Our One-Way Trip to Disaster
You and everyone you love are riding on a large bus. The bus driver, unskilled and careless, drives too fast, ignores traffic signals, and barrels off the road occasionally. Because the bus is huge, other vehicles swerve to get out of its way, with cars crashing repeatedly. But your driver just keeps going, leaving carnage in his wake. Naturally, you are terrified - but your reactions are irrelevant.
Finally, the bus itself crashes, killing many. Miraculously, you and your loved ones climb out of the wreckage. A second bus is standing by, and you gratefully scramble aboard. The engine starts up, but then the bus lurches dangerously onto the road, going too fast. Only then do you see that this new bus has the same driver, and he has learned nothing. Welcome to the United States of America. And welcome to the annual State of the Union address.Every year, the nation looks up from the wreckage, only to see that the same unskilled and careless driver is still at the wheel, bombing along. Each January, he explains himself. You already know what he will say. His one admirable quality is that, over the years, he has always said exactly what to expect. A review of the Bush speeches has an “I told you so” quality, going back to the start. That raises the question, Why have you repeatedly been surprised?
It was, after all, in his 2002 State of the Union address that President Bush defined the purpose to which he has been dedicated ever since. “Evil” was his constant point of reference, and he claimed the mantle of one who would end it. America’s enemies were an “axis of evil,” while America’s friend was God, who, Bush told us, was “near.”
In such a cosmic moral struggle, normal standards of restraint did not apply. That you could not imagine yet the wreckage of law and decency - torture, wiretapping, concentration camps, treaty betrayals - that would follow from this course does not detract from your obligation to acknowledge that it was openly set by Bush’s first statement of purpose. Your bus was being driven by St. George, the dragon slayer. And why should mere rules of the road apply to him?
In 2003, the State of the Union address was, in effect, a declaration of war against Saddam Hussein. Bush could not have been more direct in stating his intentions, asserting absolutely that Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction were a present danger.
Bush promised that Secretary of State Colin Powell would immediately go before the United Nations to prove it. (To Bush’s credit, the 2003 speech also unveiled the “Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” his administration’s one positive accomplishment.) When Bush drove the United States into full-blown Middle East war two months later, he was only following the plan he had already laid out.
In 2004, Afghanistan was a smoldering ruin, and Iraq was under the bus. Yet Bush declared victory right and left. “The boys and girls of Afghanistan are back in school,” he said. As for Iraq, we were only dealing with “a remnant of violent Saddam supporters.” He was still saying that Hussein had had weapons of mass destruction.
In the 2006 State of the Union address, Bush repeated that “we will never surrender to evil,” but now he was explicitly associating it with what he called “radical Islam.” This careless labeling took the bus into the mine field of religious war.
What is most notable about the 2006 speech, however, is that New Orleans, still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, barely appeared in it. That the United States of America has abandoned that great city and its people to this day - surely to rank as the Bush administration’s most notable act of domestic policy - should have been no surprise to anyone who heard him then.
Last year’s State of the Union address was historic. Because of the antiwar mandate of the November elections, and the cover offered him by the consensus around the Baker-Hamilton commission, Bush had a golden opportunity to change the disastrous war course he had set.
Instead, with the so-called surge, he gunned it.
“This is not the fight we entered in Iraq,” he said, “but it’s the fight we’re in.”
That’s like the driver saying, “This is not the road I thought it was,” as he leaps to safety just as the bus goes off the cliff. We are a nation in free fall. The final insult is that, one more time, the driver gets to lecture us.
James Carroll’s column appears regularly in the Globe.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company
What Bush says or doesn’t say at this point is largely irrelevant. The crimes and errors of this administration speak with a much louder voice.
Thank you for the eloquence of this article. It summarizes our national nightmare with enough humor to help this rider see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Although it is likely that things will not get better any time soon, I do have to say that I am relieved that this will be Chimpy’s last State of the Destruction Address. I wonder how many standing ovations he will get this time, especially since the rats er.. politicians are trying to distance themselves from him? How nice would it be for the police to slap the handcuffs on this abomination for a President for all of the Congress and country to see! Oh, darn I am dreaming. Well so long Chimpy! May you burn in hell which is where you rightfully belong!
