La Nation

I was asked in comments just why the fuck I still read The Non-Republic, and the only answer I can come up with is: If I didn't, I'd be reading The Nation. Now SMBIVA has discovered an extraordinary ediorial from the editors of that magazine, which begins on one hand and then travels through so many other hands that I started to wonder if the Dems hadn't up and offed the Donkle in favor of some kind of giant motherfucking squid. Owen Paine is left muttering, and I too find myself wondering, "Are you for real?" I kept expecting the Fresh Prince to jump out from behind the bushes and yell, "Psych!"

These people remind me of a guy I used to screw in college. No gag reflex. He could swallow anything. There's not a Democratic perfidy that they can't dress up as a victory for their own undearly held beliefs. Harry Reid could disembowel an Iraqi on the floor of the US Senate, eat the bloody guts, and challenge Bush to get over there and win the goddamn war himself, and still some pwog somewhere would write a thoughtful thousand words on the "turning point." "Harry Reid and the Democratic Majority did not stop torture-killing Iraqis with their own bare hands today," the editorial would read, "but the party has shed its timidity and is offering full-throated critiques of this President." Then they'd all go on NPR, and Nina Totebag would ask respectfully if there wasn't perhaps a contradiction in saying you oppose the Iraq War while raping Iraqi toddlers at fundraising dinners, and someone would say, "The Troops, the Troops!" and a racoon would knock over a trash can in an alley and someone would cough and the wide, dreaming Republic would roll over and mutter in its sleep.

Perhaps We Can Send Them to Madagascar?

Okay, Marty. Okay. We get it. What should we do about 'em? What's the, uh, final solution?

It isn't merely the unseemliness of a guy who can't go three seconds without reminding you that he is A Jew, and probably more of one than you are, you goyische self-hater, getting all Untermenschen every time he spies the corner of a tablecloth and mistakes it for a keffiyeh. It's more that you've got a fellow writing shit like, "The theology of the Christian encounter with Islam is difficult in the abstract and in real life. But an abstraction is only that. The realities of Muslim interchange with Christianity (to say nothing of Judaism) is that Muslims don't really care... or are dead-set against," only to turn around in less than a paragraph to holler at some poor author for not providing evidence . . . ? Remember when you were a teenager and Mother used to roll her eyes and ask if you could hear yourself talk?

You Broke It! Keep Breaking It!

Read this opening question and answer from an online chat with David Broder:

Los Angeles: Thanks for taking questions and providing these wonderful forums.I'm a moderate Democrat, tilting a bit left. I alternate between fury that we invaded Iraq in the first place and despair over the situation we've helped to create. That said, I'm torn over the withdrawal issue and I rarely hear anyone--either in the media or government--discuss what our moral obligation is to well-meaning, peaceful Iraqis in light of the mess we've made of their country. I'd like your thoughts on this issue.

David S. Broder: Thank you for the thoughtful question. We certainly have a duty to Iraqis to help them cope with the mess that has become their country. The obligation is partiuclarly strong to those who have helped us, but it extends to the country as a whole. We took on that responsibility when we toppled Saddam Hussein and now we have to fulfill it. But governing the country is the business of the Iraqis themselves, and they have to meet their obligations.

Presumably this "moderate Democrat, tilting a bit left," feels "fury that we invaded Iraq in the first place" because he believes that it was wrong. I doubt there's any substantive system of belief underpinning that conviction. Most people who describe themselves as "moderate Democrats" are averse to--and insulted by--the imperial critique. They accept the basic premise that the United States is or has been "a force for good in the world" (my emphasis on force, theirs on good), and that the few (for they're only aware of a few) instances of American transgression have been tragic errors and exceptions--compounded, perhaps, by the hubris, vanity, and venality of certain Presidents or Secretaries of Defense of National Security Advisors or other personalities, but with no implication that America as an entity might possess the same qualities. This person is offended by the so-called Bush Doctrine of preemtive warfare, although in the past he's supported unprovoked military actions against other nations under the broad rubric of humanitarianism. He dislikes the Iraq war because it was "unilateral," because "inspections were working," because sanctions had "contained" Saddam Hussein.

He isn't in the habit of examining his assumptions, and so he sees no contradiction between believing the invasion and occupation to be wrong and believing that the occupation must be prolonged out of a "moral obligation [...] to well-meaning, peaceful Iraqis in light of the mess we've made." The paradox is resolved by the categorical imperative that the United States is good. We have a moral obligation to continue our morally dubious adventure because its attendant evils make it morally necessary to continue . . . Well it's not really expressible in English syntax. Perhaps a Deutschophone in the audience can give it a whirl.

Now David Broder, the elderly avatar of the Washington consensus, gets in on the act. He takes "the mess we've made" and casts it in an oddly inverted passive construction--shouldn't it be "the mess that their country has become?" Say what you will about Broder, but he's a cleverer wordsmith than his questioner. He says we have a duty to help the Iraqis "cope" with this fatherless mess. The questioner says "peaceful, well-meaning Iraqis," which is paternalistic, but we understand what he means, while Broder narrows the category to Iraqis "who have helped us." Both allow that these duties and obligations extend to "the country as a whole," but at the root is the same, persistent moral confusion, that on one hand the invasion and occupation were and are wrong, but on the other hand rewards are due to those who cooperated with them, or at least refrained from actively impeding them. (Broder does not concede any "fury" at the invasion, so his position makes a little bit more sense.) Then Broder says something entirely contradictory: that governing Iraq is the business of Iraqis, and that they have to meet "obligations." There are several ways to read it, but it's plain that he's echoing the bipartisan government line that Iraqis must meet "benchmarks," must "stand up," must, in other words, fulfill externally imposed conditions before we will consent to leave. There at last is the nub. What we are in essence saying to the Iraqis is that they must deliver us the "success" that we didn't achieive. You'd better come up with some pro-Western democracy, you bastards, or else we're staying put. Call it what you will, but please don't call it a "moral obligation."

I AM the Boss of You

Justin at Americana reads a little dust-up over at Crooked Timber, which consists of a long post about this, that, and the other by Michael Bérubé followed by a zillion comments on the subject of: War, What Is It Good For? Bérubé's spidey sense was tingling--he's got an astonishing, extrasensory ability to dragoon every squib and squeak about his own damn self. Alexander Cockburn said, and Chomsky said, and so it goes, around and around, with Bérubé bellowing at anyone who didn't open wide for the "single most promising practical argument against war in Iraq [...] that it represented a disastrous diversion from the real battle, the battle against al-Qaeda and radical Islamism" was ex ante responsible for the failure of something called a "broad antiwar movement," which, as noted, wasn't especially effective at preventing the war. For a guy who spends as much time lamenting the "intellectual dishonesty" (is there another kind?) of his infinite array of intellectual opponents, this is startlingly disingenuous. You know, I think the kids in ANSWER are kinda funny too, but I'm able to loosen by garters and pull off my opera gloves and admit them to the Brotherhood of Don't Invade Iraq. And if they want to bring along their "Free Mumia" tee-shirts, good golly, let 'em. When folks like Bérubé start chattering about The Message, you can be pretty sure that something's up, and that something almost always looks like a Democrat who wants to be sure not to "discredit" some or other sort of "intervention." The Message is marketing; it's a word for political campaigns. Of course they want their rallies to look like Just Folks. They love Just Folks.

The sanctimony of it is galling, but it's the dumb that gets me. The "practical" reasons for Iraq War opposition that attract Bérubé, single, promising, or otherwise, have at their core the common feature of being almost totally arbitrary. They're based on particular, peculiar judgments, and the Prof is pretty clear on who's got the right to make those calls: He is. Bill Clinton might be. Madeline Albright probably was. Oh, and the "liberal and progressive blogosphere." An offending passage:

People like Michael Ignatieff and George Packer took Kosovo as a model for Iraq, and in so doing, traduced the very idea of international humanitarian intervention they were trying to promote. (Though, notably, Ken Roth wasn’t fooled, and neither was Samantha Power, and neither was Michael Walzer or Danny Postel or Ian Williams, and neither, for what little it’s worth, was I. Neither was most of the liberal and progressive blogosphere.)

Firstly, can you trust a cultural critic who uncritically uses a phrase like "international humanitarian intervention," which is a hoary euphemism even if you agree with and support the actions that it actually entails? Secondly, and more importantly, comes the crazy idea that the task of the reasonable, responsible opponent to war is to oppose narrowly--not to get fooled, as it were, by the bad wars; not to get lazy and "blur the distinctions" by opposing the good ones. (I hope Arthur doesn't read Bérubé; I'm afraid his head might actually explode when his eyes made contact.) Killing people for good reasons is bad, not in the least because those good reasons so often turn out to be entirely other than good. How many times must we say it: The American Liberal won't accept antiwar sentiment that is effectually antiwar. They don't want to preclude their precisious Donkle from engaging in future bouts of World-Saving. Surely somewhere some tribe is killing some clan is oppressing some ethnicity in the vital national interests of the United States. Send in the bombers!

Feelin' on Your Booty.

Evidently, Fred Thompson isn't a Christian. That's according to James Dobson, although a spokesman clarifies: "We use that word--Christian--to refer to people who are evangelical Christians." Which is fine, I suppose, just as it's fine to call insects bugs and chimps monkeys, even though not all bugs are insects and chimps aren't monkeys at all. Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, wins fulsome praise after a radioland discussion of his Monica-Lewinsky-era extramarital affair. It seems that people are confused about the objects of praise and derision here, wondering how it is that "the most politically powerful evangelical figure in the country" can come out for a wife-abandoner, but there's nothing to be confused about. Joan Didion famously observed that everything that didn't make sense about Reagan if you thought of him as the President made perfect sense if you thought of him as an actor. To think of guys like Dobson as evangelicals or Christians or any of the subvarieties thereof is to miss the clarifying truth that their vocation is talk-jockery. An ex-House Speaker who comes on the show to talk about porking some chick while the wifey wasted away with cancer is good radio, folks. Let me put it to you this way: Montel holds no moral position In Re: if he is or if he ain't your baby dady--not so long as you're willing to dish in front of the live studio audience. Dobson would support an Iranian hooker with every Sutra of the Koran tatooed in miniature on her backside if she'd show up to get a little weepy on his show. This game works well all across the world of Christian broadcasting. There is hardly a sentence that comes out of Pat Robertson's mouth that couldn't be followed by "only three easy payments of $19.95."

This is America, friends. There is only one meaningful question: What are you selling?

Program

The main thing, though, is to stop being constructive. Don't waste a moment thinking about what “policies” might be better than the ones we have. The fact is that the institutions we have absolutely guarantee insane policies, and unless the balance of power between the elites and the rest of us is changed, then those institutions will continue to manufacture insanity day in and day out.

And there is, needless to say, no institutional way to change the balance of power. The institutions exist to maintain the balance of power – or, more accurately, to tip the balance of power ever more toward the elites. Changing the balance of power requires interfering with the institutions, and impairing or impeding their operation.

In short: stop traffic.

Without comment, from SMBIVA. That's the end. Read the rest.

Chilly

You're Chile!

You're really skinny, and kind of bumpy in frame, but you're not as
rough a person as you used to be.  You like long, long, long walks on the beach and
avoiding having your rights violated, just like anybody else does.  You're even
willing to stand up to those with more power and influence than you, trying to bring them
to justice.  Fight the man!


Take the Country Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid

The Fantasticks

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

According to the dauphin, "If we cannot muster the resolve to defeat this evil in Iraq, America will have lost its moral purpose in the world and we will endanger our citizens. If we leave Iraq before the job is done, the enemy will follow us here." Dude, I think they're a little too busy for all that. John McCain agrees, though. "Thoroughfare and poppycock," he told reporters, "Goldrush Albermarle, between land and sea. It used to be nice around here, and then the coloreds moved in. Who are you? Who let you in here?" Actually, the geezer said:

"The consequences of failure are catastrophic because if we come home, bin Laden and Zarqawi, they are going to follow us."

That would be some trick, because I'm pretty sure the Z-man bit it in Iraq last year.

Evidently this is now a common theme among the residents of the Right-o-Sphere: that we have somehow confounded The Terrorists as to our actual location by relocating a small, heavily-armed portion of a percent of our population to points East. The other 300 million of us crouch over here in a continental duck blind, holding our nose against sneezing. Should our little hunting party scurry back toward the tent, though--look out! The prey becomes the pursuer, and with the natural order of things that out of whack, all bets are off.

It's true, of course, that there is a vast, imperial apparatus driving America's current bout of world-conquest, with deep roots in history and internalized imperatives and the savage economics of the garrison economy driving it ever forward. But at some level we must also admit to our analysis the plain fact that the men with the proximate access to the machinery of war and peace are as perplexed by the world as your average high school B student, the sort who gets a 1050 on her SATs, gets a second-rate teaching degree at a third-rate public university, and goes on to teach junior-high civics. The world to them is basically a colorful puzzle, with borders like the track of the jigsaw. Local or indigenous culture is like painting your face green and orange at the Italian-American picnic; it's like meatballs and pierogies; it's like St. Patrick's day. Difference loses significance when the world is just a carnival. Culture is just costume.

To the argument at hand: So one living and one dead terrorist will follow us home. What then? Will we duel it out in the streets of our own cities? Much right-wing jabber has its own internal logic, even if by the standards of the actual world it makes no goddamn sense at all, but this idea that quitting Iraq will cause some part of The Terrorists to actually, physically relocate to America is strange. What if we leave Iraq and go somewhere else. Antarctica, say, or the moon? Could we not simply lure them all into a box canyon, thence to drop a piano or Acme anvil on their collective head?

Plus, None of Them Are Circumcised

"This is an . . . election about change, rather than resistance to change"

David Ignatius puts his hand in the bumhole of French politics, and this is what he pulls out? In the whole history of democracy, an admittedly natty affair run as an entertainment while masquerading as a public service, like the news or certain performing arts, has there been a single election lacking for chinstrokers who, having heard a couple of stump speeches, put quill to parchment in order not to proclaim the theme of Change? Change is to politics what Ether was to the fathers of physics: the universal, insubstantial substance through which all things move and flow. Oops, it doesn't exist? So what? So there!

Ignatius doesn't truck to French "'exceptionalism'" which is a bit rich coming from an American, and the copy editors of the Post don't truck to the accent aigu, which they drop from Ignatius' misuse of vive la différence. ("As the French like to say," says Dave. They do not.) After all, "Most French people secretly love American imports, such as jazz and Hollywood movies." Now it is true that the French are fond of Jazz and, like everyone else in the world, watch American movies, but this particular observation suggests that our pundit has done his ethnographic research with one hand in a bowl of popcorn and two eyes on the early films of Louis Malle. Perhaps on some foggy dock in Le Havre, vast cargo ships unload shipping crates of Charlie Parker records and obscure Bogie flicks, which go zipping off to cinemathèques all over the Hexagon, where boys in short pants made of itchy wool sit in the dark, amidst curling cigarette smoke, and masturbate swiftly to the face-in-profile of Ingrid Bergman. But I doubt it.

It's remarkable, really: Dave knows less about the French than he does about Arabs. The French have got three shitty presidential candidates--a dumb cop, a legacy in a bikini, and a guy still trying to cash in on phony paysan credentials--all of whom promise to "break with the past," whatever that means. Each time politics trembles in France, Americans convince themselves that at last, the Frogs have seen the light: common law, market liberalization, term limits, and pasteurized dairy. And each time, the French go merrily on their own particular way. Ignatius:

France will be hard to transform, and for good reason: The French love their lifestyle, culture and language. They know in their heads that it's impossible for France to resist the economic and social pressures of an enlarged Europe--let alone the forces of globalization. But in their hearts, they want France to remain exceptional. Indeed, the past few weeks' campaigning has been punctuated by crude patriotic appeals, with Royal singing "La Marseillaise" at her rallies and Sarkozy calling for a spooky-sounding Ministry of Immigration and National Identity.

They "love their lifestyle, culture and language!" Zut alors! But fear not, Americans, for engorged, enlarged Europe and "the forces of globalization" will flatten their world right quick. National anthems are all crudely patriotic--that's their point--but a least a normal person can hit the high notes of the Marseillaise, and honestly, is a "Ministry of Immigration and National Identity" any spookier sounding than a "Virtual Fence" or a "Department of Homeland Security?" And how, pray tell, will this ministry come about when it is more or less forbidden by the constitution of the 5th Republic? Why, it's almost as if Sarko wants to scare himself up some votes by yelling about a buncha crazy Mahometans.

Enfin, peut-être la France et les Etats-unis ne sont pas si différents.

Update: Edited for sensicamality.

Oh yeah, baby! That's so hot!

I love it when you play with my purity balls.


(Via C&L)

One Toke over the Line

"I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air; transformed it; let it escaped and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox."

-Oscar Wilde-

Two groups of US warships featuring over 100 US warplanes flew attack exercises butt-up against Iran in the Persian Gulf.

"What it should be seen as by Iran or anyone else is that it's for regional stability and security. These ships are just another demonstration of that. If there's a destabilizing effect, it's Iran's behavior."

-U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl-

A Puzzlement

In the New York Review of Books, Jonathan Raban admits some confusion about America's favorite British Poz Power Bottom, Andy "You Can Tell by the Sibilant S" Sullivan:

What is baffling is why such an ardent disciple of Oakeshott came to sign himself up for the Bush program in the first place--a decision that Sullivan now says he finds "more than a little worrying." For, from the moment of its declaration, the "war on terror" ("this crusade," as Bush then defined it), by committing the United States to an indefinite future of hostilities against a shadowy and shape-shifting enemy, had all the hallmarks of one of Oakeshott's most deluded Rationalist projects. Yet even as Osama bin Laden morphed into Saddam Hussein, and Paul Wolfowitz unrolled his great plan for the democratization of the Middle East by force of arms, Sullivan was a raucous cheerleader for the administration.

It's like asking how Torquemada, that ardent disciple of Christ, done tortured all them peoples, and killed 'em besides. Andrew Sullivan is an ardent disciple of Andrew Sullivan, and that latter Andrew Sullivan is an ardent disicple of a fungible series of interpretations that are remarkable for how closely they hew to whatever Andrew Sullivan is saying at the time. You could just as easily find in an essay in The National Review:

What is baffling is why such an ardent disciple of the President's War on Terror now identifies with a relativist like Oakeshott.

Which is perhaps to say that reading Andrew Sullivan requires a very particular modality.

And this brings me to a point about politics. If the politics that a person advocates represent not only a hypothetical net gain for himself, but a universal gain; if, in other words, no harm or detriment is evident to any of his own interests; then you can be certain that his politics are at their very base total bullshit.

Laff Lines

"This analysis," says Hitchens, "only works if you think of politics as a process of maneuvering, whereby each party hopes to reap the benefit of the other party's mistake in having either 'lost' Iraq or in having 'acquired' it in the first place." Evidently Hitchens doesn't think of "politics" as this "process of maneuvering," but then it's always been the genius of Hitchens to set himself up in amorphous opposition to a perfectly rational, unremarkable belief, which he usually states with the clarity and concision of a wise advocate before tightening his haunches and beginning a wolf-howl of righteous derision--tuneless, frightening, and senseless. The analysis he's talking about has to do with who does what to whom regarding the various timetables and not-timetables proposed for the American project in Iraq. Hitchens shakes his fist like Groucho: "Whatever it is, I'm against it!"

Hitchens is ostensibly reviewing Peter Galbraith's new book advocating the partition of Iraq, but as usual, his real subject is himself.

What are our irreducible objectives in Iraq? To prevent the country and its enormous resources from falling into the hands of the enemies of civilization--most notably al-Qaida--and to protect what remains of the secular and democratic alliance that we once hoped might emerge to govern the situation. We made--both parties, not just the Bush administration--some serious promises to Iraqi democrats down the years. It would be morally impossible, as well as politically suicidal, to walk away from them.

"Our irreducible objectives" track awfully closely with the Hitchensian objectives long inarticulated. "Enormous resources" is a euphemism for oil, and that's as irreducible as it gets. On the other hand, "what remains of the secular and democratic alliance that we once hoped might emerge is odd," since what we "once hoped might emerge" never did emerge, and as a result can't offer up any remains. That's the thing about hope: kill it, and it leaves no carcass. The initial "we" and "our" in the passage are pretty standard for America, but the last reads strongly as a "me," despite the em-dash-offset caveat about bipartisan culpability. Who are these Iraqi democrats, and what promises did "we" make over the years, other than the usual promises that a man makes to the deep end of the toilet bowl when the last dribble of stomach acid and Glenfiddich plops from the business end of an otherwise dry heave, and his own reflection in the spoiled water takes on the air of Ahmed Chalabi. There were no Iraqi democrats: there were some exiles who wanted their own opportunity for autocracy.

There comes a heartfelt appeal to

values that are shared across American politics--such as the defense of self-determination and the protection of minorities from massacre and persecution . . .

Here you have a citizen and resident of the two nations that invaded and occupied Iraq, who is reviewing a book discussing the merits of partition at the hands of the occupying powers, offering up the "defense of self-determination" as motivating principle of that very invasion. It reminds me of an old joke: A pedophile and a little boy walk into the woods at night. The little boy says, "Mister, it's dark and I'm scared."

The pedophile says, "You're scared? I'm the one who's gotta walk out of here alone."

Libertarian Paradise

There's an article about Washington, DC in the Post called "Not Just a Government Town" that reports on the ways in which Washington is just a government town:

Washington is largely a white-collar town that naturally attracts an educated class. [It is b]lessed with an abundance of federal money, powerful bureaucrats and little reliance on fickle industrial trades[.]

Trade is fickle, but protection is forever.

