Republicans' Lack of 'Wisdom' Horrifies Allies

[donsu]

http://www.democrats.com/

Republicans' Lack of 'Wisdom' Horrifies Allies
London Review of Books: "America is now offering lessons in what little wisdom it takes to govern the world. Confounded in Iraq, isolated from its traditional allies, shamed over Abu Ghraib, soaked in corporate corruption and the backwash of environmental harm, sustaining an uninherited budget deficit while preparing more tax rewards for the rich, as dismissive of the unhealthy as the foreign, as terrified of the unfolding truth as of mailed anthrax, it is a society made menacing by a notion of God's great plan. America is tolerance-challenged, integrity-poor, frightened to death, and yet, beneath its patriotic hosannahs, a country in delirium before the recognition that it might have spent the last three years not only squandering the sympathy of the world but hot-housing hatreds more ferocious than those it had wished to banish for ever from the clear blue skies."

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n18/ohag01_.html

the writer of this article went to the Repug conv. and relates the stupidity and closed mindedness of the delegates.

the american empire smirk is lord over is a mirage.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

1. Sums it all up for me

it's all unfortunately true.

[Inland]

2. Bush so bad, he's losing the PR war with murdering religious fanatics. We

We went from being the hope of the civilized world to being seen as more of a threat than a murderous religious fanatic? Whose side is Bush on, ours or alqaeda?

[Dhalgren]

3. Hammer hitting nail absolutely on the head!

Great piece!

[ewagner]

4. Incredible Article

Thanks for posting

This clip was particularly disturbing....

snip:

A certain mica sparkled through the atmosphere of the Republican National Convention: it was the notion that a lack of patriotism was the enemy of democracy, that a love of nuance was a brand of elitism, and that being proud of your country was the only strength that mattered in foreign relations. In this same atmosphere - pungent with intolerance - the notion prevails that foreigners hate America not for its actions but for its values, its 'way of life'. When people speak of American imperialism this is what they more often mean: not the corrupting, internecine dealings of Halliburton and the Carlyle Group, the cronyist, Saudi-protecting demeanour of the Texas oil barons, shocking though all that is, but the everyday self-certainty that makes America a fighting force against other cultures and ways of life.3 The delegates have breathed a lot of this stuff into their lungs in recent years, but they wanted more. 'The Muslims just hate us for our love of freedom,' said a woman from Iowa wearing a cloth elephant on her head. 'They don't have any culture and they hate us for having a great one. And they hate the Bible.'

'Really?' I said. 'The Iraqis had a culture for thousands of years before Jesus was born.'

'What you saying?'

'I'm saying Muslims were building temples when New York was a swamp.'

'You support the Iraqis?'

'No.'

'You support the killing of innocent people going to work? People who have to jump out of windows?'

'You aren't listening to me.'

'No, buddy. You ain't listening. These people you support are trying to kill our children in their beds. Where you from anyway, the New York Times?'

[dean_dem]

5. This is just Nazi Party tactics all over again...

I know that word gets thrown around a lot as an insult, but really, that's exactly what this is. Prey on people's fears and vulnerabilities to the point of almost paranoia, create some abstract enemy (Muslims, Communists, Jews) that people can direct those fears towards, and stifle dissent by saying "you're either with us or against us" before anybody calls bullshit. There are plenty of people that don't want to be considered unpatriotic so they just go along with it. What happened on 9-11 is being exploited just like The Reichstag fire was, and what's scary is that people are more than willing to be taken in by it.
It's amazing how people think something like the Nazi Party could never have come about in the US, when that is exactly what is happening. I think that's why Europe distrusts what is going on right now. They have seen this happen in their own backyards, and they know how destructive this kind of ideology can be.

[ewagner]

6. I hesitate to use the term

and haven't found a respectable substitute for it yet. The commonon thread is that most totaliarian governments have used the same techniques.

Welcome to DU :hi:

[Tafiti]

8. Just plain FASCIST would work, too.

[Tafiti]

7. It's always nice to hear an "outsider" point of view...

and he's definitely right on. I loved this paragraph:

Sleep tight indeed. Sleep like reason. The hours passed in a miasma of triumphalism but without mention of America's troubles with itself, or of the world's troubles with America, as if all the grief in existence, all the threats, were mere phantasmagoria in the minds of the unfortunate.

This describes what many (especially Christian) conservatives experience, such a black-and-white worldview without a shred of nuance. And here we are, the "unfortunate" Democrats who see the gray, that the phantasmagoria is really happening.

[politicaholic]

9. Hmm. A writer for a book review that cronically uses run-on sentences.

Odd.

Some people just need to know about the economy of adjectives I suppose.

[President Kerry]

10. How frightning it is.. that close to half

the population of our country raves to this neocon tune.. great opinion from an outsider on RNConvention. For those that haven't read the whole thing, please do. it's well worth it

[Joanne98]

11. Sell Dollars.....Buy Euros........ If Bush wins the world will get even...

We need a second French revolution... BEHEAD THE RICH!