Tuesday, August 16, 2005
[posted by jaed at 10:47 PM]The autism of politics
The New York Times' hagiography of the day for Cindy Sheehan includes this tidbit, trivial and idiosyncratic but all too revealing:
Casey Kelley, 61, a semiretired real estate broker from Colorado who drove 1,000 miles in her camper with her dog, Lucky, to help Ms. Sheehan, said: "It's us versus them again. I haven't felt this since the Vietnam War."Glenn Reynolds has occasionally remarked that people like this are not anti-war - they're just on the other side. There's a lot of truth to this truism, of course, and Kelley's wording ("them" are neither Baathists nor jihadists, I think we can take as a given) bears it out. But really, that last sentence says it all. It's the feelings, nothing more than feelings. Deadly fascist movements, the human rights of millions living under tyranny in the Arab world, the more immediate fate of fifty million people... all, all are as nothing before Casey Kelley's desire to feel something. If the only thing that will get her emotions boiling is ignoring the actual enemy while picking a safely illusory one to be against, oh well. If the only way she can restore the passion and commitment she felt in late adolescence is to act against her own country, endanger the Iraqis and Afghans, and incidentally spit on a hero's grave, what of it? These things are not significant. She, and her feelings, are the only things that exist. The rest of the world is nothing.
Truly, some of these people are far too solipsistic to be on the other side. The other side is barely real to them.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
[posted by jaed at 8:42 AM]The truth, loudly and without decorum
Andrea speaks for me:
There are days when I have absolutely no patience with our coddled, neurasthenic, infantile society, and this is one of them. I am tired of people complaining that the administration isn’t acting in perfect concord with the thoughts of ten thousand people writing on the internet. I am getting tired of people complaining that the administration isn’t “doing enough” for the troops, for the people, for our safety, to “explain” the war to “the people” who are apparently all deaf, dumb, and blind, and then when someone in our hapless, human government comes up with something, yells in horror: “Oh no, not that way!” And doing this all on their own personal blog which let me tell you right now is not read by Donald Rumsfeld or Condi Rice or George W. Bush because quite frankly they are too goddamn busy trying to keep a future administration several years down the line from turning half the planet into radioactive glass because our lazy asses thought that fighting a smaller, more difficult war with conventional methods like soldiers and guns was “too hard” and “our kids over there kept getting killed” and “it made us uncomfortable.”Yeah. Say on, sister.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
[posted by jaed at 5:11 PM]Historical perspective, illustrated
Right Wing Nut House has some thoughts on yesterday's anniversary of the atomic attack on Hiroshima:
It happens every year. A gigantic spasm of anti-Americanism breaks out all over the world on August 6th as people gather in every major city to condemn the use by the United States of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.Read the whole thing. (Particularly if you tend to think of the Empire of Japan as the mostly-innocent victim of American aggression and more sinned-against than sinning. Not even close.)
And yet, there is no similar day set aside by the world to remember other tragedies of that war...
