Tuesday, June 21, 2005

I've grown very disdainful of (and just plain bored with) blogging politics. Nonetheless, a brief but wincingly grim reality-check is probably in order:

The US war with Iran has already begun

"By the intensity of the 'liberation/democracy' rhetoric alone, Americans should be put on notice that Iran is well-fixed in the cross-hairs as the next target for the illegal policy of regime change being implemented by the Bush administration."

Time to Impeach a War Criminal

"In other words, at a time when Bush was telling the American people that 'every possible avenue' would be exhausted before going to war the administration had, in fact, already made up its mind to invade Iraq and was willing to manufacture evidence to support such an invasion.

"The Downing Street memo confirms what many had already suspected -- George W. Bush is an out-and-out liar who intentionally misled the American public, the U.S. Congress and our allies."
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3 comments:

Ken said...

"I, for one, don’t want a liar as my President. I don’t want a man who is willing to send 1700-plus Americans to their deaths in a war based on lies running what used to be the greatest nation on earth."

Then don't fucking vote. They're all liars; that's the way our government is run.

10:18 PM
Ken said...

"I would argue that Bush's and his gang's lies are MANY orders of magnitude worse than, say, Clinton lying about getting blowjobs from a White House intern."

Well, yes, Clinton lied about Monica schlobbing his nob, but that's not exactly what I was talking about when I stated that "they are all liars." Our government tells us what they think we WANT to hear in order to further their own agendas. Their power rests largely in their ability to persuade the masses. How do they go about doing this? By being honest with us? By sincerely reasoning with us? Hell no! They exploit peoples' vulnerability to irrational, thoughtless, emotional reaction; they use rhetoric, gestures, half-truths, false promises and outright lies. This method of doing politics is stitched into the very nature of our government. Want a *noble* president like the character Harrison Ford played in Airforce One? Get real.

11:23 PM
Ken said...

I suppose one could counter that the way our politicians do things is the only realistic way -- in the great tradition of Machiavelli. He was a pragmatist and a realist; he articulated the way Europeans had been doing politics for centuries. "This is what works - this is the *only* thing that works." That is his underlying reasoning in _The Prince_, and this reasoning is irrefutable. Times have changed, however, since his era; our governmental systems have become exponentially more complex. What we have now is a mechanistic corporation in which there is a nearly infinite division of roles and responsibilities. Hence we cannot pinpoint where or with whom responsibility actually lies. The system has become reified and runs of itself; nobody is truly in control. When our politicians (such as W and his cabinet) lie to us, they are merely doing what seems pragmatic (whether it be to cover their own asses or to gain public support) from their place in the "works". Efficiency - that is, to keep things operational - is key. A broadening of perspective, the use of foresight, the employment of moral judgment - any of these would throw a wrench into things. Machiavellian politics (at least seen from the viewpoint of traditional morality) was merely immoral - but what's evolved out of that, our present day political systems, can hardly be subject to moral scrutiny because of their mechanistically complex and impersonal nature. They are Frankenstien monstrosities which will ultimately spell our own destruction.

2:49 PM

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