What really keeps Bush going is a lack of action by the Democratic Congress. The lack of action by Democrats when elections have been stolen — and the lack of action now to prevent a new steal in 2008!
We can only imagine that these politicians have more in common with each other than they do with the public.
Self-preservation — not the good of the nation, nor justice, nor peace are their goal.
I strongly recommend James Carroll’s House of War. It shows the permanent structural aspects of the Military Industrial Complex and shows that this phrase is footnotable beyond your wildest nightmare.
Nice analogy. Lots of empires have fallen. But none, so far as history has been willing to indicate, have been able to do it with such haste, ambition, and flair. Rome wasn’t built in a day - and took centuries to collapse. Hardly a spectator sport. What we’re watching today is gripping. Gut wrenching. I often liken it to one of those super slow-motion videos of a car full of crash test dummies slamming into a concrete pillar at 100kmh. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen the airbags starting to deploy.
Shock. Disbelief. Rubbing my eyes shock and disbelief. At the unbelievable things that have happened to and been done to our nation by this band of sociopaths. America has literally been wrecked by these people. Wrecked again and again. And they’ve got us on course for another colossal wreck before they punch the clock and call it a day. ANd you know they’ll go home to their palaces to dwell in the lap of luxury in climate controlled homes with lots of video games. That’s where George will be. Playing a video game while the world melts into putrid effluent because of his policies and his grand sickness. Oh the whole scene makes me vomit. The cowardly feckless Democrats. Pelosi and Reid. Fawning apologetic dimwits. Apologizing for their existence, apologizing for the existence of enlightened thinking… just sucking up to the power structure no matter how corrupt and rotten it is. One can only think that George and the spies at the NSA have all the goods on the Dem leadership, all the goods on anyone in a position to challenge the corporate-Republican plan to destroy America and destroy the Enlightenment. Just a few pictures of Reid and Pelosi with some prostitutes or goodness knows what kind of degenerate debauchery. Who knows what goes on in DC? The dogs who work for the Rove Republican machine have photos of them.
Chimpy?
Why would Bush be compared to a chimpanzee? Chimps are nothing like a human being when it comes to the most despicable qualities any organism can possess. Human is the greatest insult that can be paid to a human being.
A reference to any other species is a compliment.
Yes, I’ve always liked that image - the Bus of State sailing through the guard rail into empty space where the tourists who notice that their sandwiches and cameras are floating begin to have their Wile E. Coyote moment, frozen in the chagrined realization that something has happened that can not be taken back. Yep, some bad choices there. Maybe a nice plunge to the bottom of the canyon will help us to hire better drivers in the future.
Will the Democratic Party response tonight from Kansas Governor Sebelius make reference to illegal invasions? Illegal spying? Illegal interrogations? Torture? Secret prison camps? Unconstitutional grabs at kingly executive power by Bush?
We’ll see.
I doubt it.
Should you check out the SOTU speech, picture a man who has jumped out of the Empire State Building announcing that “Everything is Just Fine” as he zips past the 30th floor.
I like the analogy, although a bus can be repaired and the driver charged if he’s drunk. It’ll take a heck of a lot of work to repair the usa, and the drunk who’s at the wheel will again not be charged, nor will he spend any time in jail.
I feel sorry for the people who decide to watch bush bushit his way thru another ’speach’, you couldn’t pay me enough to watch that walking advertisement for birth control, or abortion.
Or maybe another analogy is more apt — that of the drunken captain of the ocean liner headed for an iceberg. And he keeps on steering towards the iceberg and all the while reassuring everyone that all is well. And by the time he is forced to give up his grip on the wheel, the collision is certain and nothing can be done to stop it. But the captain has accomplished one of his goals while he was in control — he has made certain that the well-connected and well-to-do will be first in line in boarding the few lifeboats available as the ship sinks.
The story gets worse. Our government is up to its neck in covering up illegal activities by insiders at the highest level that are sowing the seeds of future nuclear terror (truly terrifying terror, if that’s not too excessively redundant) against the people of the US and Europe. Readers of the European press are well informed about this, the Sibel Edmonds story, which first appeared on the front page of the London Times about three weeks ago, and which has now been tied to the “outing” of CIA operative Valerie Plaine. We mushrooms (as in “they feed us manure and keep us in the dark”) are not. The US Media has been utterly silent.
Read
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12276
and follow the leads. Then make a big noise!
