Ladies and Gentlemen, Your American Taliban

Rick Perry and the New Apostolic Reformation have downgraded all non-Republicans to soulless demon status. They are not speaking metaphorically. This makes anything they do to achieve power justifiable, as those who oppose them are not even human.



Their "Seven Mountains Mandate" calls for religious control of business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, the family and religion. They believe that God, or their idea of God, must take "dominion" over the political and legal structures of the United States.

Welcome again to Weimar America, land of Glorious Godfrey.

Second Amendment Solutions

Gabrielle Giffords, U.S. Representative for Arizona's 8th congressional district, was shot in the head today while attending a meet-the-representative event outside a Safeway grocery store. After shooting congresswoman Giffords, the assailant fired into the crowd at random, killing a nine year old child, a federal judge, and several others.

Sarah Palin's webmasters quickly moved to take down her PAC ad that featured crosshairs on Giffords' name. When asked about this during the campaign, Giffords told MSNBC, "We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action.”

Giffords' opponent held a rally during the election with the following ad: "Get on Target for Victory in November / Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office / Shoot a fully automatic M15 with Jesse Kelly".


"Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" Pls see my Facebook page"

It is expected that the political right will profess to be "horrified" and describe this act as "random" and "senseless". If they were capable of insight into their own culpability, they would not be who they are.

The Democrats Deserve to Lose

Yes, I'm in that kind of a radical mood tonight, after a day of striving against ignorance. The Democrats are about to turn our country over to the Ratfuckers (who, as Yeats warned, are filled with a passionate intensity)... and worst of all, the Democrats deserve to lose. They spent two years trying to accommodate people who want to see us dead, somehow believing that right-wingers will one day compromise. The Obama administration tried to please everyone and ended by pleasing no one.

A wise punk rocker once said, "The Nazis used to say 'when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun.' The trouble with a liberal is that when someone mentions guns, he reaches for his culture." Let us call ourselves radicals, let us pick up the mantle of the great Progressives, let us be petit-bourgeois anarchists, but please let us not be "liberals" any longer, who have confirmed themselves as callow wankers who cringe and waffle if only the bullies will leave them alone. We do not abandon this word to the dust-bin of history because of its debasement by the right, but we scorn the word 'liberal' because of it's debasement by the left. Imagine Harry Truman or Harvey Milk or Tony Benn in the same situations as Reid and Pelosi and you'll see what I mean.

I have spent almost 20 years in an incremental effort to make children a little less mean, a little more curious, a little less bullying, cannier about con-men, broader-minded, more willing to be themselves and allow others to do the same, less willing to settle for the world as it is-- and if right wingers do everything they can to drag us back to 1905*, well, that's to be expected-- but it's been 20 years without any help from "liberal" academics. They are mostly accomplished at "deploring conditions", something done from a distance and at a higher salary.

* [ 1905 is an arbitrary point chosen as the year before the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, child labor was still en vogue, Plessy v. Ferguson was de rigeur, Harper's Weekly was calling Governor Altgeld a Communist and apparently, Reagan Republicans think they would have been as happy as pigs in shit.]

Attached please find (again) my favorite monologues from Alan Moore's V for Vendetta. The second monologue, in which he warns the human race that if their performance doesn't improve, he's going to have to let them go...

"It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one."



The character of Valerie answers the question "Why we fight" in Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, dramatized here:



If Valerie is the heart of the thing, my other favorite scene never appeared in the film -- a film Alan Moore sniffed at as "a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives— which is not what the comic V for Vendetta was about."

My other favorite is a sequence showing V speaking over a pirate broadcast to the audience of a fascist "news" program. As he speaks, the screen shows scenes of human misbehavior, some straight to the point, some ironic. It's more Jonathon Swift than Orwell-- it's Alan Moore, actually, and it might be the kind of literature you can only pull off in a comic, giving you time to consider the justapostion of word and image. It's the kind of dark laughter Twain used to pull off in The War Prayer and Letters from the Earth, and the kind of thing I don't ask anyone but myself to laugh at, but you might:

