Kcarab Amabo

Out-Bushing Bush since 2008...

All the elements are in place for the next "Reichstag fire" event which will "necessitate" a permanent state of emergency and open military rule (as opposed to what we have currently which is military rule by corporate proxy).

But fear not, white folk. Ironically, Amabo has your back. It's the poor, the immigrant, and the people of color who have to worry about the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act that suspends rights of due process for U.S. citizens accused of "terrorism."

Ironies of Theopolitics

The Christian Right in the U.S. is creationist when it comes to science, social Darwinist when it comes to public policy.

Go figure.

Christmas Rush

The Season of Palpable American Desperation is upon us: the annual effort to reassure ourselves that, through an orgy of acquisition and consumerist spending, we can somehow vindicate our deification of a first century Palestinian apocalypticist. The disconnect between history and our present reality could not be more stark; consequently, the pressures to conform are correspondingly intense.

It is sheer madness. Around age 20, I took the cure. It still took me another decade or so to wean myself of the feeling of guilt that my "failure to celebrate" entailed. And the pressure to join the lemmings continues to be applied in casual conversations wherever one goes. Over three decades have passed since I gave up Christmas, and I still experience the looks of fear and loathing that my public admission of that decision inspires.

Sorry, my fellow Americans. It's not my job to reassure you that the emptiness you feel inside each year at this time is only dyspepsia from too much holiday "cheer." On the contrary, that emptiness is real and well deserved. If you want to avoid it, do as I have done and learn to live without the desperation and the delusions. Go cold turkey: give it up--for Christ.

I have too much love and respect for the figure of Rabbi Jesus to deify him. Even if the historical Jesus considered himself "divine" in some sense, which I seriously doubt, I won't do him the injustice of indulging that fantasy.

I rather enjoy the way I pass December 25th: ordering Chinese and sitting in a movie theater surrounded by Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and dogmatic atheists. But I enjoy even more my liberation from the scandal that is Christmas shopping.

On December 25th, I also light a candle in memory of that great Second Temple non-conformist and do as I believe that he would have done if faced with the madness of the Solstice crowds: turn my back on it all and withdraw into a secluded place...to pray.

The Obama Administration's Proposed Discretionary Spending for 2014

[Chart from the National Priorities Project; data provided by the OMB].

Wear the Red Bonnet

Jacobins unite!

Thank God the United States is not a Theocracy.

Blue Laws

Do You Believe in Magic Bullets?

JFK assassination: CIA and New York Times are still lying to us

The More Things Change...

The Madness of Crowds

In Praise of the First Amendment

Despite appearances to the contrary, the Bible is not a book: it is a library of books collected together between the two covers of a codex. As a masterpiece of world literature, a source of ethical reflection and contemplation of the human condition, it has few peers. To offer it as the "constitution" of a modern state, however, is sheer madness.

Anyone who learns to read the Bible with a critical eye will find its text at variance with many of the dogmas peddled by Christian churches. If the United States is a "Christian nation" (as some insist) it is a nation with a very complicated relation to the Bible.

LET US PRAY...

The U.S.A. Has Painted Herself Into A Corner

The Humanities Threaten Imperial Ideology

Is it any wonder, then, that interest in them is fading in the elite educational institutions of the Empire?

Becoming an Anti-Dulles

Kinzer's book ought to be read by every man and woman of good will on the planet. I picked it up and could not put it down. I think part of its fascination for me was the fact that I grew up in the midst of men like the Dulles brothers: Scots-Irish Presbyterians with a Manichaean world view who never doubted for a moment that they knew what was best for everyone. And what was best for everyone was the enrichment of American corporations. Because wealth = happiness--it says so in the Bible.

I had no way of disputing that world view until, around age 12, I actually began to read the Bible. When I finally did so, I was disturbed by the fact that my reading of the sacred text was often at odds with the prevailing interpretation of people in my church and social milieu. Then, in my late 20's-early 30's, I began to read Tolstoy. To my surprise, he read the Bible like I did and drew very similar lessons from it. Now I was in trouble.