Spread this message to your contact list! Call Congress! Get all your friends and contacts in Europe to write to their American friends and contacts and tell them what our media is keeping from us! Post letters on European news sources tipping the readers off that this urgent story is not getting through to Americans and urging them to write!
In a larger sense, we need to start thinking like citizens of an occupied country or dictatorship; developing our own tools for communicating. The freedom of the Internet is great, as long as it lasts; but most people never see most of the stories you read on this site, and we have not yet figured out how to break out of this news ghetto we are in. (Consider my new next-door neighbor, a militant, progressive, motivated, socially active, college-educated Afro-American, who had never heard of Kucinich!) Think of this story as a new (and urgent) test of our ability to communicate with the millions outside of the Corporate Media.
Cynical resignation is not an option. It is our moral duty to speak out and be heard.
I have spent most of my life avoiding getting on the bus in the first place. I have no debt, live very simply, have survival skills and tools, have supportive friends and family. I never joined the Empire anyway, so collapse already. Bush, nor anyone in government, represents my interests. I put absolutely no trust in the “leaders” in government and only expect them to act in their own self interest, not mine, therefore I am not disappointed or let down when they lie, steal, and murder, in fact I expect that they will. It does makes me angry to see the idiody and I feel for the people who are on that bus careening out of control, and I will do what I can to help when it crashes. I’m fully aware that when it does crash I may be hit with some falling debris, but at least I ain’t on it, and I don’t have my hopes up that a new driver might be more sane.
The media has convinced the electorate that the problem with the bus is the loose bolt on the third seat from the rear, while ignoring the real problem.
ChrisHorton - “…we need to start thinking like citizens of an occupied country…”
So few words, so much insight. Cheers!
Earthian, I agree with you. Nothing of real importance gets discussed. We’ll hear more rhetoric about “change” and the usual bickering.
James Carroll’s column gets right to the point. No speculation, theorizing, or what if….?
Nathanal Heidenheimer, Eisenhower knew. Too bad he waited eight years to state it. Carroll’s book is excellent!
kivals, Good analogy.
kelmer, Good point. Chimps are higher evolved than the coward-in-chief.
claudius, We and weaker countries around the globe should be so lucky. Make sure there are enough handcuffs for the ‘peanut gallery’ of cheerleading collaborators in Congress as well.
Illinois Independent, James Carroll usually gets to the heart of the matter.
jaded prole, The deeds are more important than words.
conscience, I think you may have nailed it.
Big_Money, vmulier, skippyagogo41, voxclamantis, All of you see the big picture. Why are the ‘masses’ still in denial?
It certainly is frustrating to sit through the (as Claudius says) ‘State of Destruction Address’ and listen to one lie after another. Even worse will be the applause of the ‘two-party elite’ who supported his agenda with the stamp of approval.
R.e. Sybel Edmonds story, see also
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/30505
Thanks, peaceman… I think the masses have always been in denial. Try asking your average German or Japanese about WWII. There’s perhaps a million reasons for it. But it’s hard to find a time in history where it wasn’t someone other than the masses who wasn’t in denial…
The Canary in the mine is dead and yet we move deeper into the shaft. Get out while you can.
Rebelnow has it right. Become self sufficient as fast as you can.
ChrisHorton has it right, “Cynical resignation is not an option.”
Prepare to be an active survivor not a victim.
Big_Money, Thank YOU! I have said it on CD and on the radio and at lectures and gatherings for so long I sound like a broken record, but basically the same thing you just said.
Chris Horton, Excellent comments! Very well expressed. More later.
Until everyone realizes that the Republicans are not a political party at all but rather a gang of criminals (a la the Nazis) who have taken over the apparatus of government nothing will happen. To have a hopeless war criminal such as John McCain babbling about staying in Iraq for a hundred years as the frontrunner for this disgusting mob is beyond belief. What are you going to do about it? Nothing, as usual.
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” his administration’s one positive accomplishment.) What????
As I remember there was no new money for that program it was taken from all the other aide programs in Africa such as Malaria treatment and prevention, diarrhea treatment and prevention etc. Some accomplishment!
I wish The Boastin’ Glob had anything left of something like James Carroll’s testicular fortitude! Since the 1970s it has sunk to being another corporate ass-licker edited for consumer-sheeple, and for that it deserves its disappearing readership.