Good evening, London. I thought it time we had a little talk. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin... I suppose you're wondering why I've called you here this evening. Well, you see, I'm not entirely satisfied with your performance lately... I'm afraid your work's been slipping and... and well, I'm afraid we've been thinking about letting you go.
Oh, I know, I know. You've been with the company a long time now. Almost... let me see. Almost ten thousand years! My word, doesn't time fly? It seems like only yesterday... I remember the day you commenced your employment, swinging down from the trees, fresh-faced and nervous, a bone clasped in your bristling fist... "Where do I start, sir?", you asked, plaintively. I recalled my exact words: "There's a pile of dinosaur eggs over there, youngster", I said, smiling paternally all the while. "Get sucking".
Well, we've certainly come a long way since then, haven't we? And yes, yes, you're right, in all that time you haven't missed a day. Well done, thou good and faithful servant.
Also, please don't think I've forgotten about your outstanding service record, or about all of the invaluable contributions that you've made to the company... Fire, the wheel, agriculture... It's an impressive list, old-timer. A jolly impressive list. Don't get me wrong. But... well, to be frank, we've had our problems too.
There's no getting away from it. Do you know what I think a lot of it stems from? I'll tell you... It's your basic unwillingness to get on in the company. You don't seem to want to face up to any real responibility. To be your own boss.
Lord knows you've been given plenty of opportunities... We've offered you promotion time and time again, and each time you've turned us down. "I couldn't handle the work, Guv'Nor", you wheedled. "I know my place".
To be frank, you're not trying, are you? You see, you've been standing still for far too long, and its starting to show in your work... And, I might add, in your general standard of behavior. The constant bickering on the factory floor has not escaped my attention... nor the recent bouts of rowdiness in the staff canteen.
Then of course there's... Hmm. Well, I didn't really want to have to bring this up, but... Well, you see, I've been hearing some disturbing rumors about your personal life. No, never you mind who told me. No names, no pack drill... I understand you are unable to get on with your spouse. I hear that you argue. I am told that you shout. Violence has been mentioned. I am reliably informed that you always hurt the one your love... the one you shouldn't hurt at all.
And what about the children, its always the children who suffer, as you're well aware. Poor little mites. What are they to make of it? What are they to make of all your bullying, your despair, your cowardice and all your fondly nurtured bigotries? Really, its not good enough, is it?
And its no good blaming the drop in work standards on and management either... though to be sure, the management is very bad. In fact, let us not mince words... The Management is terrible!
We've had a string of embezzelers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact. But who elected them?
It was you! You who elected these people! You who gave them the power to make your decisions for you! While I'll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short of deliberate.
You have encouraged these malicious incompetents, who have made your working life a shambles. You have accepted without question their senseless orders. You have allowed them to fill your workspace with dangerous and unproven machines.
You could have stopped them. All you had to say was "No". You have no spine. You have no pride. You are no longer an asset to the company.
I will, however, be generous. You will be granted two years to show me some improvement in your work. If at the end of that time you are still unwilling to make a go of it... you're fired.
That will be all. You may return to your labors.
(Alan Moore, V for Vendetta)


"It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said." (Twain)

How to Confront Organized Hate

Hug, nay, kiss and buy drinks and dinner for the comic book geek of your choice (ahem.) And pass this along to the PFLAG community, community organizers, and other people of good will.

Apparently a few members of the the Westboro Baptist Church of Kansas, notorious and reviled for their "God Hates Fags" protests outside military funerals and other events, thought they would get their picture taken by protesting outside the Comicon in San Diego, biggest event in the comic book year. The Eisner Awards, comics' equivalent of the Oscar or the Pulitzer, happen there, and the big movie studios stalk the halls for "buzz", which I suppose attracted Fred Phelps.

Somehow, the fans at the convention not only got advance of the demonstration, they put together a counter-demonstration with materials at hand (costumes, signs) that was ten times larger and MUCH funnier. More in-jokes than ... than.. well I can't think of anyplace with more in-jokes than a comics convention, unless it's a couple of "Monty Python" fans, and those groups overlap.

Where else would you find a loving Jesus side by side with an invocation of the Hypno-Toad? Gail Simone was one of the pros there; she spoke clearly and simply about the protesters' intentions as you'd hope from the writer of Birds of Prey, Welcome to Tranquility, and the best run on Wonder Woman since Greg Rucka. I hope word spreads, because this seems much more effective at dissipating Phelps' power than the righteous anger and well-intentioned complaints he encounters elsewhere.

My friend Wayne hopes the Baptists try again in Chicago, giving him an excuse to break out the crotchless Riddler costume and a "KNEEL BEFORE ZOD" sign. As if he needs an excuse.