I understood deep down that I was not a Christian--had never been one--at least not of the kind I had always known. I could not mouth the creeds of the church any longer nor sing the national anthem nor pledge allegiance to the flag. With Tolstoy, I was a citizen of the world--and I would never relinquish my citizenship, not even for God or country. I am an anti-Dulles living in the world the Dulles brothers and their ilk have built.

Rouse up, O Young Men of the New Age! Set your foreheads against the
ignorant hirelings! For we have hirelings in the Camp, the Court, and
the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress mental, and
prolong corporeal war.

A Note From Gerard Manley Hopkins

"I am afraid some great revolution is not far off. Horrible to say, in a manner I am a Communist. Their ideal bating some things is nobler than that professed by any secular statesman I know of...Besides it is just.--I do not mean the means of getting to it are. But it is a dreadful thing for the greatest and most necessary part of a very rich nation to live a hard life without dignity, knowledge, comforts, delight, or hopes in the midst of plenty--which plenty they make..." [from a letter written by Hopkins to Robert Bridges].

A State of War of the Strong Against the Weak

Bleak House by Charles Simic.

In 1972, We Thought We Could Make It Happen...

Marxist Humanism

I want to make a concluding remark about [Marx's] theory of communism, concerning one of the most often misinterpreted features of his theory: when Marx speaks about the "historical necessity" of communism he does not understand this in the sense of communism's inevitability. What he means by this perhaps can be expressed as follows: a further long-run and uninterrupted (in a radical sense) development of human productivity and human culture will be possible only if the social conditions of contemporary industrial societies are radically changed in the direction of the abolishment [sic] of private property, organization of material production in a socially controlled and planned way, and on the basis of all this, modification of the entire character of the division of labor. Whether this would happen or not was for him a question of social practice and struggle, and not speculation. In the field of social sciences, according to him, prediction always has the character of pointing out alternatives, and the very predictions, the recognitions of possibilities, can become factors in their realization. Speaking generally about the development of higher social formations, Marx pointed out that the inner crisis of a social system can give birth to a higher social system, but can also pass into a long-run stagnation and decay, and can end up with the deeply regressive destruction of the entire civilization. What the "other" alternatives are for our culture and civilization Marx never tried to specify. He was not an unbiased viewer of history, but a revolutionist interested in the possibility of its humanistic transformation. --Gyorgy Markus, 1966.

Obamacare Makes Obama a Lefty?

The worldview of the NYT never ceases to amaze...

Aldous Huxley Predicts the Decline of American Democracy-1958

How To Live, What To Do

As Plato knew, following Pythagorus, the Enlightened Ones are those who see the shadows on the wall for what they are. The revolution will not be televised. Every individual who drops out and makes tea is one more for our side. The happy idiots struggling for the legal tender believe the shadow play on the flat screen. We should do what we can to shake them out of their somnambulism, but we must accept the fact that most of manunkind grazes in what the great Ibn Khaldun called "the pasture of stupidity." We wish them well, but we must keep moving on. There's something happening here and Mr. Jones just doesn't know what it is. But Mr. Smith might. Or Ms. Khalil. And we must speak the truth to one and all. Disturb the sleep of the somnambulant, enter communion with the Awake. And, in this way, redeem the time.

A Leftist in City Hall?

Swing back, sweet pendulum...

State of the Nation

In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment.

--Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 17.

In a society such as ours, the "all volunteer" military is composed, mainly, of the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire, though there are certainly barbarians in the ranks and the occasional republican and, perhaps, even a few coupon-clippers moved by a sense of honor and the spirit of adventure.

To understand the state of our nation, skip Presidential speechifying and read Tacitus and Gibbon.

Time for a New "New Deal"

Only this time, take off the gloves with the bankers and the militarized corporatocracy.

And the People Bowed and Prayed...

to the neon gods they made...

Pretzel Logic

The Real Target of the Planned Aggression by the U.S. Against Syria

Read Bob Fisk's article.

Tales of Ordinary American Madness

Political commentary by Harold Bloom.

