Shorter version: Only liberal Protestants and Confucians can handle democracy.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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& that leaves the US exactly where?
Booman….
the site is somehow screwed up, it’s like the left side edge of the comments is clipped off.
Is this IE7 related and is this corrected with Firefox? Or, do you have an issue with the left hand advertising column cascading down into the comments?
Help please.
it’s an IE 7.0 problem. I will get it fixed soon.
Thank you in advance!
Yeah Booman, the site is screwed up – comments have disappeared. If you do not login, all 9 comments in your last thread – ‘Dick Cheney Beyond the Pale’ can be read. After a login, only 3 comments appear.
I’m logged in and all 9 appear.
I’m on Firefox. FYI.
I’m also on Firefox!
weird
Tom Caughlin has to go. So does McQuarters. So does the punt returner. First of all, you can’t call yourself a NY Giant unless you can play De(effin)fense. Second, there’s this basic thing called tackling that tends to slow opposing teams down. No shit…it’s true. I can’t remember a more undiscilpined NY team…ever. And every time I see a player shaking their head I want to slap it off of their shoulders.
But I’m not bitter!
at least you don’t have to live down here.
True. I feel for you.
I’d like to hear thoughts on how one can justify being in the military to receive benefits for health issues, or university, etc. when you are slaughtering other human beings. It’s quite ridiculous really.
And, since it seems to be the rationale for quite a few members here, it’s something that really fucking disturbs me.
I can only speak for myself. I don’t know that there are “quite a few members” here that do justify it. I think that the great majority probably falls somewhere in the uncomfortable and unresolved middle, like me. In the purest sense there’s no way anyone can justify it. On the other hand, there really are desperate people out there who have no other options to get their foot inside the door to an education or to provide health care for themselves or their families. And we all know who most of them are. Mostly poor, mostly minority. And I’ll bet it’s those people who have the hardest time justifying their own actions against “others” who are being beaten down in other countries by the system that they are using to better themselves. It reminds me of the plight of black soldiers in Vietnam and those at home like Muhammed Ali who resisted and said that the Vietnamese never did anything to them and that it was a white man’s war. I don’t understand how any soldier can continue to justify their participation in this war anymore. I think that their oath should require them to dissent, like Watada. I know that I could never be a part of an illegal invasion. I know that I could never allow myself to be part of a machine that has done so much indiscriminate killing. Even still, I can empathize to an extent with those who are of the lowest rank who are being abused by their commanders. Who are, day by day, losing their sanity and their humanity. Those who will come back here and be discarded by their own country. Empathy doesn’t necesarilly mean support though. If the war is illegal and I don’t support it, how can I support any soldier who is participating in making that illegal war machine move? I can’t. And that causes me so much heartache.
The truth is that I am a part of the machine, despite my attempts to dissent. And I am and will be held accountable in the future for the crimes of my leaders, my military, and my country as a whole.
What I cannot wrap my head around is this question. HOW do WE stop it? I just cannot come up with an answer.
We can’t stop it. We just can’t. The goddamned democrats that we just elected are supporting a troop increase. Fucking collaborators. There are two things that could stop it. Millions of us converging on Washington, but that won’t ever happen. Or the world will finally hand us our asses, and that’s where we’re headed now.
It may take that, Super. It may just take that.
I want to believe that there are responsible grown ups hard at work, behind the scenes, in Washington who are going to step in and stop this insanity. But I know there probably isn’t.
Somehow, we need to prepare ourselves, each and every one us, separately and together, for however this all comes down from here. It is going to take a lot of strong “ordinary” folks like us to help others much less prepared than we are, to deal with whatever lies ahead for this country.
To do that, we really do need to stay close to each other. In the event we’d ever lose net access,even for awhile, I strongly suggest we all connect up privately so as to not loose touch with each other, in terms of address/phone contacts, etc.
And as hard as it is to maintain our own emotional equilibrium in times like this, together we can and we must. Take breaks from it all when needed, especially, and refill/renew ourselves with whatever we need.
There may not be much we can DO physically, at this point, to affect outcome here, but there’s a hell of a lot we can do personally, inside the boundaries of our own personal worlds to feed and strengthen the best in ourselves and in those we love.
We are the real infrastructure of this country: the foundation of it. Nobody can destroy this without our consent.
I was talking to a friend the other night. A regular guy. Quiet, hardworking and pretty middle of the road as far as politics goes. Once we got on the subject of the war and the general direction the country is headed in he just took off on a rant about how completely screwed the country really is. The domestic spying, increased police power, the curtaling of our civil liberties, running the military into the ground, creating new enemies every minute, and on and on. He’s very level headed, this guy. It was when he stated his belief that sooner or later the American people would reach a breaking point and exercise their power over the government that I saw something that isn’t very visible in the country yet. An anger at the govt. by an everyday man and a fear for the future of the country if we allow it to continue. I’ve been extremely disappointed in the complete complacency of the American people in the face of the radical shift we’re experiencing. But maybe there is a much larger and volatile discontent out there than I realize. Maybe there is a limit to what people will allow to be done in their names. He was basically talking about a revolution of sorts. Something is simmering there.
CBtY’s best friends parents are Republicans…believed that Saddam had something to do with 9/11, that Bush was better for their small business, etc. I was always amazed at how people who “don’t really watch the news” ccould spout off allthe Republican talking points so easily (guess they got their news from Fox). The boys even avoided talking about politics with their friend because they were on totally opposite sides of the fence.
That has all changed within the last few months, and this weekend they were talking about how his parents are so unhappy with Bush that they’re rethinking their support for the Republicans.
I think there’s more anger out there than you realize. A lot of dumbasses too, but people are starting to have had it with this shit. (I guess we all just got a head start, eh?)
but just what are we exactly suppose to prepare for? Nuclear War? Good god folks, how does one prepare for that?
Well, the worse things look for the U.S. and the world, the more I find myself “cherishing” everything around me: everyone I know and love, my family, my cats, my days, nature, all the beauty there is to see and hear and touch..all of it.
Some of that comes with simply getting old and realizing life just doesn’t go on forever. But while I’ve got it, I intend to live the hell right out of it, no matter WHAT those power mad asshats in Washington do.
What I don’t understand is what in the hell good would sending a “surge” of troops in do? They basically have tried that in other hot spots and cleared all the “insurgents” out only for “the insurgents” to wait it out in hiding and come back after we leave. We do not secure these towns.
When are they going to get just exactly what “there is no military solution” means. Pull the frickin troops out now. Not one more soldier should have to die. No more blood for oil.
I honestly don’t think they want to stop this war: I think they want the opposite, and have since the beginning.
I tend to agree Scribe. To what end then is the question? Money, power, oil, the Rapture? What makes these evil bastards tick?
yes, yes, yes and yes