Here’s a fun game:
Spend a few minutes reading this site: http://www.whitehouse.org/ : and then watch the SOTU. Whoa, did he really say that??
(If you don’t know about that site, you should. It soooothes the pain of seeing actual news items by altering your brain somehow.)
rebelnow January 28th, 2008 1:32 pm
I have spent most of my life avoiding getting on the bus in the first place. I have no debt, live very simply, have survival skills and tools, have supportive friends and family. I never joined the Empire anyway, so collapse already. Bush, nor anyone in government, represents my interests. I put absolutely no trust in the “leaders” in government and only expect them to act in their own self interest, not mine, therefore I am not disappointed or let down when they lie, steal, and murder, in fact I expect that they will. It does makes me angry to see the idiody and I feel for the people who are on that bus careening out of control, and I will do what I can to help when it crashes. I’m fully aware that when it does crash I may be hit with some falling debris, but at least I ain’t on it, and I don’t have my hopes up that a new driver might be more sane.
Ardee responds,
I have seldom read a more selfish and self centered rant. Rather than note that, for one claiming to be a simple sort, computer access is one of your simple pleasures. I would surmise then that you are more a part of the nation than apart from it. That you blithely dismiss any responsibility for or civic duty to change our current “bus route” makes me really wonder WTF you are doing here in the first place?
And the bus charter company was granted immunity for allowing a known drunk to drive, then the courts denied you and your family the right to sue the charter company, the bus manufacturer, and the drunk driver, then the fed bailed out the insurance companies holding the charter and manufacturer policies, then you and your family were sued by the drunk driver for defamation of character, then your car and home owners insurance policies were dropped due to repeated incidents involving buses and drunk drivers, and then the charter company won the Baghdad Embassy contract.
So the SOU is all good…
“State of the Union, Bush to begin framing legacy”
Is this a Deathbed Conversion or just another lie from King Liar?
ardee,
are you not being a little tough on rebelnow?
I come from a very similar place… though there was a time when I actively tried to change the bus route, and I do feel a sense of responsibility and civic duty. Since the 60s I’ve demonstrated, been arrested, railed against corrupt corporations and politicians, talked to whomever would listen about environmental degradation, excessive consumption, inhumane economic policies, and lately post-peak oil and the need to prepare both personally and as a community for what’s coming. Where has it gotten me?
I’ve beened laughed at and shunned by friends and neighbors, surveiled and harassed by law enforcement agencies and ignored by elected reps to whom I’ve written hundreds of letters.
When the bus does crash, as it inevitably will, I will be the one who emerges from the woods and offers you some food, shelter, and what ever else you need, to the best of my ability, in a spirit of compassion and sharing. rebelnow will be right next to me.
may you make it through the great change.
jazzhead
I hope that he adds a bit of dignity to his last State of the Union address.
A suggestion: possibly he could be stood upon his head using various physical facilitators and then Bush could proceed to fart out his message for all to hear if not to smell.
(We still have to wait for the next useful technological breakthrough in order to appreciate such a novel and dignified form of presentation: smellorama.)
Just think of the pundicratic round of commentary after such a presentation. They could discuss, (anal)yze and compare the size, volume, explosive power, quantity and quality of any sequence of farts: blasts, squeeks, rumbles, pops ,prolong rapid fire explosions, etc.
In fact, the MSM’s in-house pundocrats could actually provide the after speech commentaries and discussions with gaseous emissions of their own.
I think if scientists could somehow capture the energy potential of these farts, they could contribute toward the USA becoming energy independenct.
However, to gain this independence, its a given that Bush, the Congress and the pundits must all consume “American” grown, processed and cooked food and drink a few hours before the State of the Disunion.
If all of the above is adhered to, these farts could drive down energy costs and blast us out of the present recession!
Why does there seem to be such a disconnect when it comes to understanding the relationship between subjective (existing in the mind; belonging to the thinking subject rather than to the object of thought) and objective (intent upon or dealing with things external to the mind rather than with thoughts or feelings).
Things will not change just because you want them to. Things will not stay the same just because you want them to.
You can only bring about the changes that the objective conditions will allow.
Thinking does not determine what is. If we do not understand this basic philosophical truth then we become subjective,cynical, and give up.
