Letters to the Editor
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Laurel962--I do
Why would you assume that because we post here that we aren't actively engaged elsewhere?
Are you discouraging our responding to these articles? Do you think that if we respond to them that it saps our energy as activists?
Do you know that most politicians and activist organizations encourage people to communicate their views in all possible venues: newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc.?
the purpose is to share views and learn from each other; not all of us agree.
Whew! Posting this took a lot out of me. Guess I'll go to bed.
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You get the media you deserve
A number of letters have suggested that Kamiya is too harsh on Americans as it's not something in their psyche that has allowed Bush a clear run, but the fact that they have been consistently lied to by the government and abominably served by a supine mainstream media.
But to me, that view sounds like another trait Americans have been accused of - a reluctance to accept responsibility for their actions.
It is of course true about the lies and the mainstream media, but it's also true that you get the media you deserve. All those millions of people lapping up Fox News' 'reporting' WANTED to believe what they were being told and Fox News duly told them what they wanted to hear.
Americans don't seem to have the cynicism of many Western Europeans. This has its advantages but it also means that there is little willingness to re-examine cherished beliefs about the myth of America, and therefore news organizations don't provide that analysis. And many Americans therefore don't have a functioning mental model of how the world works.
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the simple truth
Kamiya, I'm not always a fan of yours, but that was a really well-written, thoughtful and accurate article. Couldn't argue with a word of it, and as someone who likes to nitpick, that drives me crazy! Keep up this high-quality analysis and you may convert me into a fan.
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Judging presidents by poll numbers ...
... is like picking stocks based on today's asking price. These things fluctuate.
Kamiya's habit of arguing from the polls is weak; Bush is the same president today, doing the same things for the same reasons, as he was when his approval numbers were in the 90s. There's a reason we have a republic instead of a democracy.
It bears keeping in mind that the most popular president was Calvin Coolidge. The least popular? Harry Truman. Truman, like Bush (and like GHW Bush) explored both extremes of the polls.
Disco and parachute pants once were popular, too.
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Laurel962--huh?
You argued:
"There is also a very strong feeling that it is "my country, right or wrong", and we have to support any national policy, even if it is somewhat addle-brained and stupid. Why? Because not to support "your own country" is to appear weak and foolish in the eyes of other nations."
Please rethink this. It does not jibe with the spirit of democracy. People flock to the U.S. because our government encourages debate and differing viewpoints. Democracy thrives under challenge, not blind obedience. If we accepted your point of view, women would still not have the vote, segregation would still be the law of the land, we'd still be fighting in Viet Nam.
No nation is infallible, nor or we so arrogant as to present ourselves that way.
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SHAMELESS
AS A SENIOR WHO VOTED IN AT LEAST 10 ADMINISTRATIONS AND FELT THAT OUR VOTE COUNTED FOR SOMETHING .WE NOW FEEL LIKE LOST SHEEP WITH THIS ADMINISTRATIONS DEAF EAR, MR BUSH SEEMS TO HAVE SELECTED HEARING HE HEARS ONLY WHAT HE WANTS TO HEAR AND THE HELL WITH THE MAN IN THE STREETS OPINIONS. BUT IT WILL BE OVER SOON BUT NOT SOON ENOUGH TO SAVE THOSE YOUNG PEOPLE WHO ARE DYING IN THIS AWFUL WAR.
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Dictatorship or Democracy?
"Since the failure of Lyndon Johnson, it has become increasingly apparent that Republican philosophy suits Americans better than the Democratic with its calls for sharing and sacrifice. They like the prefessional army that relieves them of their duty as citizens. Times are not good, but tell that to the rich and upper middle class. Even I cannot complain -- yet. It's all so easy. The decline of a republic is EASY.
"We have GIVEN UP MANY OF OUR FREEDOMS and we are more concerned with Anna Nichol and the American Idol than we are with our losses.
"Chalmers Johnson says we will have a dictatorship soon,military or otherwise."
-- carolu
Quite right. The US is already very much a dictatorship. Not that we're likely to get any official notification. And Chalmers Johnson thanks you for the plug.
Democracy, which has grown up in the last three hundred years, represents, with its emphasis upon individual responsibility and individual actions, the most difficult societal system, requiring a definite human maturity.
Totalitarianism and especially fascism can in many ways be regarded as an escape from this difficulty into the irresponsibility of following a leader who deprives the people of their liberty and their maturity but promises them 'security' and 'economic progress'.
Personal immaturity and self-gratification are therefore celebrated and promoted by corporate America in particular, and in U.S. culture in general, because it prepares the electorate to give up its responsibility to maintain democracy in favor of totalitarian leadership.
In large part, America is a country of spoiled children who won't give up their Santa Claus god, won't give up their gun toys, and refuse to leave Never-Never Land. You may wish to consider that what Americans deserve is a repressive dictatorship and lives which are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Corporatists will quite naturally go on convincing them that this is exactly what they want and exactly what they need. Americans can go on believing they're the best in the world, never realizing, as they do not now, that they're little better than dogs trained to bark on command.
Poetic justice is unpleasant, but it is, after all, justice.
"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads."
"A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don’t believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing."
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower