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Friday, July 18, 2003
Thursday, July 17, 2003
So, the bloodletting has begun. First it looked like George Tenet was going to be the fall guy for phoney Iraq intelligence. But then, when he was questioned by a Senate Committee, he named names. So, an administration official did put pressure on the CIA to OK the unverified Iraq-uranium report in the State of the Union address. As it turns out, the CIA didn't even look at the documents in question until after the speech was made. Tenet, apparently, never even saw the SotU address - it was a subordinate who approved it. So, everybody says the buck stops with the guy before him. Well, here's something Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf said once in a speech: You can delegate authority, but you can't delegate responsibility. There are two important questions here. First, who knew what, and when did they know it. Second, and just as important, who didn't know what, and why didn't they know it? No one can plead ignorance here. If they knew one thing and said another, they sabotaged national policy; if they didn't know what was going on and just made something up, they were in dereliction of duty. There is going to be a bloodbath among the administration, and they know it. But rather than stepping up to the plate now and telling us just what exactly is going on and why, they're trying to stall. Well, the stall approach didn't work for Nixon, and it didn't work for Clinton, so what makes anybody think it's going to work here? Somebody's going to get to the bottom of this. Somebody's going to talk. We're going to find out who knew what, and who didn't. I wonder myself. | Wednesday, July 16, 2003
So, a new thought on the political controversies of the day, sparked by this letter to the editor regarding an article on Howard Dean at Salon.com (first letter on the page). The opening of the letter goes like this: What we Democrats fail to realize is that at some fundamental level the triumph of popular conservatism in our politics represents the interaction of basic human nature with the changed reality of life in our advanced society. Ultimately, the Republicans win -- and continue to win -- because the rhetoric of "serve yourself" beats "let's work together" in all but truly dire times. Let's face it: Community is hassle. You have to deal with disagreeable neighbors and you can't always do what you want. And the Republicans understand this. Their rhetoric is always based on the idea that you shouldn't have to be bothered by anything unpleasant: Taxes are annoying, so get rid of them. Zoning ordinances, environmental laws, nagging labor unions, affirmative action to rectify past injustices -- all are a drag. It's actually a very astute point. If anything, I suppose you'd call me a Libertarian Democrat - I don't like laws and taxes, but I know we need them. The following paragraph from later in the letter helped me discover why: But today -- as the Republicans recognize -- those most likely to vote have reached a level of affluence that evokes the illusion they can buy their way out of the inconvenience of community altogether. That leaves the Democrats to make the rather joyless argument that "we're all in it together," which, unfortunately, will necessitate paying some taxes and doing the hard work of learning to live with one another. In our post-industrial society, everyone is more and more able to comfortably exist without himself producing any of the neccesseties of life. I don't have to worry about growing my food, or finding myself shelter every night, or even entertaining myself - that's all taken care of for me, as long as I can pay. But here's the thing - the things I buy don't come from the ether. I'm buying somebody else's labor. That's right. As we move towards a society where I have to do less and less of my own work, I am in fact becoming more and more dependent on society. And that's not an indictment of "the rich" or some such rubbish. The farmer can't harvest his crop without the manufacturer's tractor, the manufacturer starves without the farmer's crop. The executive is completely unproductive on his own, just a drain on resources, and yet he improves the efficiency of all around him when you plug him into an administrative position. Without the doctor, we might all die of disease, but the doctor wouldn't do much good without the biologist's treatments, and neither of them would be effective without the teacher's education... and then we might as well get back to the farmer, who kept them all fed, while they were keeping him healthy. My point is this: we're all invested in society, whether we like it or not. We are all in this together. The kid dropping out of his underfunded high school might have been on a track to develop a cure for cancer. The half crazy guy sleeping on the street may have emerged from treatment to write the great American novel about his experiences, if there was any treatment to go to. Looking out for number one is simply not a viable way of life anymore, because these days, you aren't the one providing for yourself. You can look out for number one all you want, but if you need an emergency room and the local one's closed down, you're out of luck. We are in a position, these days, where every man can create his own destiny to a degree unprecedented in history. Anyone can become anything they have the skill and will to become. Freedom is, and should be, the law of the land. But freedom is not the same thing as independence. We are all free, but none of us are independent. We must all accept that we are all entirely dependent on each other for survival. Each of us has a responsibility to each other, not just because it's "the right thing to do", but because the man you help today may be the man who saves the world tomorrow. | |