Wednesday, October 02, 2002

FIVE YEARS AGO, I was part of an attempt to make a TV series visiting America's most wonderful and wacky attractions. Alas, now I can't see some of the places the show would've gone to; particularly the many defunct second-string theme parks of Florida.

posted by clark 9:44 PM

I AM, OF COURSE, neither the first nor the only person to equate G.W.B. with the moniker "King George" (see three items below).

There's a whole anti-Bush site called "The Madness of King George," another called "The Ribald Reign of King George the Second," and regular references to the moniker on the satirical sites "GWBush.com" and "The One True Bix." A Google search even find the moniker used in an essay by a self-described "conservative Christian" radio talk host, accusing Bush of trying to turn the US into a Stalin-style police state.

posted by clark 10:56 AM

Tuesday, October 01, 2002

A FEW ITEMS AGO, I mentioned the curious creatures I've deemed "liberal-buts." Here's one of the more effective examples of liberal-but forensics I've seen lately. Professional gadfly writer Christopher Hitchens has written a pro-war screed for the London Mirror. In UK tabloid fashion, it consists of short paragraphs containing short sentences, and expresses its premise loudly and doubtlessly. Hitchens wants us to view a forced ouster of Saddam as a righteous liberation movement any consistent leftist should applaud, and chastizes anyone who doesn't agree with him.

I don't agree with him.

I'd more easily foresee Saddam's ouster as a costlier, more violent version of Manuel Noriega's ouster from Panama or Alexander Dubcek's ouster from Czechoslovakia--the forced retirement of a fomer client-state dictator who'd tried to break off on his own. There's no guarantee any successor Iraqi regime would be any less cruel to its own people than the regime there now; just that it would be, by design, more amenable to US business interests.

posted by clark 10:22 AM

SCROLL DOWN the document at this link and read the fascinating story of a retired mechanical-pencil-company executive. Really.

posted by clark 12:11 AM

Monday, September 30, 2002

ON A RELATIVELY LIGHTER NOTE, you know I love old magazine ads. Here's a UK art-school site with scores of them, each representing a concept that's hard to visualize. Painters, illustrators and cartoonists should pay particular attention to the lessons herein.

posted by clark 11:55 PM

AS A COROLLARY to the conclusions in the piece below, here's a guy who wonders whether Bush, an admitted former "heavy drinker," fits the personality profile known in AA groups as that of a "dry drunk."

posted by clark 4:11 PM

THE WORST AND THE DUMBEST: David Halberstam's 1972 book The Best and the Brightest
vividly describes the steps by which the Kennedy-Johnson administration, chock full of Ivy League thinkers and respected analysts, stumbled into the morass that was the Vietnam war. Among the most important factors in the stumble, according to Halmerstam, were the limited perspectives these operatives chose to view. They decided early on that theirs was a winnable war to defend a stable, pro-democracy ally; they chose to ignore any analyis or research that differed from the scenario. (I'm naturally vastly oversimplifying Halmerstam here; read the book itself for the whole sad story.)

The same thing's happening now. Only the people doing it know they're doing it. Our current battle-criers decided long ago they wanted to conquer and colonize Iraq. (An Australian newspaper story claims they'd started plans for an Iraq war even before Bush's inaguration.)

We've got a whole Executive Branch establishment that, for all intents and purposes, proudly only listens to Rush Limbaugh, only watches the Fox News Channel, and only reads The Weekly Standard and books from ideological publishers like Regnery. This establishment does have staff people who scan CNN and the NY Times, but just to learn what its "Others" are saying in order to craft virulent rebuttals.

This establishment loves to scoff at liberals' "political correctness," but is fetishistically devoted to ideological conformity within its own ranks. It believes it's always right, not because it's smart but because it's pure.

Actually, "pure" isn't the right word, because it implies a sense of moralistic self-denial. These guys (and a few gals) want everybody else to do all the sacrificing; while they grow ever wealthier and more powerful.

We started with a book reference; we'll move now to a film reference.

There's a film, based on a stage play, set in an era in which a ruling class lived as libertine wastrels and the masses were subjected to strict authoritarianism.

An era enmeshed with domestic turmoil and colonial wars. An era of fierce political name-calling and backbiting. An era in which defenders of the corrupt social order will do anything to maintain their privileged status, despite the hindrance of an unelected ruler who often talks nonsense and behaves absentmindedly.

In short, an era with resemblances to our own.

Yes, we're all currently suffering from, and for, the madness of King George.

posted by clark 1:12 PM

THIS IS A FEW WEEKS OLD, but James Ridgway's point-by-point rundown of an Administration steadily sending our nation into ruin still reads quite ominous.

HEY, WE'VE GOT OURSELVES a good old-fashioned dock lockout on our hands, just like in the heyday of organized labor. Think of it as a showdown against the steady erosion of worker rights. During the long build-up to this crisis, our unelected president once threatened to use federal troops as scab workers on the docks. If that happens, watch him then try to authorize dock management to hire permanent replacement workers.

In 1981, Reagan destroyed the air traffic controllers' union and got away with it. The tactic even boosted the old dodderer's image as a tough-talkin' "Ronbo." I suspect the current Penna. Ave. occupant won't be so lucky. If he turns the longshore lockout into yet another excuse to suck up to corporate power and stick it to everyone else, we just might end up seeing the precarious status of the Austin bully droop, leading perhaps to even more unstable and implausible warmongering poses. If we're lucky, he'll collapse from the combined burden of his amassing lies, before he bombasts his way into WWIII.

posted by clark 10:15 AM

Sunday, September 29, 2002

TODAY YOU CAN FOLLOW, literally blow-by-blow, the massive protests against the IMF/World Bank meetings in Wash. DC, and the apparently brutal police reactions to the protests, at the pro-protest Indymedia.org and the officially "impartial" Washington Post.

posted by clark 11:39 AM

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