Sunday, November 09, 2003

Will this speech by George W. Bush be remembered like Reagan's "Tear down this wall" speech? Or is it just talk? After 9/11, Americans were grim and determined. Bush underestimated this resolve and undercommited US forces in Afghanistan. Then he chose to go to war in Iraq, but undersold the difficulty of the reconstruction -- again underestimating popular resolve and squandering both credibility and momentum. So now he's coming out with the stuff of history -- making his case for the democratization of the Middle East. That's not going to come easy. Does Bush have a real plan for making it happen, or is he going to try to do it on the cheap and at the lowest political cost? 9:40:54 AM    comment []

Elijah and I saw Matrix Revolutions. My advice: for maximum enjoyment, see this movie with a bright 12-year-old. Elijah was open to post-screening discussions of the meaning of "Logos" and its role in carrying the people of Zion to their destiny, and he had no trouble fitting the blind seer into his growing database of archetypes, but none of that distracted him for a minute from enjoying the fighting and the flying and the popcorn. “How can people not like this movie?," he whispered after the battle at the dock. I guess I could have said something about the bad acting or the bad dialog or big fat Morpheus, but none of that seemed important. "It was a great trilogy, just with a crap ending," he said as we left the theater. On the way home, we drove out of our way to listen to all of "Bohemian Rhapsody" at high volume. I made us a quick dinner -- Lisa and Syd were out at a movie of their own -- and he offered a last thought on the child who made the sunrise. "The girl was a program, I guess that's what she was made to do," he said. "Let's go watch some football." 8:53:36 AM    comment []