All Your Unsimulated Orgasms

Last year John Cameron Mitchell, the director of a flawed, 2001 adaptation of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, made a controversial film called Shortbus, and yes, controversial is the modifier that the filmmaker and friends spent balloonfuls of hot air renouncing for the plain purpose of getting it appended to every note and review. You can't hold that against them, though. That's the way you market the arts. The controversy, such as it was, around Shortbus was its use of, or indulgence in, explicit, unsimulated sex. Unsimulated is another word that deserves some scrutiny for its over-appearance in ad copy. Sure, cocks go into pussies--and so on and so forth down (or up) the ladder of sexual ordinariness--but that's hardly germane to judgments about authenticity or simulation. Is regular, old-fashion, moan-and-squeal porn "simulated"? If so, then?

For so controversial a film, Shortbus hits every major and minor chord of so-called independent film, from the semi-improvisory nature of its script to the persistence of the Wise Drag Queen. All small-town gay boys discover sex through hustling and move to the city. Asian chicks have trouble with orgasms, played for both laughs and tears. Melancholy indie-rock peppers the soundtrack. There is a dream sequence. There are brownouts and, at last, the big Eastern blackout, mysteriously corresponding to moments of high emotional drama. There's AIDS, of course, and some intimations of 9/11, and suicide, and a whole lot of sadness. It's the sadness that really gets me.

It says something about our art that everyone is so fucking sad. It's prevalent in "serious" film, and prevalent in contemporary poetry, and certainly abundant in current fiction. It's a vast, insatiable sadness--directionless, sourceless, a state of nature, practically. Of course, I'm happy to admit sadness to the pantheon of human emotion, and it has its place in art--a great, important, respectable, remarkable place. But Robert Pinsky, a poet of whom I'm no especial fan, once wrote something very wise about "Sadness and Happiness" in his long-ish poem of that name:

That they have no earthly measure
is well known--the surprise is
how often it becomes impossible
to tell one from the other in memory . . .

Which is, I think, a sentiment that escapes John Cameron Mitchell and his ex-gay-hustler, HIV-infected, post-9/11, "happiness stops at my skin," suicidal, filmmaking main character; or his anorgasmic, sex-therapist, father-suffocated, mother-abused, husband-despising, spiritually-empty main charachter; or any of his characters, who exist in a disturbingly gleeful realm of malcontented, passive, anomic paralysis--gleeful to the auteur of that environment, who delights in abusing his thinly-drawn characters because Abuse is true, until at last the cute Chinese girl gets her big O, the lights go back on in Manhattan, and we go spinning up into space to the tunes of Yo La Tenga, without the slightest ironical nod to the fact that this very same psychiatrical character was the one who, in a hastily executed therapy scene early in the film, berated one half of a queer couple for his indulgence in false epiphany. Ummm-hah, as Myron Cope used to say.

I suppose it's possible that New York really is a repository for whiners, though my not-insubstantial experience with that city is that its residents are made of hardier material, and not just on the outside. Personally, I live in Pittsburgh, and count among my friends in these here provinces plenty of assorted fags, dykes, misfits, miscreants, and hopeful artists, and it's my experience that even the whackos living intentionally hardscrabble in squats in the ghetto have more fortitude and a greater capacity for joy than all these loft-living complainers. All of this is to say that pathos and bathos are separated by a lot more than a single consonant.

Your Optimism for the Week

It's positive that a long article like this one, "Terrorized by 'War on Terror'," by Zbigniew Brzezinski now appears prominently in a major American newspaper. I say so with some caveats. Brezezinski nowhere identifies Carter, the president under whom he served, as a principle architect of our "Vital National Interest" policy toward the petro-states of the Middle East, for instance. And nothing about the article suggests a greater awareness that even the 'War on Terror,' is a symptom, not a cause, of the prerogatives of the national security state.

Still, it's gratifying to see that we have at least a few significant public figures who will no longer toe the Democratic "opposition" line that what we need is a "better" or a "smarter war on terror." It's gratifying to hear a major public figure admit that we will never "win the war on terror" because there's no such thing--to explain in clear terms that the phrase isn't only a matter of political hyperbole, but that it's no more or less than a shopworn bit of propaganda and a lie. And hell, when a Brzezinski can coin a phrase like "terror entrepreneur" to describe the profiteers of our hysteria, and can do it in the pages of the Potomac Pravda, why, friends: it's Sunday here in the provinces, and it does feel a little more like spring.