Today We Honor a Man of Peace

So let’s take a look at how the war is going to go.

If that’s not enough, check out what the distinguished scholar and pacifist Noam Chomsky has to say: “Sane people do not undertake actions when they know that there is reasonable possibility that it may lead to a humanitarian catastrophe unless they have enormously powerful arguments. The arguments that they have put forward are so weak that there can be no choice about this.”

Then there is this page. I’m quoting the whole article, since the Toronto paper is unlikely to keep it on their website forever. And it’s important. [Note: boldface added; links, etc., put into HTML.]

-Caveat Lector-

More reference links included at bottom of article…

“I call him the feel bad president, because he’s all about punishment and death,” he said. “It would be a grave mistake to just play him for laughs.”

Bush anything but moronic, according to author

Dark overtones in his malapropisms

MURRAY WHYTE

ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER

When Mark Crispin Miller first set out to write Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder, about the ever-growing catalogue of President George W. Bush’s verbal gaffes, he meant it for a laugh. But what he came to realize wasn’t entirely amusing.

Since the 2000 presidential campaign, Miller has been compiling his own collection of Bush-isms, which have revealed, he says, a disquieting truth about what lurks behind the cock-eyed leer of the leader of the free world. He’s not a moron at all — on that point, Miller and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien agree.

But according to Miller, he’s no friend.

“I did initially intend it to be a funny book. But that was before I had a chance to read through all the transcripts,” Miller, an American author and a professor of culture and communication at New York University, said recently in Toronto.

“Bush is not an imbecile. He’s not a puppet. I think that Bush is a sociopathic personality. I think he’s incapable of empathy. He has an inordinate sense of his own entitlement, and he’s a very skilled manipulator. And in all the snickering about his alleged idiocy, this is what a lot of people miss.”

Miller’s judgment, that the president might suffer from a bona fide personality disorder, almost makes one long for the less menacing notion currently making the rounds: that the White House’s current occupant is, in fact, simply an idiot.

If only. Miller’s rendering of the president is bleaker than that. In studying Bush’s various adventures in oration, he started to see a pattern emerging.

“He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he’s speaking punitively, when he’s talking about violence, when he’s talking about revenge.

“When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine,” Miller said.

“It’s only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes.”

While Miller’s book has been praised for its “eloquence” and “playful use of language,” it has enraged Bush supporters.

Bush’s ascent in the eyes of many Americans — his approval rating hovers at near 80 percent — was the direct result of tough talk following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In those speeches, Bush stumbled not at all; his language of retribution was clear.

It was a sharp contrast to the pre-9/11 George W. Bush. Even before the Supreme Court in 2001 had to intervene and rule on recounts in Florida after a contentious presidential election, a corps of journalists were salivating at the prospect: a bafflingly inarticulate man in a position of power not seen since vice-president Dan Quayle rode shotgun on George H.W. Bush’s one term in office.

But equating Bush’s malapropisms with Quayle’s inability to spell “potato” is a dangerous assumption, Miller says.

At a public address in Nashville, Tenn., in September, Bush provided one of his most memorable stumbles. Trying to give strength to his case that Saddam Hussein had already deceived the West concerning his store of weapons, Bush was scripted to offer an old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. What came out was the following:

“Fool me once, shame … shame on … you.” Long, uncomfortable pause. “Fool me — can’t get fooled again!”

Played for laughs everywhere, Miller saw a darkness underlying the gaffe.

“There’s an episode of Happy Days, where The Fonz has to say, `I’m sorry’ and can’t do it. Same thing,” Miller said.

“What’s revealing about this is that Bush could not say, `Shame on me’ to save his life. That’s a completely alien idea to him. This is a guy who is absolutely proud of his own inflexibility and rectitude.”

If what Miller says is true — and it would take more than just observations to prove it — then Bush has achieved an astounding goal.

By stumbling blithely along, he has been able to push his image as “just folks” — a normal guy who screws up just like the rest of us.

This, in fact, is a central cog in his image-making machine, Miller says: Portraying the wealthy scion of one of America’s most powerful families as a regular, imperfect Joe.

But the depiction, Miller says, is also remarkable for what it hides — imperfect, yes, but also detached, wealthy and unable to identify with the “folks” he’s been designed to appeal to.

An example, Miller says, surfaced early in his presidential tenure.

“I know how hard it is to put food on your family,” Bush was quoted as saying.

“That wasn’t because he’s so stupid that he doesn’t know how to say, `Put food on your family’s table’ — it’s because he doesn’t care about people who can’t put food on the table,” Miller says.

So, when Bush is envisioning “a foreign-handed foreign policy,” or observes on some point that “it’s not the way that America is all about,” Miller contends it’s because he can’t keep his focus on things that mean nothing to him.

“When he tries to talk about what this country stands for, or about democracy, he can’t do it,” he said.