Please make your analysis based on what is, and not what you wish. If “the bus” is a metaphor for global capitalism, does it matter who is driving?
I think rebelnow points us in a good direction. Living a simple life is a skill, one that most of us don’t have. Rebelnow has his counterparts - they are all over the country. We need to educate ourselves, and get busy. The internet is filled with excellent ideas, resources, consultants, etc. Living on a reservation for the last 30 years has kept me continually aware that another lifestyle is possible.
Thank you, Mr. Carroll, for another excellent read. Have you ever ridden a chicken bus in Central America?
rebelnow-well you are one of the truely lucky ones, although i would argue that ANY american citizen is a part of the empire, whether you like it or not; the taxes you pay everywhere goes into funding the schemes that most of the Commondreams commentators rail against. the fundamental question is how we RESIST the schemes and FIGHT the lies with truth. hold onto your hat, its going to be a bumpy ride! I always did like incarnating in times of great upheaval…you learn your greatest lessons that way! LOVE AND LIGHT
“…Powell would immediately go before the United Nations to prove it. (To Bush’s credit, the 2003 speech also unveiled the “Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” his administration’s one positive accomplishment.)”
Sorry to ‘disappoint’, but THAT wasn’t “positive” as an ‘accomplishment’, either:
http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/aids_part2.htm
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/whistleblowers.htm
http://www.hiv-aids-factorfraud.com/producer.htm
http://www.duesberg.com/media/nhpositive.html
“That the United States of America has abandoned that great city and its people to this day - surely to rank as the Bush administration’s most notable act of domestic policy - should have been no surprise to anyone who heard him then.”
Also very-wrong, FEMA and diverse-other Federal-agencies were/are ALL OVER NOLA — handing-out land/loans/gifts/’dispensations’/labor-abuses, slashes to ‘local-hire’ Policies, and a LONG-list of other-crap to INSURE that the wealthy of New Orleans (and the new incoming&soon-to-be Wealthy, had a totally uneven playing-field on which to ‘win’ what once stood as the “Big Easy” [a shining-example of poor-but-responsible and multi-generational Black-Homeownership, called the B.E. long-ago, because it was the ONLY big-city in the US that gave a ‘poor/black-man’ a “even-break” and Chance — how ‘Ironic’!].
Funny, how Force-5 Levees gave-way to by-then Force-3 battering — not that-day, but later(!), and only where ‘black barges’ were parked, earlier — and _only_ near hold-out/low-land black-Parishes where the Casinos and Mall had ‘been denied’, for generations, by those stubborn/”po’-but-proud” resident-homeowners who lived and wanted to die there (they had been Warned for years to ‘give-up’ — by frustrated-speculators/developers, who had pointed to those same-levees!).
This article reminds me of Woody Allen’s joke in his movie “Anything Else”.
Woody: “Never trust a naked bus driver. You’d be surprised how many people trust a naked bus driver, and worse! Did you know that there were actually Jewish groups in Germany that supported Hitler? They were called ‘Jews for Hitler’.”
“Did you know that there were actually Jewish groups in Germany that supported Hitler? They were called ‘Jews for Hitler’.”
I thought they were called the Bauer’s, or the Red-Shield’s, or something like that (was it Rothschild’s — you know, like Gore’s new best-friend in England, Nathaniel — the one who so-likes ‘Carbon-Taxation’, and so-loves his ‘environment’, and who controls most of the world’s Uranium-mines today (aside from some here on Reservation-lands)?
“They were called ‘Jews for Hitler’.”
OH…’Jews’! Then he DIDN’T mean the Rothschild’s…
They are Ashkenazic-jews, and therefore no-more ‘Jewish’ than I or Hitler was (wasn’t Hitler’s illegitimate/paternal-grandfather also a wealthy/banker/Ashkenazic-jew, who lived in Frankfurt am Main — and abused a servant-girl/minor who worked-for/lived-with him, and thus became the Grandmother of Adolph?).
Who knows…’Fact’ can be stranger than Fiction, No?
“Just think of the pundicratic round of commentary after such a presentation. They could discuss, (anal)yze and compare the size, volume, explosive power, quantity and quality of any sequence of farts: blasts, squeeks, rumbles, pops ,prolong rapid fire explosions, etc.”
