To even comment on what the insipid David Brooks has to say is not a good idea. I am disgusted that the Anchorage Daily News continues to run his columns. Bush is no ideologue. His sins and motivations are laziness and greed. He was, and is, completely content to turn over his job to Cheney and Rove. It has always been about war profiteering and oil. Bush is evil to allow it. Greenwald is supberb.

If this were so, why were so few troops committed? If this is the battle of Good over Evil, why such poor protection for the soldiers on the side of the Good?

If bush is so impervious to criticism, why does he insulate himself so? If he believes, really believes, why doesn't he just come out and say so? Skip all the WMD stuff, the Saddam and al-Quaeda stuff, the democracy stuff -- and skip Social Security, and tax cuts, and Terry Schiavo, and stem cells, gay marriage, and all the rest -- if the primary agenda item is to fight Evil.

And in that case, why not go nuke-yuh-ler and be done with it?

Don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but the NYT reported Thursday (7/19) that just now the Pentagon is requesting some more big bucks for the building-and-buying of special armored trucks which deflect the IEDs so much better than the humvees the Soldiers of Good have been driving.

Now? And they won't be done and ready to ship until at least December. It must be in the Plan for Good to win over Evil that the Holy War is supposed to be indecisive, chaotic, grisly, mind-numbing, heart-rending and above all, lengthy. Cut the dog's tail off an inch at a time.

I defy anyone to go over there, stand in the middle of anywhere, and figure out who is fighting whom, and for what. If this is the chaos leading up to Armageddon, well, maybe this IS Armageddon.

Glenn Greenwald infers that because Bush is speaking with his base, David Brooks and others of the right-wing punditry, that he's being frank because he's with friends. Ignore what Bush says in public, the core of the man's ideals are shared in private seances in a cave, then revealed to the sinners--I mean voters--by oracles such as Brooks.

Greenwald's inference assumes that Bush is principled enough to have core ideals. Through the well-documented haze of lies, nepotism, alcoholism, past drug use, religious conversion, and plain unconcern with reality that Bush operates under, I can only assume that his motives are much baser.

Bush's only ideal is to keep his ass covered. His rationale and methods for the conversion of Iraq were so outrageous, and public approval so dependent on the belief it would be over in three months, that failure was only inconceivable because it would be personal. Bush has to finish the job or fight to his death, or at least keep fighting until he's removed from office.

Extreme conservatism has always been susceptible to authorities higher than the people's will--Divine Providence, the Invisible Hand of the Free Market, ein Volk, ein Vaterland, and Bushido. History has shown cranky conservatives to be the perfect medium for hearing and retelling myths of higher wills, a fact the Bush administration has been most willing to exploit. The love of the Republican Party for the nation is so true that it will let us crucify its second-begotten (after Reagan) son.

Bush knows his administration is going down, but he or his handlers are setting the stage for a Republican resurrection. Perhaps two decades from now, as we've already seen with Vietnam, long after the troops have become civilians and the horror has been forgotten, the last glowing ember of doubt over that reluctant withdrawal can be re-ignited against the true enemy, the Democratic Party.

WT had suggested moving the discussion to chocobang, should we?

Yes! We need some more activity over there.

David Brooks' courtier piece recalls a long ago IF Stone review of Theodore White's "Making of the President 1960" and subsequent White presidential epics. Stone noted in the NY Review of Books after White's effusive description of then presidential candidate and Missouri Senator Stuart Symington that anyone capable of such gush in DC "need never lunch alone."

The quote is imprecise and made hazy by age but the point is clear. I'm sure Brooks and his cohorts visiting the White House had a good meal.

ED NAKAWATASE

Wait, let me rephrase that... Seriously, I will never read David Brooks’s column again. His was the worst example of journalistic drivel I have read in years. I almost have to wonder whether he was hung over when he wrote it, eager to finish so he could get back to bed. For those interested in a proper and thorough analysis of Bush and religious absolutists of his ilk, such as Bin Laden, I highly recommend Sam Harris' book "The End of Faith."

Some points of note… While nearly every sphere of human knowledge - medicine, physics, engineering, astronomy, even gardening - has advanced over the past 2,000+ years, what passes as religious knowledge has remained mired. If we could bring a highly-educated 4th century nobleman to Harvard to discuss the latest developments in medicine in his time, he would be laughed from the podium. If asked to elucidate divine revelation, however, he would be considered a scholar. Does anyone else find that scary?

Humanity needs the freedom to explore spiritual questions outside the constructs of today’s established religions. We might just gain something valuable in the process. The first step would be to realize how little we really know, and stop killing each other over absolute faith in that ignorance.

Just how much lip gloss did Brooks go through during his kneepad session with King Georgie?

Not necessarily in any order.

Karen -- hadn't thought of the Visigoths, in high school the Vandals, Huns, Goths, Visigoths et alia all sort of blended together (I still have trouble remembering who went to Spain and who went to Carthage). Funny you should mention them, I was looking up the Albigensian Crusade earlier today in connection with thinking about the post about Catholics. I was also thinking about hyperbolic space too, but I think you meant the other hyperbolic? The company fief?

Svensker -- Yes, I have noticed the aversion to risk. It permeates everything. Personally, I had a grand scheme of building sabbatical communes cut down by VC's a couple of weeks ago, and haven't yet gotten over it. (Feel free any grammarians to correct my past participles, I don't know the difference between "have gotten" and "have got"). I'm sure it started slowly before the end of Clinton, but in industry it was in evidence when your researcher friend noticed. Out here in Silicon Valley, the change he mentioned was perceptible, it took the form of switching from rooms of brainy people coming up with new stuff in brainstorming and freewheeling research, to VC's funding a hundred startups on the latest bandwagon because if one succeeded it made fiscal sense. Sort of a transition from the Bell Labs model to monkeys on typewriters.

WT and Svensker -- I read William's post, then Svensker's, then went to a meeting with an art museum representative then came home and looked at the new posts by Karen and Svensker. The reason that's important is because the art museum person was trying to convince me that art was as important as math and science as part of her pitch. During college, two of us had an experiment going for about a year. I was a physics guy, taking art courses and having tough time, he was an art guy, taking calculus and having a tough time. We met each other about 1 semester into what turned out to be a 3 semester ordeal for each of us. I was bound and determined to understand my art classes, he was bound and determined to understand calculus. During the third semester, we both had our respective aha! experiences, mine came when I was totally shattered by a negative critique in front of the class and went back to my easel with no idea what to do next, his came when he finally understood what a derivative meant one night and found the homework easy for the first time. We decided after a lot of coffee and talk that the problem was we didn't speak each other's language, and it took 3 semesters for the ability to "think in art" or "think in calculus" to set in.

And that's relevant because I once found a painting that had been discussed by about 20 art historians and they talked, increasingly, over time, about the dry brush literati style. They thought that because the artist had been influential in the growth of that style. I finally found a reproduction of the painting in a book published before all of them, in 1898. The painting had no dry brush work in it at all. So I'd have to agree with Svensker that things drift when cut off from the source. Even if the language is painting (or, perhaps calculus).

WT had suggested moving the discussion to chocobang, should we?