«american nightmare»: selected passages
just hours away from election day, it may serve us well to consider the following thoughts:«william carlos williams wrote "the pure products of america go crazy". these words could serve as a motto for the age of bush. in years to come historians will likely judge the bush presidency one of the worst in the history of the republic --an amalgam of arrogance, radicalism and folly so egregious it's almost laughable. abandoning common sense in foreign affairs, weakening the rule of law, handing the nation's wealth over to the super-rich, and squandering the friendship and sympathy of the world in rigid pursuit of a chimerical dream of a world that cannot threaten us, the bush presidency has betrayed the nation's deepest principles, both liberal and conservative...»
«alarmed and outraged, half of a bitterly divided nation protested, but it did so alone. cowed by 9/11 and intimidated by a right-wing media machine that wielded the flag like a spear, congress and the media, the institutions that should have checked bush's mad rush to war, abandoned their posts until it was too late. from its dubious beginning to its fear-mongering, vote-suppressing end (one hopes), the bush era has been a perfect storm in which all the worst aspects of our national temper -- insularity, empty swagger and ignorance -- have come together...»
«a pious, foolish and poorly educated man, surrounded by zealots and knaves, dreamed of smiting the evildoers, but instead put a sword into their hands. he imagined that by invading a state in the heart of the arab world, he would cut through the gordian knot, but he entangled his army in writhing coils. he fantasised that an all-powerful america would stand atop a grateful world, but he made his nation despised everywhere, and particularly in the one region of the world where it is most important that we not be despised. this is the world bush left us. we must make a new one.»
source: american nightmare (opinion: gary kamiya, salon.com founder) via rmt.
