"... disdain for religion is certainly an attribute of enlightenment, I grant you that, but the question is is enlightenment what we are looking for? I think this is where conservatives have liberals beat, you know, the way they can with such easy duplicity accept the need to have the poor beasts believe in a something they control as opposed to having the cretins, left to their own wits, possibly following after a power less predictable..."

Listening to Republican debate this morning I wonder if the candidates are idiots or if, in tailoring their canned responses to idiots, they end up sounding like idiots themselves? It's a quandary. One just doesn't know which abomination to reason came first, the politician or the voter...?

"... let's be honest here, let's be realistic: humans have unfortunate tendencies, the most salient for present purposes being that whenever two or more of them come together, no matter how noble the cause, something gets corrupted..."

... you might think it a good thing that a country has a pacifist constitution, that their laws proscribe against the developing of offensive capabilities - I imagine those who write poetry for peace and drink tea for peace and brood or well with tears for peace, I imagine such would get all giddy over such a thing - but, ya know, when a country makes itself so nervous that it has to write that fear into their constitution, well, isn't that a bit... off putting?

Apparently not if they're on your team - this time anyway. And so as Japan slowly unravels aforementioned constitutional limitations on use of force we find there are so many things once thought intolerable that end up being somewhat tolerable after all. You simply can't trust people...

... the administration has invested so much in Petraeus, have engaged in such a hagiographic inflation of his significance that one must ask - is the fix in? How can you trust what will be reported back no matter when it happens? How can Petraeus possibly report that he's failed after heroic expectations have been stoked this way? Is he a patsy or willing participant in a scam? He did go on an ultra right wing radio show - hard to believe that was innocent. This whole enterprise increasingly looks like a vapor hanging over a cesspool.

The push back from Republican senators is a clear sign that only the indoctrinated cool-aid drinkers are left believing this administration has not become dangerously unhinged from reality. Of course one hopes that's all it is, that they're merely unhinged - if they have in fact embraced an alternate reality with all the fervid delusion of religious zealots, well, that's a wee bit more disturbing. How can we be sure Petraeus is acting as an independent agent here, that his conscience has not been co-opted? This administration has so sullied the waters around them how can anyone who steps into that water possibly stay clean?

... nothing so dangerous as a person who's certain he's got it all figured out - so it's odd that the media seems to abound with the ilk. Guess there's something inherently appealing about the posture affected. Odder still though is that with so much figuring out going on so little seems to get figured out - or that so few seem to have figured out this figuring out business, but that's the danger, no...?

Dawn of the 10 year old Jihadist

"Holed up inside the complex behind the lines of troops and razor wire, the children – many of them girls whose families had sent them to the mosque to receive a strict Islamic education – repeatedly rejected relatives’ entreaties to leave before a threatened army onslaught.

There was evidence that many had been brainwashed into a cult of martyrdom, and the authorities feared last night that some were being prepared to be suicide bombers. In barely eight weeks, Saima had been transformed from a religious but fun-loving girl to a jihadi, grimly craving martyrdom."

To me it's laughable people who attempt to defend Islam and in their appeals lump it in with all religious expressions and faiths as if that made it just another rational pursuit. One can rationally defend religion's place in the world because it satisfies an unfortunate human need - but you can not defend religion itself as a rational expression. Christianity is better than Islam, not because of the quality of it's tenets and teachings and beliefs or the mellifluous beauty of its scripture - it's better because history has effectively subdued its darker purposes [albeit Bush et al strive to unravel that knot] whereas Islam runs free like a mad dog gone to rut. One fears what force bearing what carnage must be unleashed to tame it [Christianity? It truly is the age of irony].

... obviously Bush's strategy is to do so many things badly that the public will lose track of all that has gone wrong and fall forthwith into a stupor of lapsed attention. The end result will be the same as if he had done nothing at all, a state of affairs much favoured by the lazy and idiot-like - and the mischievous...

... weak and vulnerable as they are, people seek certainty. If they find it in something that in reality is fraudulent or fleeting, then reality doesn't matter - just so as long as they can feel certain that something has been found and it feels good to have found it...

now this is not deeply reasoned with precise logical postulates, I know - but those who say Israeli abuse of Palestinians and refusal to give back the West bank are the root of all the problems seem to want to gloss over an obvious question that arises: if such is the case why does Israel persist? They hate the Arabs? Irrationally seek unremitting vengeance against them? They prefer chaos as part of a long term strategy? All in part or whole may contribute to policies if one assumes the policies are abusive - but there's a simpler answer and much more practical: Israel needs the West Bank in order to properly defend itself come an invasion from Lebanon or Syria - you need space to maneuver in order to defend in strength and the West Bank is that space. On top of which, should a future war go badly, it gives them something to surrender to achieve a truce. You never hear this military argument when people discuss Israel's posture towards the Palestinians and the West Bank but it's the argument that makes the most sense - it's also the argument that suggests that there's no way in hell they're giving up the West Bank. Unfair, sure, I guess - but abusive? Not necessarily.

[and when China makes the same argument viz Taiwan? will you be so accommodating of practical necessity then? god damn Chinese - we're on a collision course: I wonder what it means that they're such bad drivers? My, that's an off colour joke. Very nasty. When did an expectation of anything else become the norm? Not sure, but I'm willing to blame television]

QED

Lot of shit, no shovel

This attempts to make the case for the surge and because it's written by an officer actually on the ground in Iraq and involved in COIN operations you respect the argument - except for three glaring flaws persistently hanging over it: 1] he never addresses how many troops would be required to make the strategy work in a general enough way to make it viable within any meaningful context; 2] he glosses over the fact that even if you can effectively marginalize the 'terrorists' and create secure corridors within the country there is absolutely no reason to believe that good things will then just naturally inhabit those corridors - ie the political motives and intentions of various factions are extremely confused; and 3] he glosses over the key element of security, once achieved, needing to be maintained indefinitely by a highly suspect Iraqi military and constabulary. Without three you just got a big pile of shit and no shovel.

In short, it all sounds nice and neat and professional on paper, but much like Descartes' proof for God, you already need to accept the existence of the thing you're trying to prove exists in order for the proof to be acceptable. Or - it's like buying a used car based on it having a nice paint job and never looking under the hood because, you know, under the hood is where all the bad stuff is and oh my you really need a car and would just rather assume it drives as nice as it looks.

Finally the Nazis prove good for something other than making for excellent gun fodder in sundry movies and video games: Germany's stern anti-cult laws, an angst ridden response to their Nazi past, have led to Scientology addled Tom Cruise being banned from working in the Fatherland. How wonderfully absurd life is: even the darkest fucking clouds still manage a little flash of silver.

