The World Turned Upside Down
I’ve been a little off my game lately due to a very active schedule and little rest. Today, it is all catching up with me, but I feel a need to say something.
Current events are seeming very familiar to me in a way I haven’t felt since 1974. I actually have a sense that a corner has been turned, that a cliff has been averted, and that positive progress is again possible. It may be that it is only the impression of an exhausted mind, but it appears that everything once clearly defined - especially in the political realm - is all jumbled and in disarray.
Consider the following examples:
RollingStone.com columnist Matt Taibbi insists that the GOP is thrown off-balance by the way the Democrats are running the Congress, so much so that they have been “transformed into a bunch of squawking dissidents“. As such, no attempted insult aimed at the Democrats is considered too low or crass, or else Tom DeLay woulnd’t even consider equating the Democrats with Hitler. Does this mean that DeLay loses the debate?
Whether he has or not, he’s causing conservatives to resign from the American Conservative Union’s governance board - once Delay was appointed to it - over DeLay’s participation in the “massive expansion of the government”, which is seen as a violation of conservative principles. As one of the newly-resigned members put it, “It is one thing to call yourself a conservative, but you have to act on it.”
Across the aisle, things are going no better for the Democrats, who are too busy fragmenting over health care proposals to deal with the much more pressing issues of investigating the US Attorney terminations and ending the war in Iraq. One of the prime movers of the latter crisis is being charged with cozying up to the power, as if that is of any importance right now.
But just what should be considered important? Knoxville News-Sentinel columnist Don Williams believes that the American people don’t know what is important due to their being manipulated by the media with mounds of Britney and Anna Nicole, instead of covering the Bush lies that took us to war - a topic which seems to now be the sole responsibility of Dennis Kucinich.
Williams declares:
“[The] major media have been complicit in duping the [American people] by applauding politely as the courthouse of international norms burns down, igniting fires that threaten the world.”
But all is not lost, expounds Tom Engelhardt:
“[T]o offer a little hope to those who believe that the mainstream media holds the idling brains of hundreds of millions of Americans helplessly in its thrall, that we are all merely the manipulated, let’s consider something curious indeed:
The general point of view of the minority
represented in those giant prewar demonstrations
took deep hold as time passed
and has now been embraced by a striking majority.
It took far too long! But as long as the end result is the desired one, that of protecting our freedoms and restoring balance to the government, it is much better late than never. We can sort out the mess later as long as no new messes are being created. That is what is important right now.