Generation Me

Somebody had to say it.

The Moral Order Is Inverted

Word.

America’s Descent Into Madness - Truthdig

The U.S. Government and the Egyptian Junta: Politics of the Corrupt

"But Mr. Kerry announced no punitive measures, while President Obama, vacationing here on Martha’s Vineyard, had no public reaction. As his chief diplomat was speaking of a 'pivotal moment for Egypt,' the president was playing golf at a private club."

Crime Pays in the U.S. of A.

A decade later, the gang of four who destabilized Iraq (Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld) remain at large while Iraq continues to bleed.

Score One For The American People

Snowden, Greenwald and Wikileaks are winning - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

So Why Do We Let Them?

A Rare Moment of Candor from a U.S. Politician

Knowing the truth as she does, why does she continue to support the continuation of the very same policies she criticizes?

Oh, yeah. It's all about the power...

Wall Street

Emblem of the Reagan Revolution and its tragic aftermath in American morals and culture.

Message To America

Is it Islam's fault that you grew up believing in Santa Claus...

or deifying a first century Palestinian apocalypticist...

or buying into whatever your government wanted you to buy into?









Is that really Islam's fault?

If not, then why do you insist on taking out your frustrations with your own culture, religion, and government on Islam and Muslims?

It's high time that you learned to mind your own business and repair your own house and heart.

Answer Me This

How is it Islam's fault that you didn't grow up with Norman Rockwell images of Eid celebrations implanted in your subconscious?

I Have Just One Question:

How is it Islam's fault that the Reagan administration chose to wage an illegal proxy war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and, in the process, recruited, trained, and armed the likes of Osama bin Laden and others to prosecute that war?

Culture of Fear

Desperate to ratchet up the fear factor and to continue to justify its criminal activities throughout the world, the militarized corporatocracy that rules the federal government of the United States issues a new "terror threat" warning.

Don't forget, dear citizens, to be afraid, very afraid, of "al-Qaeda."

Maybe THIS Will Quell Those Nasty Rumors That Obama Is A Leftist

President Offers To Give Republicans The Store, They Demand More

Dear Mr. Snowden: Don't Let Them Get Their Bloody Hands On You

The conviction of Bradley Manning: A travesty of justice

A Small Victory...If You Can Call It That

In the Bradley Manning case.

R.I.P.

Man of No Nation.

What We Can Learn from Southeast Asian Hillbillies

Anarchism's Time Is Approaching

And with the likes of Jim Scott, David Graeber, and Marina Sitrin providing intellectual grounding, what's left of the American Left would do well to begin paying attention.








James C. Scott

Everybody Get Ready

The militarization of America

"Both America’s ruling oligarchy and the Pentagon command recognize that profound social polarization and deepening economic crisis must give rise to social upheavals. They are preparing accordingly."

Snowden: My Take

My take on Edward Snowden is that he's one of those guys who drank the kool-aid and wanted to do his part--very much like Dan Ellsberg. While doing it, he began to see the discrepancies between the narrative of the Land of the Free and the reality of what he was being asked to do by his government in order to "secure" that vaunted freedom. His conscience began to bother him. He decided to talk.


The government (the military especially) takes advantage of the energy and idealism of youth. On rare occasions, that energy and idealism can come back to haunt the powers that be. Every now and then, a G.I. comes back from the war and writes The Naked and the Dead. Every now and then, a Pentagon official decides to photocopy pages and pages of classified documents that contradict the official government spin. Even so, the risk to the government is really pretty low, considering the high degree of conformity that many Americans exhibit. But every now and then...

The price of democracy is access to information the government considers proprietary. The Bill of Rights was composed with that in mind. "Just trust us, we know what we're doing" doesn't cut it. Read your Orwell.

Snowden is a hero in my book. I don't expect him to be a saint or a genius or anything extraordinary. In fact, I expect him to be quite ordinary. The more ordinary the better. When John Q. Public wakes up and begins to have doubts, real freedom has an opportunity to break out. I'm not holding my breath, though. As Yeats wrote, "The best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity."