I laughed, I cried, I wrote a novel

"... I started that particular viral video, that was my creation. She was a dishwasher at a restaurant I worked at, so hot and only sixteen, soapy water all splashing up on her t-shirt, cute little laugh - just so wrong that I had to get it on video. Now she has an agent, gonna be a big star they say. Big enough to not be bothered to return my calls, ungrateful bitch. But it was me made her, sure as shit. So I wrote a novel, 518 pages of unadulterated reality, exposed her whole sordid mess. Truth will out, right? Has to. Just have to find a publisher and then her little joy ride is so over..."

and I see Drum now points out how books begin to appear blaming American military decline on liberals - but I told him this would happen at least a year ago! I wrote in the pages of his blog and was damned to hell by the illiberal whelps that populate it for being a war monger - I told them to steer away from the 'withdraw from Iraq' nonsense because it played right into conservative long range plans to blame everything on liberals. Idiots didn't listen. I told them that this surge is just politics - I told them that McCain's piety viz surge is all about eventually blaming liberals when the shit hits the fan and that therefore the democrats should temper their speech, be careful of what they say and how they say it - I pointed out that this is what Hillary seems to understand and it's idiotic to fault her for it and force her to the left which will hurt come the general election. But they didn't listen.

Not that I really expected them to listen - that'd be silly. Oh, the games we must play...

chess is for losers

If Romney wins nomination he will deflect questions concerning his Mormon faith by claiming attack on any faith in a god is an attack on faith in general and that such an attack is liberal in nature - and this will work, already is - see his response in debate that he shouldn't have to defend his faith. Mormonism is patently absurd even by the forgiving standards of most religions but Americans are not so much concerned with orthodoxy of a particular creed as they are with the ease of an outward show of faith in a supreme whatever [as long as it relates, even if only anecdotally, to the rabble of the Rood, awash in the tears of their Christ] . It will not surprise me to see Romney try to defend all his blemishes behind the white light of faith - you can also see that coming: "... it's not so much that I flip flopped on abortion that bothers liberals, it's that I'm now pro-life and they are the party of death..." etc etc.

This tactic will work - still, I'd like someone to mount a rational challenge of it - for once you'd like to see these people exposed as the dirtbags they are - it's one of the ironies of TV: exposure is much greater but access much more limited: you never hear a counter argument laid out logically in an attempt to uncover the flaws in a line of rhetoric or reasoning - just a few questions asked and then move on. Quite absurd - it's as if all had agreed that the truth doesn't really matter, as if the dissembling dance around the subject is more important than the subject itself, as if the dance had become the subject - all has a very fin de siecle feel to it. Public discourse devolves increasingly into an anodyne game of checkers - chess is for losers!

reality explained

nowhere to be
nothing to do
if not for me
there wouldn't be you
there wouldn't be you
without a me
nothing to do
and nowhere to be

Now I see an aggrieved academic has ripped into Chris Hitchens for his 'I Hate God' polemic accusing him of selective reasoning and bad reasoning at that, phony scholarship, ersatz philosophic musings etc etc called to arms like a rebellious mob against the ramparts of religion and the pious practitioners barracks behind etc etc

I don't have much to say for or against Hitchens since I be not nearly learned enough to adequately defend or refute [I mean one can sound as absurd tearing down God as propping the old bastard up] - and besides, I kind of like Oxfordian styled screeds regardless of what they have to say-

But does it not seem increasingly that defenders of religion and adjunct godheads use response to arguments hurled against them as proof in and of themselves of what they defend? Intelligent design seems a perfect example of this: we can't really refute evolution so in arguing against we'll create a different set of criteria to support our claims - in other words, we don't really need to refute evolution, just sound like we have a plausible counter argument to reassure the faithful. Same goes with the decline of strict dogma and rise of universalism, a trans-confessional episcopaliansim - because you know in a world of loose individualism and appeals to limpid ironic poses and sloppy pandering to the senses it's really hard to stay rigid and not be laughed at.

A return to Roman pagan cults then? Now that would be ironic - and so conveniently modern. Given how unstable they are people remain quite predictable, no?

The Japanese are getting fat eating like Americans, thus erasing generations of healthy eating habits often extolled as particular to Japanese culture. Most will choose to see this as yet more corruption by merciless Yanks - but rather you know I'd say America didn't create the corruption but instead revealed it.

You could say that the 'genius' of America turned what was formerly seen as a weakness [the commonness of the common man] into a strength while exposing as weak what was formerly seen as a strength [the superiority of certain classes]. Those larded Japanese have taught me this.

- It's one of those odd things that seems to pass unnoticed but you can't be sure that it means anything.
- I'm not sure something has to have meaning to be meaningful. I'm not sure if those are the same thing.
- But it's odd, regardless, no? Why is Tiger Woods called black when his mother was Thai or Filipino or some such thing? Or Barack Obama called black when his mother was white? Or Halle Berry black when quite obviously there's a significant quantity of pale assed Euro trash genes coursing through that body?
- Are you a racist?
- No, of course not. [beat] I mean, I understand the allure of an extreme, intolerant point of view. Can be very calming. I was a misogynist for while just because it felt so damn good. [beat] I mean, everyone's a racist underneath it all, don't ya think? We're all too afraid to admit it but, truth be told, none of us can really stand the other.
- You are a racist.
- No. Well, yes, but only in the sense...
- I'd stop if I were you.
[beat]
- It just seems odd. [beat] I mean, Tiger is married to a Swede and they're gonna have a baby soon and if that thing comes out looking like Bjorn Borg are we supposed to call it a white baby or a black baby?
- Really, you need to stop.
- I mean, if it's white are black people gonna be all pissed off? And if it comes out looking like Emelda Marcos well the whole thing's a mess then.

Two Goats on Girl Island

Nautical Nan
Dressed like a man
And frequented bordellos
Playing coy
With the sailor boys
They were all such naughty fellows

Two Girls on Goat Island

The sea is cold to linger on the shore
There's two there I love, but only one is a whore
The other is something, but memory forgives me
The sea is cold - you see how it outlives me?

and turtle doves eat ivy? no

what if the Iranian seizure of 15 British soldiers is an attempt to change the rules of engagement - meaning, the next time there's an approach of an Iranian vessel you don't go down without a fight as the Brits did here? What if it's Iran's intention to create such an incident somewhere down the road, what purpose would be served? I suppose to dampen down public discontent with A---. Rally round the flag, infidel oppressors, all that good stuff. If that is so wouldn't it mean that A--- is supported by the Mullahs? They after all control the Republican Guard, the hardy chaps responsible for this seizure. That would be interesting, no? - because there's been some indication that A--- and the Mullahs are somewhat at odds. Seems to me that would indicate this is not some isolated event but rather part of a strategy.