And all-that would surely make INFINITELY more Economic-Sense than what he’ll instead outline-tonight — regards Prime-rate Interest and ‘Stimulus’ and ‘bail-outs’ for Banks/Wall-Street, I betcha…
MOSCOW, January 28 (Itar-Tass) - The budget surplus in 2008 is to prove 1 trillion 80 billion roubles, Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said at meeting of the governmental commission on budget projecting on Monday.
How is King Liar doing with the surplus he inheireted?
Jazzhead :: I support yr defence of pal Rebelnow, and thanks for being one such as I, –lifelong committed to doing as much as we can to set the ‘planetary bus’ back on the right road, ~ as opposed to the *Road to Ruin*, -courtesy of the loons (internationally) in power.
Thanks to most here for good points re Bushbaby & vile cohorts driving their abominable ‘Axles of Evil’ bus over the cliff edge, — and also over the millions of corpses they have left in their diabolical wake…
‘Wake’ –now that’s an interesting word…
The bulk of humanity is not yet quite ‘awake’ -as yet, and so it’s our task to continue to aid the process. When the scales finally fall from their eyes, then another variety of ’scales’ will tilt, and depraved specimens such BushCo will never again grasp any sort of power.
They can only steal power when they tell efficient enough lies. When such lies become as transparent to the masses, as they are to most of us, then corrupt beings like BushCo become as potent as the prehistoric dinosaurs are to our current age, ~ just primeval old skeletons, scattered about in history’s dust.
The ride ain’t finished yet guys! The road is longer yet, and we still have time to do all the many things which really can, must, and *will* make a difference!
xx
U-C-D
You’re right, UN-common-dreams, the ride is not finished yet. Watch this short video if you are concerned about what Bush may do before the end of his term. They haven’t put all these new laws and directives in place if they expect to hand over power without a fight. We can only hope that this is the last year we have on this ride to hell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4kLPTdm8Lk&NR=1
The riders on the bus don’t like the bumpy ride but they’re ok with the general direction. This is a trigger happy nation and the road is the road to war, with any driver. The destination is world supremacy.
Forgetting for a second that tonight was the state of the disunion address, I turned on the TV and there they were, the evil triumvirate. Having just eaten dinner I nearly vomited (I’m not kidding). In the 15 seconds that I watched, George was hitting the podium with his fist, finger pointed at the congress, scolding and lecturing them about some absolutely necessary funding, blah, blah. Dick sat cheeky jowled, smug and sniffing through his nose in his arrogant way, while the eyes of the congressional princess roamed over her subjects. Fifteen seconds was all I could take.
I suppose I could have continued to watch and utilize the moment as part of my practice in the transformation of anger into compassion. But I’ll wait until I have an empty stomach.
Thank you Doom n Gloon, Jazzhead, UnCommon, hereontheres, I appreciate your comments.
At the risk of boring many readers I’ll try to address ardee’s comment about my most “selfish self centered rant”. I could see how it could be read that way. Though I enjoyed James Carroll’s article and agree to a certain extend, I take issue with the assumption that we are all on the same bus. Who is “we”? If I see an idiot driving a bus endangering everyone on it and it’s about to crash, are you saying it’s my “civic duty” to get on? I would argue that helping others get off the bus as fast as possible may be acting more responsibly than yelling “hold on, but don’t trust the driver”.
Civil disobedience, for me, is a lifestyle, a conscious one. It means to participate as little as possible in the consumer game. That means I buy nearly all my food from local organic growers, I buy used clothing, used books, and drive a 20 year old pickup which gets better gas mileage than the new models, and bike as often as I can. I’m not a total Luddite but I do what I can to avoid the trap of “buy now, pay later”. I’d rather “do without and be happy”.
I’ve learned to garden, I’ve spent lots of time in the forest, the desert, in the mountains, and by the sea. I’ve taken wilderness EMT training, I know carpentry, plumbing, electrical, welding, etc. While all my college friends are now well established and very wealthy (one’s a DA in a major US city, another a VP in a well known software company, etc) I took a very different path and not necessarily an easy one either. I now work for a non-profit organization. My yearly salary is about equal to the yearly “travel stipend” of some of my old friends. So I’ve opted out of the rat race, but as Anna Quindlen writes, quoting her Dad I think, “even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.” (Not that my friends are rats).