End the Corporatocracy!

Begin the republic! Overturn Citizens United!

Brief on the Legality of Extra-Judicial Killings Ordered by the White House

A Federal Judge with a conscience? How far can this go? I'm guessing: no farther than the usual political theater. But time will tell...

Can You Tell Me Who To Contact Here, Senor?

James H. Cone on the Cross and the Lynching Tree

Bruce Springsteen: American Skin (41 Shots)

This Machine Kills Fascists

Was Woody Guthrie an anarchist? Beats me. Would he have approved the following statement of Anarchist goals? Again, it beats me, but I think he would have found much in this statement that resonated with his own brand of Left-wing populism:

The anarchist conception of power is in opposition to the Marxist conception of the seizure and adaptation of coercive, vertical, centralised [sic], bourgeois power. Instead, anarchists argue for, and in their innumerable revolts and their four main revolutions have practiced, a free, horizontal, federalist, proletarian counter-power that would equitably distribute decision-making powers and responsibilities across liberated communities. In particular, anarchist theorists have grappled with how to construct a real, living libertarian communist praxis, thereby encountering the key question facing all revolutionaries: how does the militant minority transmit the ideas of a free society to the oppressed classes, in such a way that the oppressed makes those ideas their own, moving beyond the origins of those ideas into the realm of libertarian autogestion.

--Michael Schmidt, Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism, AK Press (2013),
6.

Moreover, I think Woody might answer the "key question facing all revolutionaries" with one word: music.

Hope For An American Spring

We, as anarchists, know that people, even the bourgeoisie, are not inherently bad; we all merely conform to our class interests. Given the right conditions, conditions of true equality and freedom, a powerful spirit of mutual aid and co-operation has been demonstrated to come to the fore in the popular masses...

How we act is related to the structure of society. When oppression and exploitation are forcibly removed by directly-democratic, horizontally-federated organizations operating under the guidance of the popular will, then the "goodness" that is in most of us comes through and flourishes as it did when the workers held the reigns in Argentina, Macedonia, Ukraine, Spain, Mexico, Manchuria, China, Iran, Cuba, France, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Algeria, and elsewhere.

--Michael Schmidt, Cartography of Revolutionary Anarchism, AK Press (2013), 128.

Is This A Rhetorical Question?

Can American democracy survive its betrayal by the government? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Faulknerian Criticism

In his late novel Intruders in the Dust, William Faulkner characterized the United States as "a mass of people who no longer have anything in common save a frantic greed for money and a basic fear of a failure of national character which they hide from one another behind a loud lip-service to a flag."

On July 4th, 2013, declare your independence from all of that.

Faulkner on Mob Rule vs. Man

"...there is a simple numerical point at which a mob cancels and abolishes itself, maybe because it has finally got too big for darkness, the cave it was spawned in is no longer big enough to conceal it from light and so at last whether it will or no it has to look at itself...Or maybe it's because man having passed into mob passes then into mass which abolishes mob by absorption, metabolism, then having got too large even for mass becomes man again conceptible of pity and justice and conscience even if only in the recollection of his long painful aspiration toward them, toward that something anyway of one serene universal light."

"So man is always right," he said.

"No," his uncle said. "He tries to be if they who use him for their own power and aggrandisement let him alone. Pity and justice and conscience too--that belief in more than the divinity of individual man (which we in America have debased into a national religion of the entrails in which man owes no duty to his soul because he has been absolved of soul to owe duty to and instead is static heir at birth to an inevictible quit-claim on a wife a car a radio and an old-age pension) but in the divinity of his continuity as Man..."

[William Faulkner, Intruder In The Dust, LOA edition, 436].

We Could All Use A Little More...

Faulknerian integrity:

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame. No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the bank either. Just to refuse to bear them.

[William Faulkner, Intruder In The Dust, LOA edition, 439].

The Two Faces of the Democratic Party

On the left: craven capitulation. On the right: moral and ideological bankruptcy. If you continue to stand for this, it is because you have given yourself no choice.

Shame on you.