Because Blair is in a tough spot here and the Iranians must know that - he can't respond militarily, call for more sanctions dwarfed by those already imposed by nuclear standoff, nothing he can really trade off here or exchange for release, except maybe promising to leave Iraq, which wouldn't happen - and the Iranians must have figured all this - so why did they do it? Just to get someone's attention? That seems a little thin, although the timing may suggest that was the reason. Still, I'm thinking it's a bit more pernicious than that - if they perceive the Americans as being vulnerable right now, which they are, a limited skirmish wherein they could claim a victory of some sort could prove useful.

Funny to hear all the right wing boys calling for a strong response that proves their mettle and resolve; comparing Iran to a spoiled child that must be punished accordingly. Typically shortsighted of them in the 'if all you got is hammers everything looks like a nail' mode. Hey, if you really wanna show cold blooded toughness just call their bluff and tell the Iranians to either release soldiers now or summarily execute them - with of course the understanding that response to an unfortunate reply to ultimatum will be somewhat biblical in nature. It ain't poker until you're playing with real money.

War is kind of seductive - I suppose the immensity of it gets people to thinking that the awfulness of life can be overcome. In that sense God and War very similar as far as human projections onto the cosmic screen go.

Parmenides was at the party and embarrassed himself as usual

randy if not giddy liberals announce return of liberalism to political mainstream, rebirth of liberal identified agendas in thoughts and action of politicians and plebs - this because the W has so shamed and degraded conservatism with his botched war and his Rovenian manipulation of public discourse for strictly political ends, a credo manifested yet again in festering fed prosecutor scandal which seems destined to be the good riddance of politcal hack AG Gonsales - Gonsales will come to represent, in that they so shamelessly used and the AG so willing allowed the office to be used as nothing more than a partisan tool, this will come to represent as well as anything Bush has done that there purposes were always strictly politcal : gain control and hold it by whatever means because the coutnry is doomed otherwise.

whatever reason you impute this ethos to I'm not sure matters - that they seem to believe it with such zeal is what unsettles me. I've always maintain that the reason they fucked up the war so badly is because the war was only ever about domestic politics which is why they showed almost no interest at all re phase IV planning : there only concern was a gulf war 1 redux, nice theatre that in combo with 9/11 would allow them to browbeat liberals into whimpering submission and provide them with a huge fucking carrot to dangle before the bovine ignorant eyes of the masses needing to be lead somewhere by someone - just put a switch to their backsides and folks will cooperate - secretly, that's what they want!

i'm no activist, i'm not suggesting plebs rise up from their couches and demand better snacks - i don;t care, the dynamics woudl remain the same - just look at recent poll that suggests 60% of people vote because of perceived character of person they're voting for. Character?! what is that? what it is is the easiest way to reach a comfort level about a decision that really shouldn;t be so easy and shouldn;t be about comfort - if you want polticians to put on pantomimes for you, shadow plays that will softly conote or intimate the comfort food for the fraught intellie=gences of the country - well then sure character is what you'll want very much to base your decisionon - it easy to do

my point being to get back to the beginning: liberals rejoice at the return of liberalism but it's really just a game of back and forth: one rises and the other must necessarily fall because people are going to need to believe in something - but it means nothing more than that. More thought isn;t being invested, more insight provoked, more substance unearthed - the cattle move in a ceratin direction because they have to move in some diection - that the switch that drives them has been taken up by the left hand because the right has tired is meaningless to them.

Democracy is simply the refinement of ignorance into a more progressive command structure; the dynamics seem to suggest the democratic model is very much different from the serf/lord paradime out of which it grew, in reality though all things cohere within the one substance.

better hell than heaven if it's your heaven

"... well, I will not renounce my vote for the war. It was a rational decision; and with equal rationality I understand that it appears now to have possibly been a flawed decision, possibly flawed in the sense that we can never have experience of the alternatives and so can never know which for certain was the more foolish reckoning no matter how foolish the decision we did make appears now to be - and any who suppose otherwise are cowards or charlatans. But let me ask you this: you are lost on a deserted stretch of road in a wilderness; two cars stop to help you, one driven by an incoherent youth smelling of drugs and lassitude and the other by a middle aged man of reasonable demeanor; you choose a ride with the latter; he turns out to be a fool, a clueless driver with no sense of what he's doing so that you end up more lost than you were before; based on the pre-existing evidence was your decision wrong? Obviously not, it just turned out that way - and so what would be the point of apologizing for it? The apology is meant to appease the hurt feelings of whom exactly or undo what perceived wrong? Not all choices are the same and it's disingenuous to act as if they are. No, renouncing my vote would be wasted breath to serve a purpose whose value is hard to discern - unless of course my values change and I come to admire the dissembling ways of people."

instant messaging

Small point - but to a Pythagorean that can mean so much - anyway, I'm not sure it's always understood or noticed that Clinton's famous election rubric of "It's the economy, stupid" was not really at all about the economy but rather about sending the message that it was about the economy to fungible voters. I'm not sure many recognize this or stop to think about the significance of it - well, no doubt those studying the semiotics of social hierarchies etc etc understand and recognize - but your average grunt I'm not sure sees just how much message supersedes practice or content or depth in modern politics - realizes just how smoothly surface meaning has replaced, indeed seemingly obviated need for depth from both purveyor and consumer of these shared messages.

I'd have to remember at least some of the great reams of history I've read in order to know whether or not this is a keen observation - I'm guessing it isn't, if only for the reason that if it's even half as clever as it wants to be I should feel more surprise at having made it - nonetheless I do find it interesting. The smoothly part that is: as if we don't even question, hell, notice anymore the emptiness governing our socializations. [yeah, I'm sure things were so much better a few thousand years ago along the dusty banks of the Nile][now, c'mon, I've said before that the unresolved irony underlying democracy is the necessary belief or illusion that people actually deserve or are worthy of or well suited to the freedom given them - which is not to descry the freedom, which obviously has it's merits, but merely to question what its real value is].

