Wasn't That Special?
So, Harriet has taken one for the team. That at least is in character.
I don't recall whether I've already said this, but the most interesting news photo of the past ten days was of Dubya at the press op where he tried to dismiss the mounting criticism of his administration as "noise." It was a photo of a profoundly angry man barely in control of his rage. Keep in mind this very angry guy lives about two blocks from the widest selection of nose candy in the continental US, and has been reported (reliably or not) to have snorted at Camp David when Daddy was in charge. The unvarnished Shrub appears to be a man of unparalleled vindictiveness, so it will be interesting indeed to see where he directs that repressed anger. On the whole, it would be better to have him smack down the religious right politically than to go invade another country. There's a short list of national and world leaders who ought to be losing sleep over the idea of an uncontrolled US leader and controlled substances rubbing elbows in the same city. Maybe sticking him in Crawford wasn't a bad idea.
It's struck me that reactionary movements in America have a short half-life. The first Great Awakening got some mileage for nearly a decade, only to collapse exhausted by its own emotional excesses. The Confederacy was in a state of internal collapse before it was two years old, done in by its own contradictions as much as the military power of its enemy. The "Republican Revolution" appears to be irretrievably sunk in corruption and conflicting agendas at scarcely 11 years of age. One wonders if it would have lasted longer with a leader of equal intellectual timber to George Whitefield or Jonathan Edwards. Instead, we get a second-rate clone of Alfred E. Newman.
What, him worry? If I were him, I sure as hell would.
I don't recall whether I've already said this, but the most interesting news photo of the past ten days was of Dubya at the press op where he tried to dismiss the mounting criticism of his administration as "noise." It was a photo of a profoundly angry man barely in control of his rage. Keep in mind this very angry guy lives about two blocks from the widest selection of nose candy in the continental US, and has been reported (reliably or not) to have snorted at Camp David when Daddy was in charge. The unvarnished Shrub appears to be a man of unparalleled vindictiveness, so it will be interesting indeed to see where he directs that repressed anger. On the whole, it would be better to have him smack down the religious right politically than to go invade another country. There's a short list of national and world leaders who ought to be losing sleep over the idea of an uncontrolled US leader and controlled substances rubbing elbows in the same city. Maybe sticking him in Crawford wasn't a bad idea.
It's struck me that reactionary movements in America have a short half-life. The first Great Awakening got some mileage for nearly a decade, only to collapse exhausted by its own emotional excesses. The Confederacy was in a state of internal collapse before it was two years old, done in by its own contradictions as much as the military power of its enemy. The "Republican Revolution" appears to be irretrievably sunk in corruption and conflicting agendas at scarcely 11 years of age. One wonders if it would have lasted longer with a leader of equal intellectual timber to George Whitefield or Jonathan Edwards. Instead, we get a second-rate clone of Alfred E. Newman.
What, him worry? If I were him, I sure as hell would.
posted by Uncle | 23:19
2 Comments:
Lord yes, laird. Let us take the long view.
Remember some other history you and I learned. When our school marms wanted the quintessential example of corruption and incompetence in Washington, they invariably chose Harding and the Teapot Dome. Now before our wondering eyes, we have Bush the Lesser, and not just the comparable Halliburton, but multiple unjustified, unilateral wars and the descruction of the economy. Before our wondering eyes...
I can't help taking the long view. I was suffering history grad student before I was a reporter :)
Harding had at least the good grace to die in office. If we got nothing else from that, we got one of Wolcott Gibbs' more deathless columns, "The Comic Art of Calvin Coolidge."
I think spite will keep Shrub alive through the 2009 inaugural.
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