Believe In People, Not States

Why China won't be a better superpower: Believe in people, not states - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Signs of the End...

The post-9/11 mood of hyper-patriotism is beginning, finally, to run its course.

A whole generation was bamboozled, but it is beginning to see the folly of its youthful enthusiasms.

I predict that the government and allied right-wing groups will continue to find and/or create new opportunities to try to keep the mood of hyper-patriotism alive (i.e., we will continue to be subject to manufactured terror scares, to witness police entrapment of hapless immigrants and misguided nobodies, to endure more non-issues like "shari'a in our courts" bruited as the latest threat to the American way of life), but I sense exhaustion setting in.

One sign of where we might be in the curve of this arc is the increasing shrillness of the patriotic displays to be found at sporting events, in advertisements, in shopping malls and airports, in Hollywood films (Hollywood--that old reliable ally of the Pentagon's propaganda machine), on the Action McNews Network...

But the party's over. The pendulum is swinging back. The Invisible Whitmanian Republic is due to show signs of life, like mischievous green blades (Leaves of Grass) protruding, unannounced, from the cracks of a city sidewalk.

I am not predicting a full-scale people's revolution--the American Spring that we so desperately need. Not at this point. The National Security State has time, money, and momentum on its side. Things will get worse, much worse, before we can hope for better. But I do think that Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, ordinary guys, intelligent, principled heroes, true patriots, are just the beginning of the end of the nightmare orgy of mindless hyper-patriotism that has afflicted this country with disastrous results--for us and for much of the rest of the world.

God bless them.

Read It And Weep

A "must read" LRB diary entry by Yale literature Professor David Bromwich. Read it and weep.

What Say the Tea Leaves?

I'm an historian, so I'm not very proficient at reading tea leaves. When I was an undergrad, I read Alvin Toffler's prediction (Future Shock II) that, within a couple of decades, it would be common for people to own small, desk top appliances called "personal computers" that would allow them to work from home, etc. Not being able to foresee the invention of the microchip, I scoffed.

The government employs very smart people who are experts in game theory and who know how to model possible outcomes of actions and events. These experts do their damnedest to help "all the criminals in their coats and their ties" (Bob Dylan) to hedge their bets and get away with as much murder as they possibly can. I think they are pretty efficient at it.

But I am a student of Tolstoy and Al-Ghazali: rationality can work wonders but it is not all-encompassing. Nor does it work alone: greed, conceit, bigotries and garden variety stupidity all have their hands in the mix as well. So the experts are always in danger of conforming to the archetype of Daedalus, who overlooked one small detail. Or like the captain of the Titanic who, as she set sail on her maiden voyage, stood on her deck and confidently asserted that "Not even God could sink this ship." At least that's a tale I've heard; it may be as mythical as the Daedalus story, and no less true.

What I see is that the violence-prone wealthy white Protestants who run the U.S. government through financial influence have been working (since Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1980) to reverse the many gains that the 20th century's run of democracy-in-the-streets had provided the middle class and historically marginalized peoples--both within our borders and without. They are not a stupid bunch (for the most part); their problem is that they are self-interested to the point of blindness and corruption. They are risk-takers, though their risks are carefully calculated and always indemnified with other people's (i.e., the U.S. taxpayer's) money. I see them underwriting moves (like the Supreme Court's decision to treat multinational corporations as individuals with free speech rights or the decision to dismantle part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965) that appear to me to be rash in the extreme. I think they are pushing their luck as they re-invent the world to conform to their own self-aggrandizing and self-indulgent ambitions (which they mistake for vision). And, with their self-serving version of Jesus on their side, they believe they can continue on this course with impunity--indefinitely. I'm betting that they are wrong. But I could not begin to say where the tipping point lies--what are the precise elements of the "perfect storm" that will leave them (and, unfortunately, the rest of us--whom they hold hostage) reaping the whirlwind.

I just try to be as aware of my surroundings as I possibly can and keep in shape by practicing my duck and roll. The prophetic tradition has warned us all--since the Axial Age--that there are consequences to our actions. And Khidr, the green-man/trickster, wanders the earth unnoticed, while his traces are everywhere.