I only bring this up in reference to three things in the news. A poll showing that in America no matter how appealing a candidate may be if he's an atheist only 45% of the electorate would be willing to consider voting for him which means no matter how brilliant a person may be if he doesn't mouth some mindless faith in some obscure thing lurking above he has no chance of winning an election which means that for more than half the electorate voting is not about substance but rather about the intimation of it. Hillary Clinton, in reading a quotation of some hymn affected what she thought was an appropriate southern accent in reading it aloud during a speech. This is really superficial stuff - and yet still ill-advised because it makes her look and sound awkward in her public presentations which will hurt her in comparison to Obama's slick and stylish oratory, yet more evidence of surface rendering substance irrelevant in the argument for the public's presumed conscience. Finally, a liberal strategist in Ontario has suggested the federal liberals soft stand on crime is going to cost them in the election even while admitting that the supposed hard stand on crime espoused by the conservatives is really about which rhetoric on crime appeals most to the voter - ie it's not so much crime that worries people but rather the message sent in how officials talk about crime that matters. The full absurdity of this rhetoric is demonstrated by fact that the only place in Canada where crime is a serious issue is in Toronto, an extreme left wing city with a socialist as mayor - and yet it is conservatives that make tough talk on crime part of their platform. Obviously their appeal has nothing really to do with crime - it has to do with the message, the message is what's important to people.

I just don't see how the marriage of modern media and democracy can long survive. The divorce will be ugly - and I imagine China will be the cold blooded arbitrator divesting parties of their precious assets.

hijaberwocky

Soccer playing Muslim girl - or should one say Muslim girl who plays soccer? - it's hard to know what's appropriate - anyway, aforementioned so forth etcetera in Quebec was not allowed to take the field, mount the pitch - now, that's crude - while wearing hijab, sacramental scarf like artifact that some Muslims [the rules are vague here, open to interpretation and so variously interpreted] insist or demand or ask or prevail upon or strongly suggest although it's entirely up to you, beloved, their womenfolk wear when out in public to keep from provoking sexual unrest among the unclean etceteras [I'm not sure what kind of deviants they attract to these soccer games, but rules are rules I guess, even when they're not]. League officials claim the prohibition was for safety reasons - a scarf getting caught in a scrunchy no doubt and all hell breaking loose. No one really believed that explanation, but officials refused to budge [paradoxically revealing a potentially unclean tendency lurking in their dark thoughts thusly demonstrating the precarious state the poor girl's purity could have been subject to - how many coils the snake does have]. So girl pleaded case to FIFA, the international governing agency for soccer [ya know it's called football ya bloody pagan!] and they replied, ironically enough, that rules are rules and there'll be no scarf wearing on any hallowed grounds whereof soccer [football] players are conjoined for the purposes of sport [you see, that is ironic - so many beliefs to be defended!].

Now, some will cry 'Islamaphobia!' and others will cry something else and I'm not, at this moment anyway, fool enough to try the ramparts of such a ludicrously arrayed fortress of rival prejudices and superstitions and cultural assumptions - I'm sure all are most righteous servants to their various gods and good luck with that. Still, I'm curious, and this is a small point not meant to indicate which side of the argument I find least offensive/annoying/moronic - but, how can playing a sport, in public, how can such an activity be logically reconciled with the intent and purposes of the hijab? I know that haditha [do I have to put an article in front of that? don't know, churl] suggests to some believers that females of the age of menstruation [jeez, how many besotted bastards have been utterly freaked out by that little biological bit of housekeeping?] [and now it turns out the girl is only 11 so why is she even wearing a hijab? It's spiritual grandstanding, that's what it is I tells ya!] who do not cover themselves appropriately will not find favour with Allah and therefore I understand why the girl's desire to wear it should within a certain context be taken seriously - but that does nothing to improve the logic underlying her complaint. No? Yes. No. No? Yes, but -

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!'

For the rain it raineth every day

Considering the way the right talks about the left and the left talks about the right, as if each to the other is deluded, deprived of common sense, mired hopelessly in partisan sympathies that range from the merely repugnant to grave threat to the republic, good and evil at war for the soul of God's most precious country - considering this isn't it clear that each side must admit to being of the opinion, conscious or otherwise, if one can actually unconsciously be of an opinion [and, given the opinions people be of and cling to sentience certainly is not beyond doubting here] that vis a vis these assumptions, predilections and prejudices the system would appear therefore to be broken, compromised by sundry corruptions to the point where its viability is open to serious question?

Seems clear to me. Fool.

Lear: Take heed, sirrah - the whip.
Fool: Truth's a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when the lady brach may stand by the fire and stink.

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, guiltie of dust and sinne

"... is a picture art or just information? If the latter, then why, what are the parameters that would take you there? But, if the former, will you not eventually then come to the point where a picture may indeed be art but only in the sense that art is merely information?"

"But art is information," she said, frowning slightly as she slid a lock of hair into the clutches of a crimper.

"I said merely information. It goes without saying that nothing can't be anything without first being something."

Her toiletry came to a sudden halt as she stared at me in the mirror, a poorly defined remorse narrowing her eyes.

"Do you really hate me that much?"

bloated cows bob in fetid waters

I might do this if problems in the mid-east were a computer game:

• put US on total war footing, meaning institute draft and redirect tax cuts into military spending.
• stop fighting Taliban in Afghanistan: rather, leave country to them but line Pashtun tribal area border with troops, mines, whatever - no one crosses the border. Leave Taliban left in Afghanistan to criminal Afghan tribal elements to exterminate.
  
• withdraw support of Israel forcing them either into a peace agreement with Palestinians or into a war to solve issue once and for all; recognise Saudi Arabia as a more important ally than Israel - at least for immediate official purposes.
• since preceding would lead to political upheaval in America must stage military coup to secure the country. That should help with the draft I bet. At same time take over Fox broadcasting and bring back Arrested Development - good show.
  
• get rid of Maliki, assassinate Sadr, and back a Sunni strongman in take over of Iraq under a brutal but fair regime of martial law - brutal but fair, I said. It's a computer game! I can do whatever I want. Divide country into ethnic regions. Give Kurds Kirkuk and threaten Turkey with annihilation if they make a fuss.
• use an infantry division to annex a nice northern part of Iran with help of Kurds thus destabilizing Iranian Shia leadership; with Sunni's on my side and Israel acquiescing I can deal with resulting dynamics. Will need at least three carrier groups in Persian Gulf. Might want to drop a small nuke in some deserted part of Iran just to focus their attention.
• use some kind of weather machine to ruin grape harvest in France thus plunging country into absolute despair leading to collapse of European Union and hopefully United Nations along with it.
  