Othello, the Boulevard, Teabaggers and Lattes on the Rim of the Volcano

Othello isn't only about jealousy, any more than Hamlet is about revenge. Othello's great sin is his assumption that because you are Good, all others must necessarily be trustworthy as well.

If I were sent back with a warning to the Belle Epoque in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, how many of the boulavardiers could perceive the deadly earnestness with which the children of that time were training to become mass murderers? Would any of them have been able to strangle the infant Hitler in his cradle? Albert Speer said that it was hard to recognize the Devil when he's standing by your shoulder.

From what I’ve seen in Cultural Amnesia and Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals the people in the cafes thought of militarists as clowns, no real threat, certainly not builders of death factories— and if the militarists did succeed in finding a war, well, they mostly hurt themselves and young fellows stupid enough to follow them. War, however terrible, was fought between armies in a field outside of town-- sophisticates didn't realize what industrialization could do to weaponry and the practice of total war.

The Dreyfuss affair was the argument of that time. It was injustice and anti-Semitism that sent Colonel Dreyfuss off to Devil’s Island on a trumped up charge, but no one thought of The Affair as a blueprint.

So there I am on the boulevard with my coffee, laughing at someting Tristan Bernard just said, sighing at a stray tendril of hair on the neck of a passing girl who might have modeled for Mucha—- but how could I tell them what I know? That the 20th century will be a bloodbath, that industrialization will turn the front line into an abbatoir, with my friends from the cafes and salons-- Tristan Bernard's own grandson Francois-- at the bottom of the pile in Matthausen? How many of them would believe me?



They would smile and nod and exclaim mais certainment! if I’d predicted that a militarist would blow himself up with some diabolical device, that a head of state would be caught in a sex scandal, or a minister sent to prison for embezzlement. They would recognize our own all-too-human sins, folly, arrogance, lust and greed. But would anyone on the boulevard believe a prediction of the ash pit, the soap factories, the pillows stuffed with human hair? A medievalist might recognize the precedent for Ilsa Koch, but like trusting Othello, most would not be able to countenance the sick rantings of the so-called man from the future. When the most dreadful thing you can imagine in others is limited your own capacity for evil, you never see what's coming until it’s too late.

This is not to paint a sentimental picture of bohemians caught napping by the wicked military-industrialists— it was a failed water-color painter, Hitler, an amateur mythologist (Himmler) an advertising genius (Goebbels), and a country full of worshipful rubes who dreamed the iron dream. Never underestimate the resentment and malevolence of a failed artist-- from Beck to Norman Podhoretz, O'Reilly, Midge Decter and the Kristols, angry failures have found a home on the right because the hipsters made fun of them and wouldn’t invite them to the cool parties. This may be oversimplify the motivations of Limbaugh and Goerring, but not by much.

The bad guys can fall into the same trap as Othello. Krupp sponsored the Nazis because they could not imagine a wickedness greater than their own capacity for greed and political control. German militarists and industrialists thought they would use the Nazis to get rid of the labor unions and the liberals, and in the end the Nazis used them. American conservatives thought they could use the emotion of the Teabaggers and the the Know-Nothings to disguise their plutocracy as populism. The Bohemian Grove made Ronald Reagan, patron of idiots, who didn’t know, didn’t care and didn’t think it mattered how many were ground in the wheels beneath his chariot. Now of course, the tail is wagging the dog, with Limbaugh and Palin the soul of the party.



Othello is a supreme success in his own field, but battle savvy doesn't transfer to the parade-ground. He knows only two kinds of women-- his sainted mother and voracious camp-followers, and if Desdemona isn't a saint, then she must be a whore. In the world of men, he thinks his combat instinct has taught him all he needs to know about reading men; if he's fought alongside me, then he must be a pal. It is naivete and self-assurance that destroys him, long before the first whisper from Iago.

One morning in an inner city classroom, three sharp explosions went off outside and I turned to see that all the kids near the window had hit the floor without any comment. In most classrooms, anything out of the ordinary from first snowflakes to fornicating dogs will draw a mob to the glass. "Missa Fountain," Wayne scolded, "you might want to get away from the window." I was the sophisticate, but in the words of a forgotten punk-rock magazine, "Goerring said 'When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun'. When someone mentions guns, a liberal reaches for his culture." Shades of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.

