The Great City - Chapter 44 - Departure of Shabu
“Finally, we must present the new prince with a problem so big that no other problem seems important and so difficult that there exists no acceptable solution. Then, when he takes power we can mock him from every corner of the Great City both for what he does and for what he does not do. And we can mock him regardless of the choices he makes.”Worry Wart's prior post ( What’s Wrong With the Media? Why Care? ) leads into the parable:
... Hate speech, trash talk, language that tribalizes America, however, needs to be banned because it shreds the fabric of society. A free society cannot endure it for long. And once it is shredded, only one thing can put it back together: a terrible, repressive regime. We might have learned this from the disintegration of Yugoslavia. But we didn’t. We might have learned it from the disintegration of Iraq. But it seems we haven’t yet. Let us hope we can learn it before their fates have become ours.Don't know about taking the disintegration of Iraq as lesson, though, since the US actively worked to make it happen ... we can't even face the torturers among us or even oppose the abuse we go through in order to fly in a commercial airplane. Where would we get the courage to face our culpability in destroying Iraq.
Where's the tipping point? Most days my 'gut' tells me the US has already passed it ...
| Today's QUOTES: | It's important to underline the fact that the newspaper model that is collapsing is not the model that kept newspapers healthy for hundreds of years, but the "modern" model that has been destroying more than just the newspaper industry - it's the high-flyer model of newspapers as just another "business" whose sole purpose is to make money. --On paper, in black and white, The Sideshow ... If the administration continues to validate this idea that the United States is so "exceptional" that it's exempt from human rights treaties, the Geneva Conventions, and it's own constitution it will be impossible to ever recapture even the (mostly unrealized) ideal of a country of laws and not men. --Pragmatic Princples by digby, Hullabaloo This last statement is Swagel’s snide way of saying that both the Bush administration and the Obama administration operate on the belief that the only way out is to subsidize the rich. Apparently, no one has the moral character to make their friends and supporters eat their losses. --Paulson and Market Participants: BFFs by masaccio, firedoglake.com ... “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. ... --Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable by Clay Shirky |
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