• dissolve NATO and form new alliance - Transoceanic Alliance 'tween Germany, England, North America, Japan and Australia. This will force Russia and China into an alliance and they will feel compelled to come to the aid of Iran.
  
• blockade Iran and cut off trade with China. Things will probably start to get ugly then.
• exit computer game and pick up email.
  

Price of freedom, she said

There was much to recommend to our muses, such as they are, maundering wretches, meddling in trivial nuances and gestures and all the trite tokens of our ways [this sentence, a perfect rendering of the style of Burton, or possibly Hooker - ? - means I believe nothing but intends - distends as well, for the belly is full, portending a likely end state towards which our means contend - this nothingness with such grace and measured charm that what it doesn't mean means everything towards service of that intention] [this sentence too seems to both lack and assume a general organizing principle not fraught by a wayward dalliance with reason] [?] these last several days for the uses of sad [nee antic] commentary.

Not least of which was the Chinese painting a mountain green. A barren mountain, scarred by some industrial use - does it matter which? - baubles, secreted in cereal boxes or happy meals, waiting to be plucked by greedy fat fingers, toyed with for a few brief seconds of this eternal march, and then tossed into yawning garbage bins - a barren mountain painted green. One imagines to mitigate said barrenness with as little care for integrity as possible. Truth is, and the truth is both funny and telling here, no one, not citizen or government official, no one in the sleepy, blighted burg that sits at the foot of the painted mountain knows why the mountain was
painted - don't know and are loath to offer a guess, for fear no doubt of offending whatever august force brought its serpentine wit to bear on what one must assume was the festering barren mountain problem. Interesting times they will be indeed when this Kafka like behemoth of a nation goose-steps [does the Chinese military goose-step? most sincere apologies if not - in my dreams I see them as committed goose-steppers] its way to center left stage of these world affairs and breaths down the neck of that venerable but now one fears fading star, Uncle Sam.

Most important news of the week though was discovery of Roman coin that ostensibly shows that Cleopatra was in fact it seems not the beauty myth has proclaimed her to be. Now, I try to honour truth and its stolid but somewhat sad attendant reality whenever time and circumstances allow for it - but I'll be damned if I'm gonna let any truth mongering wise ass take from me the belief that Cleo was with most glorious certainty the salacious, opium sucking sylph shown in all her slithering, nubile beauty in HBO's esteemed series 'Rome'.

I will serve gladly the causes of reason and knowledge and the various truths they fabricate from out of our most fallen earth - but don't ask this of me. The price is too dear.

gravedigging and the dynamics of an educated workforce

Reading about EFPs in Iraq - explosively formed projectiles - and how they can rip through an Abrams tank and I was wondering how long before this expertise is exported and this lethal modification by the enemy starts showing up elsewhere, namely Israel, which has perfected use of tanks in your whoreson urban asymmetrical war zone - I wonder how or if the math has changed and if we see here the worm progressing through the belly of the King. Or -

Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of
earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he
was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

Well, a little ripe perhaps. The Pentagon blames Iran for this modification and immediately people see Bush setting stage for the Persian Gambit - but I don't see this: to me it's just more proof that they plan no such thing: the real use of the rhetoric is to raise the stakes of failure in Iraq, which is assumed and expected, in order to deepen the blame they intend to heap on hapless Democrats. They expect things to fall apart and for Iran to take over and the right wing will hold the left wing responsible for it.

It's sickening and absurd - which was the point of the Gravedigger scene, no? [you could argue it was simply a case of Shakey not liking lawyers very much - true, but that wouldn't necessarily change the intent of the conceit - yes, but...]

But, hey, the Dixie Chicks won album of the year last night at Grammys - so chalk up a victory for liberals there, right? Democrats absolutely dominate the battle space of meaningless award shows highlighting the achievements of vacuous, rich, pretty people. Suck on that Dick Cheney!
Hooah.

expect the worst

There's something of a rush on in America to reform the country's ailing health care system - talk of helping the poor and the forty million uninsured and the many millions more insufficiently insured and of course most importantly relieving stressed businesses that can't afford the rising cost of employee benefits - all very laudable I'm sure and also conveniently a perfect prop for the aspiring leader to hang his or her heart on in a show of sympathy before the cameras and it's assumed the undifferentiated mass of creatures lurking behind.

As I said, no doubt laudable and I'm sure inimitably Christian, what with helping the poor and improving the bottom line - hell, if Christ were an American, and at this point I don't see how he can't be, I'm sure he'd have a health care plan so who am I to be sceptical, faithless good for nothing fop that I am [yes, fop I say, fallen humanist Elizabethan jackanapes! - get thee to an alehouse, whoring wassailer, mocker of all things holy!]

Still, I 'd like to make one point which no one seems to be making or even have noticed: Americans are fat, they have horrible diets, they are addicted to the constant consumption of quick and empty calories as long as those calories are sufficiently larded with various saccharides and lipides, they like to sit for many hours at a time on soft couches watching TV and playing video games, they abjure exercise with the lazy devotion of a fin de siecle French monarch - and they love a bargain. You're telling me that onto the bonfire of these vanities you want to throw the gasoline of cheap and readily available health care? If these people think they can easily fix or reverse or subdue or cover up or make themselves oblivious to whatever damage a non-stop diet of donuts and Dorritos consumed at the foot of their HDTV altars can do then they will most certainly pursue that damage to its logical conclusion and believe me the conclusion they pursueth unto will definitely not look like Angelina Jolie [that seems like a gratuitous mention of a Hollywood starlet, no? Something of a rhetorical letdown, only marginally germane as it were? Why not 'invading hordes of Chinese locusts swarming over the flaccid, cellulite ridden corpus of a fatigued giant'? Nice ring to that].

In a world where ultimately nothing good can happen the wise proconsul will expect the worst and punish his people accordingly.

look on my works ye mighty

CNN spent an hour of its evening telecast last night discussing, analyzing, picking over with vermin like acuity the death of Anna Nicole Smith, a fat, drug addled, possibly retarded ex-stripper who, not content to rest on those laurels, had managed to get some rich old guy to marry her thus making her putative heiress to a disputed fortune and consequent to that glory had now it seems stepped into eternity amidst the gaudy confines of a Floridian hotel suite under the ersatz glare of a gaudy Floridian sun. Led with a full hour on this - that I know of - displacing all other news.