This, then, is why he’s so closely watched by his handlers, Miller says — not because he’ll say something stupid, but because he’ll overindulge in the language of violence and punishment at which he excels.

“He’s a very angry guy, a hostile guy. He’s much like Nixon. So they’re very, very careful to choreograph every move he makes. They don’t want him anywhere near protestors, because he would lose his temper.”

Miller, without question, is a man with a mission — and laughter isn’t it.

“I call him the feel bad president, because he’s all about punishment and death,” he said. “It would be a grave mistake to just play him for laughs.”

The Democratic Underground forum interviews Mark Crispin Miller

From Atlantic Unbound: The Bumbling Communicator:

Wanna learn more about our “resident” “Fortunate Son”

Bushisms (so you can review them for yourself)

A compendium of links on the topic

By All Rational Measures, I Should Be Climbing the Walls Right Now

But I’m not. I’m weirdly at peace — even deeply content.

Let’s take a look at my life right now.

Unless Michele or Paul can get work, I’m going to be the sole support of the household next month. My salary covers the rent, period. When two of us are working, we can get by, though health insurance alone runs us something like $750 a month. (Mine is paid through work, thank God.) We really need three people working to live in fair comfort, pay down the various debts, keep the house running smoothly, and save some for the future.

My laptop power supply died at Orchard Valley Coffee today.

My sneakers have holes, my jeans have holes, and my truck really needs a tuneup.

I haven’t slept more than 5 hours a night since Paul was laid off, and I am having nightmares again — both sure signs of major life stress for me.

I have my annual job review in a couple of weeks, and I’m worried. Probably irrationally, but still.

Nevertheless, I am content tonight.

Somehow, through it all, I feel so much more solidly balanced these days. I have love, work, friends, family, home. I’m writing again. It’s not that nothing can affect me — clearly Paul’s layoff did affect me, since it has invaded my sleep. But I have faith in my own strength. No, I always had that. I had to.

What’s different? I have support. I have love. I can be *honest*.

Yeah, I’m concerned about money. I have to be. But the essentials are solid. The relationships are real, honest, supportive, healthy. We will make it through this. Together.

Dream Advice

Recently, with the return of insomnia, I’ve been lingering on the borders of sleep. This state of semiawareness leads to strange and apparently insightful mini-dreams: a single line, a single scene, a single image.

What they’re saying:

“He’s bleeding in ways you can’t understand.”

“He’s afraid you won’t recognize him.”

“It has to be done with cell-model precision.”

And tonight, after a couple of hours of utterly exhausted sleep, I woke screaming from a vision of a grave under a tree, and a hand emerging from it to seize me. The hard part is that the tree and the grave (or well, or spring) underneath it is familiar to me, part of my mental landscape for God knows how many years. Most of my life, I think. It’s a real place that dates back to very early childhood. As the dream fades, so does the vivid picture of the place. What’s left is the narrative memory that lets me describe it, a schematic idea lacking the brilliant sensory details, the memory of my drawings of it over the years. This is the tree I’ve always drawn. And tonight I was *there* — seeing, smelling, noting every twig, the texture of the bark, the color of the leaves.

I woke screaming, in terror, but the real sorrow of this isn’t the nightmare. It’s waking and losing that place.

California Winters: A Dissenting Opinion

My friend Doug, who lives on the Central Coast, writes:

Just saw your Sunday comments in UnNatural History — just so you know, this has been an unusually warm winter even by California standards so far. I don’t even think we’ve had a good heavy freeze here yet, and I’m at about 1000 feet, separated from the ocean’s influence by a high ridge of hills. So, I think the plants are even more confused than they usually are this year. I note that my irises are sending up leaves already, which they didn’t do until spring last year. Of course, they could all have the snot froze out of them at any point, should we get the burst of colder air I’m half expecting momentarily. Or perhaps not — this is supposed to be an El Nino year, so my main expectation is a mighty slug of rainstorms in a March-ish timeframe.

Of course, from your point of view, you might not even notice a heavy burst of winter cold here, since on temperature scales you’re more used to, either mode probably qualifies as positively springlike. That’s the whole point to becoming a Californian — learning to be a connoisseur of the understated, and to discern the finer points of climate, rather than the rest of the nation, who merely get used to being bludgeoned over the head with it.

I thought the whole point of being a Californian was to walk around in a T-shirt on a January day, saying, “My God, it’s summer!” Which is what I’ve been doing all day today. (Well, not literally. I spent most of the day chained to my work computer, swilling Diet Dr. Pepper and sweating out last-minute rewrites.)

It’s true that the Northern California climate offers subtle pleasures. For one thing, the grassy hills of the East Bay, even in the wettest seasons, are always more of an avocado green than the grassy hills of the Peninsula, which have a deeper, more tender hue. You have to watch for these differences and enjoy them.