But to continue in my defense of my selfishness, as another example; instead of buying a lot toys during the holidays or birthdays we taught our children the value of handmade gifts, a tradition that we still adhere to. Ok enough.
So now all we are hearing are things like “stimulus package”, and “boost to the economy”. There’s a panic about “consumer confidence”. Bushie wants to throw some chump change at us to get us to go out and buy. It’s the consumer frenzy that is driving this planet into a polluted mess. It keeps the war machine alive by propagating fear so that we must be on a “war footing” to protect our “way of life”. It’s a vicious cycle and it’s not for me and I’m not getting on the damn bus. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have compassion for those that are now suffering and that may soon be, nor would I stand idly by. I made a personal vow years ago to cultivate compassion and to “do no harm”. It’s a very difficult path, but it’s the only one I want to be on.
Purvis
The repubs aren’t a la the nazis, they are the nazis. There is an actual historical link between the Bush family and the nazi german industialists along with operation paperclip bringing nazi scientists into this country and the ratline bringing lots of nazis into south america leading into the problems that we saw there in the second half of the 20th century.
medic6869 -
As your diametric philosophical opposite, I think everything is made of thought and I question the existence of matter.
I don’t believe that I can make a magical dent in the status quo, say, global capitalism, just by wishing it. But I can connect with the intelligence of other people by means of language and other convenient physical structures, and in this small way push human history in the direction I want it to go. It is demonstrably true that over time things change when I and most other people want them to all at once. Global capitalism may be a rock solid, consensually established mass of external reality, but it is also just an idea. The Soviet Union was another such idea, simultaneously hanging out in the minds of a large number of people, until one morning it just vanished. Whether or not it was ever objectively real is a question for metaphysics, but I’ll bet its disappearance was due to everybody just not wanting it any more.
I agree with the neocons that we are active players in reality. We are not some kind of fizz given off by the brain. Our subjectivity speaks the same arithmetic as the world, and in the realm of human affairs, we are credentialed to create things and to deconstruct things. I also agree with you that we can only bring about the changes that objective conditions allow, but the juxtaposition of inner will and outer opportunity is more about subtle vs dense than about delusional vs factual. The house I live in was once my thought. As political hominids we pursue our dreams and press our causes, and change does come out of that
George Bush and Dick Cheney HAVE CHANGED!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What in the HELL is the matter with you folks in America? Can’t you look at George’s face, and Dick Cheney’s permanent smirk, and tell that they’ve CHANGED?
REALLY! One would think Americans are stupid.
A mindset of unbridled competition works for the winners , when natural resources are in abundance to be exploited, compared to consumers. Then the best exploiters grow the fastest, and wealth is spent.
A different situation arises when resources are scarce and both current and future debts are growing. Then the individual greedy exploiter does great damage to the future prospects, by inefficient waste. Cooperation is necessary to reconcile all aspects of use, secondary damage, alternate use and reuse. Costs and benefits cannot be constrained to the single producer, single consumer model. The ecology and entropy of life and nature sustainability will appear as conflicts within all parts of the system.
The current models of governance are not coping with reality. Rather than looking to continued foreign exploitation and conquest, great attention needs to be given to internal system conflicts. The false war against terror is a false escape from the real terror of internal mismanagement, and a sign that internally the US of I is drowning in its own contradictions. The US of I is an invader because it has burnt up its own heritage.
It gets worse. With globalization and “free trade” we are now drag racing other buses, as fuel runs out, on the road to the desolation of global warming.
I found out why charter bus drivers where caps. So they can throw them over the speedometer and the passengers can’t see the thing hitting 100 on the Jersey Turnpike.
Looking to the future; instead of looking backwards ~
How do we make it better? How do we make better societal choices? How do we choose better leaders? How do we, as a people, enact the necessary changes that ALL will embrace?
There comes a time in history when we need to take our focus away from what we don’t like about the world and instead focus on creating a world that we can appreciate and build on instead of one we just sit back and complain about.
Therein lies the challenge.