I had thought when earlier in the week a female astronaut, in a delirium stoked by a love triangle with other accomplished, highly intelligent extra-terrestrial types and being so stoked had apparently driven all diapered up cross country with a plan to presumably turn said triangle into a mere vertex with aid of knife and steel pipe, when this paragon of excellence and achievement and hard work shuffled bedraggled and shamed into court [Florida again!] to be charged with attempted murder I had thought then that maybe America had finally turned down that dark road we've long expected and there was nothing left to be dispirited by regarding it.

Leave it to a now erstwhile everything erstwhile stripper slash erstwhile oil heiress to remind me of just how wrong I can be - as if anything else mattered. Despair indeed.

the drunken post-grad conversation

- unless one makes the assumption that Bush plans to bluster out of Iraq with the same reckless, blind, near ignorant faith with which he blustered in, then its hard to see the surge as something legitimate. The number of randomly precise stones that need to fall perfectly into place for that wall to ever get built defies augury.
- yes, yes, we defy augury. Was that Marlowe? He took a cold knife to the eye, drunken papist.
- not a papist. Definitely a drunk. But it wasn't Marlowe.
- well then maybe the administration is a hotbed of game theory enthusiasts. You know, there was that Spanish guy, Cortez I think, and he was conquering various peoples down in the Latin nethers, and he burned all his ships so his soldiers wouldn't consider killing him, you know, and running off home, thus leaving the goatee wearing brigands no choice but to fight. It was a totally reckless, wild scheme - but it worked! [beat] Well, worked for the Spanish fellows; if you were one of the poor, painted, maize eating bastards it didn't turn out to be one of your better days.
- Bush doesn't strike me as the type that would revel in the abstruse arcana of game theory. [beat] Now Rove....
- yes, he's a reveler, for sure. Cold, cunning, lying, manipulative bastard definitely has the gaming spirit.
- you see he propped Bush up in front of a bunch of hissing Dems the other day to act all humble and gracious and approachable and all that shit? Guy just loves playing games with those idiot liberals.
- a real pisser, ol' Turdblossom.

Happy Bus

I am now officially pissed off at those calling for withholding funds as a way to end war in Iraq. I have never heard one person promoting this idea move past the mere promotion of it and explain the details. Forget the dubious constitutionality of it - explain to me how it works? On the most basic practical level it causes chaos amongst the rank and file of the military - end of funding means end of legitimacy and why would any sane grunt put his life on the line for a reason that lacks legitimacy? End of funding quite simply means end of military presence and I have not heard of one person in his right mind who also isn't still having his shoes tied by his mother who thinks that's a good idea. But beyond the somewhat emotionally charged issue of troop morale, the short sightedness of the suggestion is absurd - you rescind funding and Iraq turns into a bloodbath: do you ignore the bloodbath or re-institute funding to quell it? Amidst the chaos the Kurds annex Kirkuk, separate from Iraq proper and Turkey, alarmed by this, enters Iraq: what do you do? Same scenario with Iran: you just let Iran take over? If Saudis decide that's unacceptable and a regional Sunni vs Shia war is threatened, what then? You start funding the war all over again? Call it a different war and fund that?

It's absurd. Calls for withdrawal of funding are simply idiotic and should be met with scorn - and yet they proliferate! Presidential candidates proudly proclaim their love for the notion while rabid acolytes cheer them on - but cheering for what? The promise that they won't have to feel bad anymore about themselves, their country, the world? Are they cheering for the promise of an eased conscience? Are they cheering for an end to the war or an end to an uncomfortable association with it? Idealists on both sides resent the thought of having to compromise their precious notions of how things should be, their identities are too tightly tied to particular modes of thought - which is why those railing against the surge sound just as unglued from reality as those rallying for it. Where is the rational and reasonable dialog that should be taking place? Is such a posture just not politically tenable anymore? Is the perceived hopelessness of it all driving people to extremes of denial?

Or is thoughtful reflection just simply at odds with the mass personality issues afflicting an affluent democracy? As free people in a free society we are burdened with the usually unconscious responsibility, imperative even if you like, of having to think well of ourselves and others in order to get along as it were - in effect it is almost necessary that we give ourselves credit when possibly in fact no credit is due.

In Russia there's a TV show called 'Happy Bus' that airs on a state controlled network and involves two rich and powerful men giving away money and gifts to poor Russians. One of these two men will succeed Putin which is why he has put them on TV in something of a gratuitous competition to see who the ignorant will find most appealing and therefore who is more apt to be the best dictator. Opponents of Putin will not be getting TV shows of their own. That is how democracy works in Russia and Russians don't seem to mind. One is tempted to be scornful of the charade and sure enough hackneyed representatives from legitimate democracies do from time to time step to a podium and spout off something that sounds outraged - but you know I'm thinking there's a lot of people out there riding Happy Buses and they ain't all Russian.

Give it a chance

I will say again that the only logical explanation for the Bush cabal's putative 'surge' is that they don't really expect it to happen and it is intended merely as a rhetorical fulcrum to shift blame over to soft shell Democrats and those irremediable Iraqis. If one was sitting on and ultimately responsible for a situation that was doomed and offered no pain free way of escape and you considered the domestic politics ravenously circling this dire situation as the only battle now worth winning - then indeed it's not improbable, if you were a cold cunning bastard, not improbable that you'd come up with an idea like the surge.

Of course they didn't actually come up with the idea, just borrowed it, assumed it - and then proceeded to substantially gut it, to a degree apparently so cavalier and ill-advised that the chicken hawk academic who did conceive the child has renounced the creature as a bastard foundling that he can no longer recognize as his own - which adds I think credibility to my thesis.

At this point the only people who seem to support the surge are the ones who, like its chief sponsors, do so out of political calculation - which, I should add, I don't necessarily fault them for: politics is the art of lying while pretending to do otherwise [that could describe all art] and only the naive will fail to see that sometimes these lies behave so much like the truth that it can be hard to tell the two apart. What strikes me about those still supporting the surge is not the relative verity of their declamations but rather the argument cobbled together to support such, an argument which essentially boils down to an almost pathetic plea of 'might as well give it a chance'. Even if the chief sponsors had an unblemished record of successes to reference in this war 'give it a chance' would still sound so hollow as to defy recommendation - and these guys don't have any successes to point to! It astounds. Indeed, astounds so much that again I look for the sleight of hand: they use such hollow justification because they know giving it a chance is never going to get the chance to be given, thereby denying critics the chance to ever prove that it didn't have a chance to begin with, ergo it did.

If the shit hits the fan in Iraq as badly as reason would seem to dictate it will this clever little lie of theirs has the potential to look something like a truth come that fateful shit fanning day - and often that's good enough when the war one really wants to win is political.

