if you haven't read Plaid Adder's latest.............

[nostamj]

it's a really good read. a teaser:

Our country, right now, is run by men who have been protected and powerful all their lives. This is why so many things never occur to them. They don't ask themselves how "the Iraqi people" will respond to the burning of their cities or the deaths of their kin. They don't wonder what it's like for the survivors, what resentments or hatreds might be growing in the hearts of the people we've hurt. They don't even bother themselves too much about what's happening to their own soldiers in the field or their families at home. Having never suffered themselves, they don't understand what suffering does. And so they don't understand the present or the past; and they'll never understand the future.

Cassandra's Curse

[anti-NAFTA]

1. Well.

There are plenty of Americans who suffer but who liked to watch the bombing of Baghdad on the evening news because it made them feel good.

Hitler and Mussolini came from working class families. Did that make them any more compassionate?

edit: And they both served in World War I on top of that.

[KoKo]

2. It's excellent, I read it when it was first up. Printed it out to keep.

:toast: to Plaid for this one.

[teryang]

3. Thought provoking

Those corporate industrialists who supported Hitler never answered for their actions. They were immune from the consequences of their actions. Similarly, the crimes of the Bush coalition during the Reagan era and thereafter basically went unpunished although there was some political theater and a lot of pardons.

During the S&L crisis, hundreds of billions of dollars were looted from the financial system and treasury by the BFEE political coalition. Many of the participants including the Bush family are still in power. The criminals of Iran-contra are reinstalled in the current regime.

As more than one observer has pointed out recently, this isn't a government, it's a looting. Who get's injured or killed in the process is a matter of indifference to those who are above the law.

I don't know that it is an American tradition to trust our government. The operative principle of checks and balances was distrust.