You've put your finger on something I am struggling with myself, struggling with how to understand it, struggling with how to express it.
It seems to me that there is a group of people, politicians and grassroots leader and their followers and journalists and policy wonks, who have completely different standards about the terroristic threats we are facing since 9/11, and the terrorist threats we were facing before 9/11.
For the terroristic threats we were facing before 9/11, every threat, no matter how vague, must be treated as gospel and all signs and portents point inexorably to the events of 9/11.
But for the terroristic threats we are facing after 9/11, have been facing since 9/11, no matter how clear-cut, they should all be discounted and dismissed and no action should be taken. Except, maybe, if the UN decides that it's important.
I think it's a pernicious kind of nihilism - that at bottom the mindset is that the US is the source of all evil in the world, probably because the US is really run by evil corporations, and cowboys* who murder Indians. So, at bottom, I believe it's truly frivolous and not worth one iota of attention.
Ask yourself, after listening to Kucinich and Byrd and Teddy Kennedy - why? Why did you bother? Did you learn anything worth knowing?
Derek expressed it best a few weeks ago - I am paraphrasing - with these nihilists constantly flinging themselves in the way, not only is it a miracle that the right actions are taken, it's a miracle that anything ever gets accomplished at all.
Maybe the reason I am having a hard time articulating it, is that once I've articulated it, what have I accomplished? I can't change them, all I can do is gape at them, astonished at their mendacity.
[*Bush is a cowboy. Cowboys killed the Indians. Therefore, Bush kills Indians.] |
