conversely...,
2005-05-31 15:02:36
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'how extraordinarily wealthy people created philanthropies to promote the welfare of extraordinarily wealthy people'...,
2005-05-31 20:12:15
ever more desperate and the bandwagon i've been waiting for:
American dissatisfaction with the war has reached a solid state of apathetic crisis. Where are all protests, we are asked. They all but dissappeared as soon as the war started, everybody was told to fall in line or they were not just bad anti-Americans but outright treasonous, and it seems they believed it. It's not like the activists doing the organizing ever stopped.
I don't know why anybody would expect the public to continue to come out in droves for public demonstrations against the war when so many did before it started. Much of the new majority opposed to the war in the opinion polls were hurling vile invective against the people demonstrating against it not long ago. Hell, a lot of them voted for Bush. It took over a decade of US involvement in Vietnam before you heard a peep of protest, once the ball gets rolling most people are going to shut up and hope everything turns out for the best. Given an administration they could expect to respond in some way and maybe it'd even be worth it - say if Kerry had been elected and kept us in Iraq without turning it around (the likely outcome), or if atrocities escalted that demanded public response - and public opinion is probably holding that somewhat in check. But these guys have so completely insulated themselves from any criticism that they don't even register that there is any, other than smirking, cynical comments about how great free speech is when exercised in the safe, encapsulated confines of a free speech zone. Can't talk to your refrigerator and expect to get results.
But there's something wrong about this line of questioning altogether. There's a majority of people who have come to the conclusion that this thing was a mistake and half know they were lied to (much of the other half still believe the lies, and I think know it), and since everybody knows, and everybody knows that everybody else knows, the question is really why aren't the media and our elected officials addressing what everybody knows?
Stan Goff a few days ago posted this bit of commentary:
Note the special attention the press constantly gives to al Zarqawi – the evil personification of the war. This is part of the massive disinfo campaign that has characterized this image-management war from the outset. I have serious doubts about who this person is, and whether “he” is responsbile for everything the press claims – since the info-tainers simply repeat what the Centcom PAO and the Pentagon tell them. This is to divert us from the fundamental understanding that the resistance, in all its forms, is primarily Iraqi… and it experesses with arms a widespread Iraqi hositlity toward American forces.
The recent spate of US and US-directed "offensives" is a desperate attempt to regain the initiative, which has been largely lost since around Day Two of the invasion. What is interesting is how this condition is constantly transferred back onto the resistance by the administration, who never tire of telling us how the resistance is "on its heels," its "back is broken," and that every upsurge of resistance activity, which is becoming increasingly adaptable and sophisticated, is an indication of their own "desperation" and impending defeat.
Right on cue, four days later, we're enjoying a romantic interlude between Larry King and Uncle Cheney when Larry King should probably be talking to people who can demonstrate the remotest capablility of being serious:
KING: [For American troops t]o be removed. It's not going to be -- it's not going to be a 10-year event?
D. CHENEY: No. I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time. But I think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throws, if you will, of the insurgency. We've had reporting in recent days, Larry, about Zarqawi, who's sort of the lead terrorist, outside terrorist, al Qaeda, head of al Qaeda for Iraq, may well have been seriously injured.
"Last throws"? How much of this rank, desperate bullshit are people expected to endure? They've heard this before and, seriously, I can't expect anybody to even take this war seriously anymore if this is their best game face. It's astonishing that he could say something like that without Larry King pointing out to him how often the administration has said shit like that in the past and would have regretted it if guys like Larry King would bother pointing out to them how often they've said shit like that in the past. According to Dick Cheney the war was virtually over before it began, for fucks sake.
What good would a movement do by organizing demostrations against the crime already irreversably committed by these uncanny mammoths of mendacious mediocrity? How do you drive a point through skulls this thick without thwacking them through with a nail gun? How do you teach those sad, future generations of elected executive officials that there will be a price paid for crimes against the peace? Impeach
impeach
impeach!