Those folks

I notice that Bush is now calling himself 'the decision maker' and no longer 'the decider'. For a naive nominalist I suppose that amounts to an intellectual maturing, a step forward at least. Although, decidedly, 'the decider' had more of a colloquial ring to it and the man does seem to put much faith in the jargon of names he's wont to anoint things with. For a moment I wonder if maybe improved grammar is not a step forward but rather a sign of diminishing confidence - but then you hear Gates refer to the terrorists as 'those folks', a favourite epithet of Bush's, and you realise that if Bush can get a highly educated man like Gates to refer to incarnate evil as 'those folks', well, I guess his universe is still unfolding as he imagines it should.

And on the subject of Gates, in the same 'those folks' presser he confirmed what everyone had always believed and what Bush had frequently denied, that being that officers in Iraq did not feel free to ask for more troops if they felt more were needed. The press ignored this for some reason but I thought it significant as regards imputation of mistakes made towards Casey and Abizaid - note McCain's remarks re Casey as Army chief of staff - and yet the feeling of inhibition amongst the general staff once again points to faults being rooted in the Pentagon. McCain I assume must realise this - so I'd call it a telling sign that he chooses to go after Casey the way he has.

And yet furthermore on Gates: he claimed originally that the surge would proceed cautiously allowing time to see if the Iraqis are to be trusted. This claim was contradicted by Petraeus, who intends on moving quickly whether the Iraqis are ready or not, passing the 'secured' areas off to them with the assumption it seems that things will work out. Gates then contradicted himself and seemed to sign off on that approach.

It all sounds extremely tenuous, with the whole deal riding on a slippery slope of contingencies and assumptions - leaving one to again ask: what the hell's going on here? Is the surge a legitimate military effort or is its main purpose political? Hard not to conclude it's the latter.

sense and sensibility

Can the new or emerging strategy of intimidating or limiting Iran in Iraq - diplomatic, monetary, military proscriptions, prohibitions and proclamations - possibly make any sense without entering into direct negotiations with the Iranians? If the goal is inevitable confrontation, then yes; if the goal is to force compromises, to find a middle ground going forward, then the answer would seem to be no. As said before, the Bush administration's precipitous rejection of the ISG's recommendations, especially those regarding talks with Iran and Syria, tipped their hand concerning how they thought things should play out - once they rejected talks the surge, as it came to be known, was an inevitability.

Four questions then: are Saudis on board [which, if the case, would be cause for worry it seems as regards regional conflict]? Do Bush henchmen really want confrontation with Iran or just the real perception of the possibility of such? If they actually do want confrontation, how far and to what end? Would Iran see actual but limited confrontation as possibly being in their interest and therefore something they might want to encourage?

Possible overriding question: does it not increasingly seem that the US is caught in no win situation? If it confronts Iran it very likely stokes sectarian concerns; if it ignores Iran it very likely leads to a stoking of sectarian concerns. If such is the case what does that say about Bush's decision to apparently confront Iran?

Clausewitz over dinner

"Well, no one really knows, do they? Fog of war and all..." he said, trailing off to watch the waitress measure out a portion of wine for his approval, which was given with a curt and faintly lurid smile. "Chance cannot be factored out, try as we might, and so we shouldn't expect it. It just strikes me as improper to lose faith over a little... friction."

He sipped on his wine, eyes falling on the slender backside of the waitress as she subtly moved away.

"Possibly," I said, suddenly feeling less than interested in things. "Certainly your argument has the virtue of forgiving its own flaws. But... scatter enough leaves and eventually you'll see a pattern and from that pattern you may divine a sign and it's not impossible that sign may seem to point to an actual event - but only a fool would then choose to put his trust in the scattering of leaves."

mount of olives, pitted

"... so many hours in front of a TV and I can only say one thing with certainty: if survival of the republic comes down to depending on the ability of our male population to produce proximate erections on demand without intercession of drugs, devices or other third party solutions... well, my friend, we will then quite truly be up a creek without a paddle."

China wants to dance

"... it's not so much that the bloody Chinese decided to make instantly obsolete an aging satellite, although it is of course that as well, but also you see the way they went about it that causes one such discomfort: either it's an intended provocation, possibly aimed at a domestic audience, or they suffer under the demands of an ill advised ambition. Claims that it was a reasonable call to peace are absurd. America's one sure advantage in an increasingly treacherous world is its technology and to think it is just going to surrender that advantage to appease its competitors is either naive or disingenuous. It'd be like asking the prettiest girl at the dance to deliberately scar herself so the more dour looking creatures have fair chance to be rewarded in a way they don't in fact deserve. Only a fool would trust the professed good intentions of the disgruntled, the envious, the disenfranchised."

And Senator Specter is a hack as well

On a seemingly unrelated but more related than you'd imagine point, if one is willing to imagine unrelated things as being more related than you'd imagine - Senator Specter, cheered on by Democrats and apparently having surrendered up his soul to the blue rabble, has summoned the gall to ridicule in public AG Gonzales's suggestion before the senate judiciary committee that maybe the universal right of all Americans to habeas is an 'activist' fiction which possibly has allowed a lot of 'our enemies' a free ride for far too long a time now, no doubt imperiling the very freedoms we should be striving so courageously to deny.

Do liberals care nothing at all about ideas? about thinking outside the box? about original and dynamic intellectualism? No wonder all the smartest people are Republican [excluding Senator Specter, of course].

Dakota Fanning's director is a hack

That's right - and no not because of the whole rape scene controversy: if a 12 year old girl cannot pretend to make adult decisions about pretend adult situations under the pretense of an aesthetic whose ostensible purpose is to transcend the perverse pathology of an imagined adult context and while doing so manage to earn millions of dollars for her stage parents - well, then our culture just means nothing, is pointless, and you might as well put an end to it.

No, dear Dakota's director is a hack because of this:

"I am hoping that this film is going to touch a lot of people," she said. "When you go to a theater and you see the truth, you feel less alone in the world."

Unless that sentiment is a complete lie and is meant to mean the exact opposite of what it means to say, in which case I'd probably have to upgrade her from hack to genius, then I must assume the woman just does not know what she's doing and risks undermining everything Dakota has worked so hard to pretend to do for the greater misunderstanding of all: nothing is more damaging than a truth actually believed in, nothing more precarious than a world where one does not feel increasingly alone.

But maybe she's lying - which would be a great relief.

Casey striking out?

