crabs

HARPERS NOV. 2009:
--% of white Americans in August who said they considered Fox News “reliable: 46
--% of black and Latino Americans, respectively, who did: 5, 11 [p.13]

--Those who celebrated Bush’s militancy back in the intoxicating days when he was promising to rid the world of evil see Obama’s enthusiasm for pressing on in Afghanistan as a vindication of sorts. They are right to do so. ... Not for nothing has [Afghanistan] acquired the nickname Graveyard of Empires. Americans, insistent that the dominion over which they preside does not meet the definition of empire, evince little interest in how the British, Russians, or others have fared in attempting to impose their will on the Afghans.... For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building ... why not fix first, say, Mexico? ... The contrast between Washington’s preoccupation with Afghanistan and its relative indifference to Mexico testifies to the distortion of US national security priorities adopted by George W. Bush in his post-9/11 prophetic mode—distortions now being endorsed by Bush’s successor. It also testifies to a vast failure of imagination to which our governing classes have succumbed. ... The ethos of consumption and individual autonomy, privileging the here and now over the eternal, will conquer the Muslim world as surely as it is conquering East Asia and as surely as it has already conquered what was once known as Christendom.—Prof. Andrew Bacevich [pp. 15,16,18,20]

--...we concluded that I was doomed for the rest of my life to be a professor. Not that I hated to teach. But defined. Classified. Serious. That was the worst part, to have to be serious about life. ...The basic question: Who was ready, willing even, to launch an attack on the other, to lead us into a new war that would devastate the planet. Obviously, it was the United States. ... Then deGaulle seized power and suddenly it dawned on my that my life would be totally absurd, that my generation was doomed to exist under his pathetic and ridiculous assurances of “la grandeur de la France.”—Jean Paul Sartre [21]