Thursday, July 05, 2007

A dispiriting Fourth


The print edition of the New York Times didn't lead today with the photo above. But the internet version did. That's a swearing in ceremony for new citizens held, oh so appropriately, in front of phony patriotic storefronts and Cinderella's castle at Disneyland.

No slight meant to the new citizens, who, I think we can assume, are diligent, serous minded, ambitious people whose energy our country needs. But the setting is an awfully good metaphor for the contemporary United States. A candy colored commercial facsimile has replaced the aspirational United States our myths depend on -- see a biting Canadian view.

America had become, in the eyes of the world, un-American. ...

Meanwhile, a feckless President pardons his loyal servant in felonious obstruction of justice, while the nation's highest court's term can be properly summed up as "Justice Denied."

It has been decades since the most privileged members of society -- corporations, the wealthy, white people who want to attend school with other whites -- have had such a successful Supreme Court term.

The wise Derrick Z. Jackson sums up this judicial achievement:

... the Reagan-Bush wing of the Supreme Court officially ended a second Reconstruction. It ushered in a third era of willful white ignorance.

Meanwhile, and perhaps worst, we have a President likely determined on further imperial war to upstage his continuing crime in Iraq:

All signs indicate Bush has not given up on his dream that part of that legacy will be a military strike against Iran. And that is far more frightening, dangerous and outrageous than any commutation for Scooter Libby. The saying goes that there is nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. A reasonable corollary of that adage could be that there is also noting more dangerous than a "liberated" lame duck president, especially when his name is George W. Bush.

Times indeed that try our mettle as people -- do we really choose to live in a Disneyland fantasy or is there a real world out there?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Time for the I-word again.

Impeachment.

I'm tired of feeling like a helpless, scared-to-death passenger trapped in the back seat of a car as a boozy, coked-up Bush careens blindly towards the abyss. Melodrama? God help us, I don't think so.

Katrina, Iraq, an economy on the edge of bankruptcy, and flat-earth bozos tossing copies of Origin of Species in trash can is goddamned terrible. It's gonna take decades to fix. But it can get much, much worse. Before January 2009, a crazed, I-Don-t-Give-A-Fuck Bush still has the time to appoint a Supreme Court justice or two and--ready--go to war with Iran. Can this country survive World War III? I don't think so?

Melodrama? I don't think so.

Impeachment is the only check and balance we have left. Threatening to use it with no intention of doing so is like waving a cap guy in Tony Soprano's face: it can get you killed.

It's not a political choice anymore.

It's survival.

janinsanfran said...

I agree d.r. scott. Basically I feel the same way I have ever since 9/11 -- persons with any remaining sanity have to create, reinforce, and push every potential point of friction that prevents the country from following Bush over a cliff. The Democrats are sometimes a help, and sometimes not.

But the PEOPLE have to keep on opening new fronts against these crooks in power.

It is, somewhat, comforting to realize that in 2003 when they went into Iraq and in 2004 when our fellow citizens re-elected Bush, the country looked to be even more out of touch with reality than we do now.

Anonymous said...

Call me "Doc", J.

And I agree with you that there is a reluctant but ever-growing awareness in the United States about how batshit crazy the bozo in the White House is.

(It's the moment in a horror movie when the sneering cynics realize that the monsters are real. This usually happens before they're eaten)

As the old saying goes, "Nothing focuses a man's mind like an imminent hanging."

Thank the Goddess for enlightened self-interest. It ain't pretty, but it works.

Civic Center said...

Dear doc: I loved your analogy, "It's the moment in a horror movie when the sneering cynics realize that the monsters are real. This usually happens before they're eaten." I'd amend that last phrase, however, to "JUST before they're eaten." It's always too late.