Saturday, September 18, 2004
Grab-bag
First off, 201k apologizes for the lack of entries here recently, and appreciates the emails encouraging us to get going again. Real life has once again sidetracked our quest to save democracy. More as the election approaches, we hope.
Secondly, we've been asked about providing RSS feeds, and would be happy to comply if some kind, technically savvy soul would explain how exactly we would do that.
And now, a few thoughts:
1. The Bush campaign and its flunkies claim that John Kerry will not keep American safe from terrorism. This is the core of their re-election strategy: create as much fear as possible in the minds of voters, and paint Kerry as unable to protect them.
The opposite is true. The world is a far more dangerous and complex place than George W. Bush has ever understood. He is manifestly unable to comprehend and deal with it, and has amply demonstrated so.
This should surprise no one, since there is nothing in his record to suggest that George W. Bush has ever had to live in the real world. He has never had to live by or follow the rules the rest of us have to, or, more importantly, had to deal with the ramifications of his actions the way the rest of us have to. He simply doesn't get it, and never has.
And John Kerry should be saying so every single day of this campaign.
2. The relevence of the Vietnam war -- and, by extention, Watergate -- to this election is what each candidate took away from it. John Kerry, and indeed most Americans, learned that if leadership does not properly lead then the mission becomes corrupt and dangerous, and that things rapidly escalate out of control, harming a lot of innocent people, helping no one, and leading to disastrous failure.
The members of the Bush administration -- and let's not forget many of them were in the Nixon administration -- took away from Vietnam and Watergate the lesson that if you control the message you control the reality.
That, Poor Readers, is where we are now.
Secondly, we've been asked about providing RSS feeds, and would be happy to comply if some kind, technically savvy soul would explain how exactly we would do that.
And now, a few thoughts:
1. The Bush campaign and its flunkies claim that John Kerry will not keep American safe from terrorism. This is the core of their re-election strategy: create as much fear as possible in the minds of voters, and paint Kerry as unable to protect them.
The opposite is true. The world is a far more dangerous and complex place than George W. Bush has ever understood. He is manifestly unable to comprehend and deal with it, and has amply demonstrated so.
This should surprise no one, since there is nothing in his record to suggest that George W. Bush has ever had to live in the real world. He has never had to live by or follow the rules the rest of us have to, or, more importantly, had to deal with the ramifications of his actions the way the rest of us have to. He simply doesn't get it, and never has.
And John Kerry should be saying so every single day of this campaign.
2. The relevence of the Vietnam war -- and, by extention, Watergate -- to this election is what each candidate took away from it. John Kerry, and indeed most Americans, learned that if leadership does not properly lead then the mission becomes corrupt and dangerous, and that things rapidly escalate out of control, harming a lot of innocent people, helping no one, and leading to disastrous failure.
The members of the Bush administration -- and let's not forget many of them were in the Nixon administration -- took away from Vietnam and Watergate the lesson that if you control the message you control the reality.
That, Poor Readers, is where we are now.
