Friday, May 07, 2004

Posted here Friday, May 07, 2004 at 12:28:20 PM     Several reflections on the Rumsfeld hearings. 1. The senators spend way too much time giving speeches and too little on asking questions. The long question gives R too mnay leads, and too much time, to dodge the quesion's central inquiry. 2. R's stress on the damage of the pictures, rather than the damage of the acts, is to me fundamentally to miss the point. I think he is sincere, which in  a way makes it worse. It really is a question of character.     ********

Posted here Friday, May 07, 2004 at 8:26:54 AM     As of this morning, the sexual side of Iraq is replacing the issue of leadership and general maltreatment of fellow human beings as the driving issue. The  failure of Bush is to have set a style that lacks any humanity or grace, and this encourages bad individualistic behavior, the worse the lower down, where people are given lousy jobs and yet required to perform. But more significantly by setting the world's agenda as only the war on terror, he has lost the real agenda facing us as a nation: environment: wealth issues, the rise of market forces to their dominant position, arms trade, the proper use of technology in a world full of technologically induced problems, the difficulties in this world for children (and most everyone else as well). The Republican agenda had two parts: a power side, and a paternalistic moral vision side. They conflict, but the leadership has held them together. The Democratic agenda is slightly tilted toward income management and multilateral ism. Both have failed to deal with the growth of complexity. The result is more power to bureaucracies, governmental and business, glued together by the media. The US is a big power without sophisticated leadership. While some of the leaders are well intentioned and well informed, they are not able (Clinton) to develop a governing style that is substantially responsive to the issues.Our leadership is not focused on any analysis of key societal issues, nor willing to lose in the service of the country. The vast majority of people are not given any leverage on this system, but their daily lives are affected - from gas prices, torn up roads, increased bureaucratic complexities - feel leveraged by power. The result is to feel that change is bad. So people will take any path they can to vote for less change. This way they feel less responsible for new initiatives which only serve power and wealth, knowing that it is not a solution, or even a move toward a solution. The result is that the energy and intelligence of the nation is not bound by the system, and the overall situation approaches a point of some kind of no return. Increased authoritarian control is the most likely outcome. And this will motivate increasing numbers of people to be willing to go further - as in Chicago in '68, than would have seemed possible a year ago. The Bush administration, relying on the slogan of "democracy and freedom" will end up being against democracy and freedom because they are a threat to democracy and freedom. And what Bush means by democracy and freedom is a mixture of letting corporate/government/wealth dominance under the disguise of a free market/media world have its way. Freedom in this context is rather narrowly defined as private property rights and capital freedom, combined with a legal system that gives corporations the rights of persons (and not the responsibilities), and some semblance of free speech, free press (the limits of which may be about to be tested). What the larger majority means by democracy and freedom is broader, involving being heard and being responded to, and the ability to move freely, in thought and body, socially and individually, without surveillance. Seen another way,. the need of the corporate/technical/financial system to operate is the core driver, and there really is not a well formulated humane alternative.   ********