Now we are in a political cycle with candidates mined from the Jerry Springer show, deviance defined downward. It is permissible among people like Sharon Angle and Rick Barber to make physical threats against their opponents, to talk of secession, to shout down reason. Palin smiles more broadly the crazier the talk gets. They see themselves as perpetual victims, giving them psychological permission to use "any means necessary" against their oppressors.

I wonder about my own complacency. Having a wonderful time, sipping my latte on the rim of the volcano, but keeping one eye on the exit and hoping my friends and I have enough sense to jump to Canada before it blows. When do the clowns cross the line from buffoon to monster?

Puppygate for Giuliani and Romney, and Other Telling Tales

Ted Bundy, you know, was once an up-and-coming Young Republican who dreamed of the governorship, and then, who knew?


Then came the news that Judi Giuliani , wife number, oh, I don't know, three or four, used to demonstrate surgical staples on living dogs, which were then left to die. Then-CEO Leon Hirsch defended the practice in the 1980s, saying there was no other way to properly show how the staplers worked. "A dead dog doesn't bleed," U.S. Surgical CEO Leon Hirsch said in defense of the practice in 1988, "You need to have real blood-flow conditions, or you get a false sense of security." This is akin to the Bedouin gentleman who gelded camels by standing behind them and banging two rocks together, and when asked, "Doesn't it hurt?" answered, "No, you just keep your thumbs out of the way."


Now we have Mitt Romney's misstep in sharing an anecdote about his dog Seamus' 12 hour trip in a carrier on the top of his car. It was meant to show Romney cool in a crisis-- hosing off the nervous dog's diarhhea when it ran down the back window-- but instead showed him as a problem solver who doesn't spend much time thinking about the creatures suffering at the root of the problem. This is the kind of thinking that solves the problems of the homeless by sending the police to round them up, that insures pure drinking water by selling it in plastic bottles.

A month or so ago, I was one of those who dismissed John Edwards for his haircut and have been taken to task by earnest friends who feel this is a superficial matter, and an example of the mob mentality media. They accurately point out that the serious issues raised by Edwards are lost in the frippery about his expensive haircut. I am not Savonarola, rejecting vanities, but Edwards is asking the electorate to see him as One of Them. This $400 luxury, while at the same time he tries to make a point about economic inequity, is the worst kind of tone-deaf hypocrisy, disrespectful to the poor, and Edwards deserves to be embarrassed.

I tell you these anecdotes tell us more about the character than all your position papers about what a man will do when handed almost unlimited power. Contrast these with the personality portraits of both Roosevelts, Truman, Churchill, Lincoln, or even the contrasting portraits of ancient rulers in Plutarch. And recall that George Bush used to get his kicks by blowing up frogs with firecrackers.

In an Infinite Universe Filled with Alternate Realities, It's Hard When You Realize You're Living in the Evil One

January 2008: Bells tolled across the continent of Africa in honor of ailing Vice President Richard Cheney, the former Haliburton executive who channeled that company's expertise into building his "Infrastructure for Africa" project. Nelson Mandela held Mr. Cheney's hand and dabbed at tears as he told his new friend the new Pan African superhighway will be named in Cheney's honor.
The ailing vice-president insisted on being carried in a litter to the worksite of one of the thousands of wells Haliburton is digging across the poorest continent, each one an hour's walk away from the next. He could hear some of the 2,788 American Conservation Corps volunteers as they planted rows of genetically modified shade trees along the roadway and worked compost into the arid land. "Imagine a world in which these 3,000 young Americans died in some war instead of blessing the earth. Instead of trillions for war, you invest billions for peace," Mr. Mandela told him, "The world was blessed to have you."

In Iraq, the almost bloodless coup against Saddam Hussein and his sons orchestrated by White House staffer Paul Bremer continues into its second year without major violence. The Iraqui parliment sends word of "a second Runnymeade". Iraqui generals, kept in place following the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, kidnapped the Iraqui high command and held them incommunicado on an island in the marsh district of Southern Iraq until a transfer of power and plea bargain was arranged for atrocities committed during the Hussein regime. "No one can predict the unintended consequences of war," President Bush commented. "There are so many things that could have gone wrong."

Here at home, the president continues to dismantle the so-called "War on Drugs" as a "failed policy" that "did more harm than good." The president has spoken from the "bully pulpit" of his struggles with substance abuse "to fill the emptiness inside." He and his daughters continue their surprise visits to small town AA meetings and treatment centers.