So my traveling companions are Moses and Khidr. The Jesus of Mark's gospel runs out ahead, waving me on. Muhammad reminds me to trust God but, pragmatically, to tie my camel. And he also tells me this.

The tea leaves appear to be saying: Keep your weather eye open.

While We Were Sleeping...

Infrastructure of a police state

Legal Tender?

If You Want To See Democracy, Look For It In The Streets

More than one million join Brazil protests - Americas - Al Jazeera English

Why Is Dick Cheney Still At Large?

He ought to be behind bars,  joined by fellow war criminals George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Barack Obama.

Obama, Cheney and Snowden’s revelations - World Socialist Web Site

Instead, he and his co-conspirators remain "free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise."

The Nightmare Vision

This very interesting article suggests that the militarized corporatocracy (the unelected government of the U.S.) is well aware of the potentially catastrophic consequences of predatory capitalism for the environment, the economy, etc., but instead of pursuing policies that might avert disaster has elected, instead, to engage in "damage control" of a different kind: it plans to suppress all democratic action that would attempt to alter the corporatocracy's course. It is a nightmare vision.

Lately It Occurs To Me...

The mid-60's to early 70's was a great moment in the history of Western civilization--a moment when a youth culture dreamed a better dream than the oppressive one that the Eisenhower era had delivered: the dream of what I call the "Whitmanian Republic." The right-wing backlash began in earnest with Reagan's election in 1980, though the seeds for it were planted throughout the 1970's. McGovern's defeat in 1972 was decisive; Jimmy Carter's spineless presidency drove the final nails into the coffin. Ted Kennedy's challenge to Carter (in 1980) was undermined by his own Party (as McGovern's challenge to Nixon had been undermined by that same Party). Here's Ted being the good Party man at the Democratic convention in 1980.

Still, there are echoes in that speech which continue to call to us today. We hear the call as well in Rumi's Masnavi--where, in Book 3, he places a speech on the lips of Moses in which the prophet predicts Pharaoh's inevitable downfall. He also addresses his own followers: "With us, one must needs be a waking sleeper, that in the state of wakefulness he may dream dreams" (Nicholson's translation).

The oppressiveness of the past three decades almost makes one long for the Eisenhower era. Even so, I cannot help but think that the Right has over-played its hand. Waking sleepers are in the wings. Where else could they be?

From the Ashes of Empire...

There is much to be criticized in the life and legacy of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), but much to be lauded as well. In the latter category, despite his militarism and often mind-numbingly bureaucratic sensibilities, there remains the uncontrovertible fact that, without Ataturk's timely intervention, modern Turkey would be a patchwork of colonialist "protectorates," professionally managed by (and in the interests of) foreign powers and their local condottieri. In other words, Turkey would be another Frankenstein created by Europe and its North American allies instead of an independent nation embarked upon the never-ending experiment of government of, by, and for its own people. From the ashes of empire, Ataturk constructed a republic. That is the proper direction for a nation to travel.

The government of the United States of Amnesia, on the other hand, continues on the mission it adopted in the early 19th century with (ironically) Thomas Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana territory from France: the construction of an empire from the ashes of a republic.

One studies history in order to gain an intimate acquaintance with the kind of record that historical events inevitably establish: a record that discloses how unintended consequences are by far the most important factor in the determination of the course of human events.

William Faulkner's Mythical Macrohistory of America

From his vantage point among the defeated, William Faulkner became one of the most perceptive observers of the evolution of American civilization this country has yet to produce. Like a latter day Ibn Khaldun, Faulkner composed a mythical macrohistory of America, "built around the conflict between traditionalism and the antitraditional modern world in which it is immersed" (Faulkner, edited by Robert Penn Warren (1966), 23).

For Faulkner, "traditionalism" entails acting "always with an ethically responsible will...[a] vital morality, humanism" (ibid., 24). "Antitraditionalism," on the other hand, involves "acting only for self-interest": it is "amoral" and "animalistic" (ibid).

