaders have probably had it. People with this kind of clinical problem are extremely dangerous, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the levers of power in any setting.
I'm not proposing this situation is simple. It's clearly anything but simple. But the distinct possibility that a clinically disturbed man was appointed to office by the SCOTUS for purely political reasons, and then cheated his way to office by constant lying and voter suppression in several states, and that his psychological problems have resulted in the deaths of untold thousands of people...that possiblity should be thoroughly explored, whatever else GW Bush's motivations may be.
By the way, the constant, routine lying of the Administration is a commonplace symptom of certain kinds of personality disorders. People like GW Bush would RATHER lie than tell the truth. Just because.