An unnamed source in the French government confirmed rumors that the French have nominated President Bush for the Nobel Peace Prize, "in light of his just anger tempered with precise restraint following the atrocities of September 11th". They point out that the president resisted using military overkill in response to the attacks, and instead used law enforcement techniques backed by rapid response military teams in the hunt and capture of Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. "Like ze cowboy hero!" Parisians enthused, waving American flags at a memorial benefit for American victims of the attacks. "He shoot straight and risk everything to protect the innocent, les enfants. Le mot juste, le coup precise et juste!"

New Orleans continues to rebuild under the guidance of the president's "brain trust" of engineers and civic planners from the Netherlands. A series of sea gates and barrier islands will eventually protect the Crescent City in ways tested and proved over hundreds of years along the Zuider Zee.

In Afghanistan, NATO troops move in cordons through the mountains along the Pakistani/Afghan border, with infantrymen and cavalry forming a forward line of defense against Taliban incursions, while engineers rebuild each village's infrastructure "behind the line". "Our goal is to build the necessities for a society with no place for al-Qaeda and the Taliban." Most of al-Qaeda's fighters have reportedly filtered back to Saudi Arabia, while their declared enemy, the Saudi royal family, appears to be instituting a panicky series of reforms, including a promise of investment "to make Palestine bloom like Israel" and redistribute the wealth from oil revenues "along Islamic lines".

In Sports, the Dodgers announce plans to return to Brooklyn, while the Designated Hitter was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

What Killed the Dinosaurs? Their Inability to Adapt. What Killed the Humans? Their Short Attention Span.

A near-Earth asteroid named Apophis will pass by on April 13, 2029. There's a 1 in 5,500 chance that the asteroid will thread itself through through a 600 meter wide "keyhole" of possible paths, in which case the Earth's gravity alters the asteroid's orbit just enough for it to collide with Earth in 2036. Apophis, discovered last June, is 390 meters (1,280 foot) wide. An impact would release a blast with 100,000 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.

The European Space Agency is fiddling with something called the "Don Quixote" mission. A satellite called Hidalgo will charge into an asteroid like Quixote at his windmill. A second satellite--friend Sancho of course!-- will measure any change that Hidalgo made in the asteroid's orbit.

Absolutely no one thinks it's a good idea to use explosives on a near-earth asteroid. Explosions cause fragments. Fragments mean even more of a chance of being hit by something. (Don't anybody tell the Texans; they like blowing shit up. And have you ever seen a Hoosier in a fireworks shop? Of course, Michigan-- we gave the nation Tim McVeigh and Andrew Kehoe the Bath city bomber -- has no right to throw stones.)

What was Hollywood thinking when it sent bombs to blow up asteroids in "Meteor", "Deep Impact", "Armageddon"? Oh, yeah, Hollywood and "thinking"-- I must be sleepier than I thought. (Isn't it kind of weird how B-movies now have A-movie budgets, but without a corresponding improvement in their scripts?)

Twenty years of plannng is a lot to ask from the short-attention span generation. Having grown up on Heinlein novels, I'm confident that human engineers could slap an asteroid away, but are humans politically capable of focusing our attention for such a project? "Depend on it, Sir," Dr. Johnson reassures me, "when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

Short attention span: that's what we get for being primates. The Chinese call the monkey "the animal with a hundred hands", because he can never concentrate... what was I saying? Kipling has the last word on human and monkey society in "Road Song of the Bandar Log"from "The Jungle Books". Brother, Thy tail hangs down behind!

If we had descended from rodents-- the relentless squirrel, the busy beaver-- or even lagomorphs, as any owner of a "never give up" house rabbit will tell you-- I would be a lot less worried about humanity's future.

Welcome to Weimar America

In the years before lionization by Bill Moyers at the Skywalker Ranch, the mythologist Joseph Campbell made it a Halloween custom to give a series of lectures at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids. The church is non-denominational, a free speech forum that hearkens back to Winston Churchill in the 1930’s.

Campbell would present a slide lecture on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and then give the sermon on Sunday. I was part of the book discussion group that shared potluck with Campbell (he came back for seconds of my cornbread, leavened with bacon grease) and so I was able to witness some of his casual conversations.