The novelist personified these two antagonistic forces as families: the traditionalist Sartorises and the antitraditionalist Snopeses. "And the Sartoris-Snopes conflict is fundamentally a struggle between humanism and naturalism" (ibid). For Faulkner, humanism was essentially Romantic: informed by notions of chivalry and noblesse oblige. By contrast, his "naturalism" was "entrepreneurial" and characterized by a "low cunning" that regarded other human beings as means, not ends.

In novel after novel, he developed this mythos of the decline of the Sartorises and the ascendancy of the Snopeses and, in so doing, chronicled the downward course of America's "spiritual history."

Sic transit gloria mundi: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Would That It Were True

The U.S. Is Giving The Developing World A Run For Its Money

More US babies die on their first day than in 68 other countries, report shows

One more stat that should tell us that something is terribly wrong with our society.

My Bad

I grew up under the mistaken impression that it was possible to live in Walt Whitman's America.



Whitman's America was but a beautiful dream. The nightmare reality that I live each day is Ronald Reagan's America.



sic transit gloria mundi...

Reaganomics

An unmitigated disaster.

The Boston Lock-Down

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, law enforcement officials appealed to the public for possible leads on the perpetrators. The information produced through this cooperation led to the identification of two suspects (a pair of brothers). For unknown reasons, the suspects, instead of attempting to elude the police, chose to undertake a brazen crime spree involving a car-jacking, the fatal shooting of a campus police officer, and the robbery of a Seven-Eleven store. The suspects' whereabouts now exposed, the police pursued them; a gun battle ensued that resulted in the death of one suspect. As of this writing, another suspect remains at large. He is believed to be 19 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and is presumed armed and dangerous.

According to the web-site Neighborhood Scout (a source of information for buyers and sellers of real estate), the city of Boston, Mass., has a population of 625,087. Annually, that population experiences 5,528 violent crimes (8.84 violent crimes per 1000 residents; the national median is 3.9)--making the city safer than only 15% of all American cities. In other words, Bostonians are no strangers to violent criminal activity. Each year, the residents of Boston have a 1 in 113 chance of being the victim of a violent crime. On average, 15 violent crimes are committed in Boston on each day of each year. Despite the danger, Boston law enforcement authorities do not lock-down the city.

When Boston's women were terrorized over a two year period (from 1962-1964) by the so-called "Boston Strangler," Boston law enforcement authorities did not lock-down the city.

In August 2007, Michelle Obama spoke to supporters in rural Iowa about her husband's decision to run for President. Among the reasons that she gave for why she approved that decision was "...I am tired of being afraid. I am tired of living in a country where every decision that we have made over the last ten years wasn't for something, but it was because people told us we had to fear something. We had to fear people who looked different from us, fear people who believed in things that were different from us, fear one another right here in our own backyards. I am so tired of fear, and I don't want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear" (quoted in Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear, 2nd edition (2009), 244).

The Obamas have been in the White House for the past six years and Americans are as frightened as ever--not of the every day violence that makes Boston more dangerous than 85% of all U.S. cities, but of the rare and extraordinary violence that can be perpetrated by individuals who are "different from us."

Lock-downs in the "land of the free and the home of the brave"--something about that just doesn't seem right. Where is Barack Obama's leadership on this vital issue of fear? Where is Michelle Obama's leadership on this vital issue of fear?

Am I suggesting that Mr. Tsarnaev should be allowed to roam free? Of course not. None of the perpetrators of Boston's 5,528 annual crimes of violence should be permitted to roam free. The Boston Strangler should not have been permitted to roam free. Crimes should be reported and investigated; criminals should be apprehended and made to stand trial.

What troubles me about the Boston lock-down is the message that it sends to the world: the citizens of that great American city--a founding city of the American revolution--have, out of fear of the rare and extraordinary, permitted their government to close the city while a search goes on for a 19 year-old fugitive from justice.

We like to say that we (Americans) won't give in to terror. In light of the Boston lock-down, why should anyone believe what we say?