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I can always spot a rabid venomous right winger these days they always use the term ‘Islamofascist’! It’s thrown around like the term liberal is. It’s the newest buzz word for the hate spewing crowd. I have also come to the conclusion that these folks vocabulary’s are very limited. No doubt by the fact that neocon’s hate truth and the real world. The sad part about the whole mess. Most American’s can’t get off the bus and just let the rabid ‘Islamofascist’s’ crash with their sorry driver. That don’t deserve to be saved by the rest of us. They deserve what they are going to get a wreck of a country. After years of bashing Clinton. It’s almost funny that their bus driver makes Clinton look like a saint!
Rebelnow : Walter Brennon has some great lines you might appreciate in the old B&W movie “Meet John Doe”
You know, that great thespian, who, for reasons unknown to me, has never received so much as an Oscar nomination, let alone win one of those ugly statues, I speak of Vin Diesel, of course, said it best in one of those wonderful “Riddick” movies. Some evil force is about to bring a world (or the whole universe) to an end, and Riddick sayeth, “Had to end sometime.”
That’s how modern “statesmanship” and “leadership” have left me thinking. Actually, I’m being unfair, “religion” has done its part to bring about the sorry state of the world and my dashed hopes, too.
hedology;
You nailed it. Not enough resources to continue the waste of unbridled competition.
A great metaphor by James Carroll. Unfortunately, there are far too many Americans who see themselves as dragonslayers led by St. George to be followed by St. Mitt? St. Rudy? St. Hillary? No! Too ridiculous sounding to sustain the image even for those people.
jazzhead January 28th, 2008 5:00 pm
ardee,
are you not being a little tough on rebelnow?
ardee responds:
No I think not. I have spent over forty years working within my community, whether on national, state or local issues. I have demonstrated, I have petitioned and with a lot of help from some of my fellow citizens I have accomplished some things and been frustrated mostly. But I have never, not once, lost my identity as a part of something greater than myself. Nor have I, like you have and rebelnow as well, ever once failed to understand that I am a part of something greater than myself.
Ultimate power resides with the people, and only through the excercise of that power can we hope to make a difference. Removing oneself from this responsibility, whether to your children, your neighbors or yourself is simply inexcusable.
ardee, I think that you presume too much. What makes you think that I or others who choose to avoid the rat race as much as possible, have not worked within our communities, have not demonstrated, or have removed ourselves from responsibility? Why do you think that I have “lost my identity as part of something greater than myself?” I have demonstrated, been involved in volunteer work donating my building skills to help less skilled, the elderly or poor. I’ve worked for hospice and am currently working at a non profit that is dedicated to helping relieve suffering. “Inexcusable” behavior?
Ardee we may actually be on the same page here, my rant is that I don’t trust the government to be responsible nor to be looking out for my interests, nor for the interests of the poor, nor the sick, but that doesn’t mean that I’m irresponsible.
Here’s a couple of book suggestions.
“Gone To Croatan: Origins of American Dropout Culture” published by Autonomedia
“The Many-Headed Hydra, Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of Revolutionary Atlantic”, by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker
He sounds unstoppable, doesn’t he? So the truth is that those who have been elected, appointed, and hired to prevent an individual from hijacking our resources and using them to trash the world have collectively, breathtakingly, failed. When a madman runs amok, he can later claim insanity. The fault lies with all those who could have stopped him but didn’t.
If Smiling John McCain, the ersatz moderate, is the next driver of the bus, prepare yourselves for a head-on collision with that light at the end of the tunnel, which will be an onrushing military catastrophe far beyond the debacle in Iraq. And he ain’t a hell of a lot brighter than Georgvs Leastvs. A revival of centrist moderation - I don’t think so.
Actually, what I think is that we are well and truly fornicated if the White House isn’t passed back to the party of FDR and RFK.
Carroll’s analogy doesn’t go far enough.
New bus driver just like the old one.
“Next stop, ‘Vichy America’. No rest rooms. But nice hot showers after your tough trip.”
Now is as good a time as ever to review this disgusting President and all the former Presidents who have been responsible for countless deaths and treacherous dealings for the past 30 years. Have you met a Republican lately? If so, you might ask them WHY are they Republican. And then give them a copy of This Can’t BE Happening by Lindorff, or Sleepwalking through History, the REagan years. Give them a copy while they stand up for another idiot like McCain or Romney or Giuliani and our country finally falls into a third world disaster.
All those who avoid debt suddenly find themselves mysteriously saddled with debt and they don’t know how…LOL!
“Life is what happens while your busy making other plans.” John Lennon