The subject of Goethe’s “Faust” came up. (When we read it, three of the group members, my friends Dan, Wilhelm, and the beautiful Gail were reading it in the original German. Not me—I was basking in the relief of not being the smartest person in the room.) Campbell said quite kindly to Wilhelm that he had always considered what happened in Germany one of the tragedies of his own youth. He, Campbell, had studied in Germany under Heinrich Zimmer and other folklorists, the scholarly children and grandchildren of the Grimm Brothers. For Campbell’s generation of college students (he was born in 1904) “Germany” meant the culture that produced Beethoven, Mozart, Nietzsche and Goethe. “Japan” was a name that was meant cherry blossoms, haiku, Shinto, Zen Buddhism, the primeval bear cult of the Ainu.

Then two of the great cultures of the world went rabid, spilling out over their borders to murder the world and choke themselves in blood. Instead of the gospel of Amadeus and Hiroshige, they brought news of Dachau and the rape of Nanking.

I remember that conversation quite accurately. It could happen to any country, any culture, and I'm one of those who want to stop it before it happens here. “It can’t happen here”, Sinclair Lewis said, but he said it grinning like a skull. There are lines from Robert Lowell: “Do Rome, Carthage know what we deny? Death only throws fixed dice, and yet we raise the ante, and stake our lives at every toss.”

This memoir of Joseph Campbell on Germany and Japan is by way of introduction to worries expressed by Anatol Lieven and his book "America Right or Wrong", just out in paperback. Lieven is a senior associate at Washington's Carnegie Endowment and is probably hates being the smartest person in the room.

"While America keeps a splendid and welcoming house, it also keeps a family of demons in the cellar," he writes. "Usually kept under certain restraints, these demons were released by 9/11," with the attacks on Washington and New York in September 2001, as the trigger that unleashed the nationalist, messianic "dark side" of America.

Any honest reader of America from Twain to Hammet to Chandler to MacDonald knows the truth of Lieven's words. If history and what was done to the Cherokees doesn't convince you, James Ellroy will set you straight in the first paragraph of "American Tabloid": "America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets," and later in an interview, "Individuals are innocent. America itself as an entity was founded on a bedrock of racism, slavery, land-grabs and the slaughter of the indigenous people. That's it. To ascribe, as I say in the prologue of 'American Tabloid', our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances [in this case, the Kennedy assassination] is fatuous, and wholly wrong."

According to Reuters, "British journalist and think-tank fellow Anatol Lieven wrote his book "America Right or Wrong" as a wake-up call for the United States to curb its nationalism or face the consequences. For his trouble, Lieven received hate mail, was derided on Internet blogs and, in possibly the cruelest cut of all, was labeled "anti-American" in a review in the New York Times."

I am disappointed in our paper of record, so earnest about reading trends but so late getting to the table. The NYT sincerely wants to see the Big Picture, but it defends itself from thoughts it cannot bring itself to look (But what can you expect from a corporate culture that bores its readers with Chris Ware while overlooking the Hernandex Brothers?) The The New York Review of Books, at least, was able to read the book without frothing at the mouth, although The Times Literary Supplement has, I think, a clearer view of the book.

[OEE note: For myself, I felt vindicated by Lieven going back to the illiterate Andrew Jackson as the first avatar of our xenbophobia, our resentment of expertise, and our proud ignorance. I've a barroom theory that two-hearted America sighs for Thoreau, but settles for fucking Andrew Jackson. They say every great fortune begins with a crime, and for me Jackson, along with Jefferson, has been the dark murderous ancestor at the base of our material wealth. Jackson is the man who said, when told by the Supreme Court that he could not remove the Cherokees, said "Justice Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." The son of a bitch is turning on a spit in Hell for every frozen child, even as he poses on our twenty dollar bill. Forget about the sports teams that insist on calling themselves "Redskins". Get Jackson off the 20 dollar bill.]

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity." Buy that goofy Irishman a Guinness, and keep your socks and toothbrush packed under your bed. That's what Hannah Arendt did for the rest of her life, even after she landed safe in the USA from fascist Germany. You tell me: our country's current leaders cannot bear criticism or even scrutiny. They question the patriotism of even the staunchest veterans. Anyone who disagrees with them is a traitor. And the mob, its back turned even as its sons are being fed into the grinder, is busy watching the cabaret. A bientot. Auf wiedersehen. Until tomorrow...