Now I swear that I am willing to accept that possibly I am a wretched fool deserving no consideration who imagines himself capable of talking things military because... well... because war just has a way of making a man feel good about the world --

but when General Casey announces that if in six months or so things seem ok in a born again Baghdad then American troops will be able to start going home - isn't he in effect telling the 'bad guys' that if they just play nice for a few months all their wishes will come true? I mean, one of the possible tactics to be employed by the insurgents will be to wait out the putative surge - so why are we telling them to do just that? Is there a cunning at work here that passes understanding?
Is it all just a big lie but some are better at telling it than others? Or has the idiocy afflicting Bush metastasized and overwhelmed erstwhile healthy organs in the body politik?

The Barack Obama conversation

- So there I was, standing in the express line at the Big Barn waiting to pay for my bag of chopped suet.
- Chopped beef suet?
- Yes, of course. We're not animals here.
- But we do eat 'em.
[a troubled pause]
- I don't see your point.
- Ah... yes. Analogical reasoning and the rudiments of primitivism. Sympathetic magic and the suppression of doubt. [pause] All that stuff.
[troubled pause]
- Anyway, I'm waiting with suet in hand and sure as the caves of Lascaux are dark the weedy, unwashed wench in front me feels the need to open up on this Obama character and the glorious cause and the slow, determined march of history and the infernal bleating of the bloody chimes of freedom and isn't it oh Lord a new day a comin' and praise our unworthy souls the deliverance thereof.
- They do tend to comport themselves with an over weaned ethos, if you will.
- And so of course I had no choice but to retort impostor! puerile impostor who can't say a harsh word but he wrap it in the gauze of some insufferable sensitivity. Don't be reachin' out to me, ya sweet tongued charlatan. I don't need your heartfelt touch.
- We'll be touching ourselves, thank you very much.

Two more wrongs, then take a right

I read Boot's column in the LA Times, the gist of which says that the President's plan, flawed as it is, is the best on the table and therefore it behooves us to give it a chance, and I thought 'well, this is a clever way to support nothing while looking like you're supporting something'. What I mean is that Boot and his ilk are saying in so many words that the Bush plan may be a doomed piece of nonsense but that the only thing worse than the nonsensical doomedness of it would be to admit that such is the case: what they're saying is that shallow theatrics is the only thing of substance to be hoped for now and that there is nothing more substantial, within that superficial context, than the good ol' American can do gumption based theatre of gosh darn it not giving up without a fight.

Now, I'm not going to necessarily disagree with that idea; after all, the world constantly verges on the farcical, the ludicrous, and the above does not to me seem so remarkable in its divergence from reason to warrant concern - indeed, it may be quite a rational response given prevailing circumstances. But the opinion or posture does regardless beg one certain question which proponents of it refuse to answer: even an illusion, to be of practical use, needs basing on something one is willing or capable of believing is true, regardless of verity of said verity and accordingly the truth asking for forgiveness here is that doing something is at least if nothing else better than doing nothing - but...

Why should I believe that, even allowing for the provisional nature of the belief? Boot and his cohorts ascribe to it with a felicity that is almost contemptuous, as if they were being asked to explain why the sun comes up in the morning; and to their credit, if credit is due, I suppose the theatrics of a show of force casts them in this role and they are playing it, professional hacks that they are, with conviction - but none of that leaves me any closer to an answer. There is absolutely no reason to be believe that doing something in this case is better than doing nothing, even if one accepts their language and definitions, which I don't - it is after all very difficult to do nothing - ; in fact it is possible and reasonable to argue that their something is likely to do more harm, as in precipitating the general coming apart of things, opening precipitously the door to the fools that rush in, that their something may indeed do more harm than their nothing.

Maybe though that is what they want. The closer one examines the spectacle the closer one comes to embracing the cynicism of it all, be it theirs or your own. Hamlet was quite happy to drink the wine proffered to him by a woman, dupe though she was, who he knew he couldn't or shouldn't trust. Now, was that bad writing by Shakespeare - or the cynical affirmation of a truth?

The Ethiopian conversation

"...well he said that in backing the titular Christian entity of Ethiopia in its rampage into Somalia for the purposes of rooting out the Islamic Courts, well, he said, we're no better than the rogue states we declaim against, flouting shamelessly the very international restraints that might, you know, define the one in opposition to the other."

"What's that?" the nonplussed preacher asked, delicately balancing a pastry on a napkin.

"And I said, you know, your high thinkers talk of the post nation state world, the post post Westphalian context and all that. But what if the post Westphalian actually ends up being pre-Westphalian in nature? What about that? All your fine ideas won't count for much then."

"No, I suppose not," offered the preacher timidly, struggling with a wanton crumb that had attached itself to his soft lower lip.

God we, in trust

"... they clamoured for my opinion regarding Bush's plans to surge into Baghdad and steal victory from the jaws of defeat from the jaws of victory and I said, albeit a tad unsteadily, having helped myself generously to an array of social inducements luxuriating in the open and easy prey to a lurid hunter gatherer, such as I am - I said: it will surely succeed if it manages to fail, and it will manage to fail having so cleverly courted a success it neither wants nor can achieve; it is brilliantly ill-conceived, a marvel of well-honed incompetence, far reaching in its shortsightedness, a masterstroke of profound emptiness. They have come of age, our precious fools, come of age."

Mclean, Virginia

“... and the poor souls have absolutely no idea how rotten with corruption their ostensible benefactors are. None whatsoever. Few of your common rabble do. In fact it would not be inaccurate to say that normal is that state of being most easily associated with benign ignorance and a general proclivity to remain so. Our society, our great way of life, our American genius, as you would have it, does not rest on the shoulders of giants, has not been wrought from the earth by a noble race: such fine lineaments as you imagine for yourself are but a mere accident of accumulation, a felicitous distillation from an undifferentiated mash. Ignorance has brought us here, ignorance has carried us forward and ignorance remains our greatest hope and solace. We are nothing without the torpid stupidity governing the general will of our slumbering masses.”

He paused a moment to draw on his cigar and swirl with stolid meditation his glass of exquisite port, adding, as if in answer to his own thoughts: “We have risen above, it is true, and good for us I suppose; but probably best to remember, for what it’s worth, that there can be no above without those wretched things dutifully toiling below.”

hoc erat in votis [Horace on cheerleaders]

... they’re like strippers but without the depravity, without the debasement, as if Juno had said to Man: you are sick creatures, truly awful - but there’s no reason you should not be allowed to deny this truth by way of convenient illusions: the best pleasures are those least compromised by reality.