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?