Contending
This morning I must contend with the gods of the school copy machine in preparation for an ACT workshop I inherited on short notice. I have not worried about workshop itself. I have worried about that copy machine (oh, esteemed copy machine, bestow upon me thy favor; I entreat thee, yeah though I have many copies to run front and back) - about whether it will actually work this morning without a secretary to nurse it along and ferret jammed sheets of paper out from its innards. It is wise not to ask why I didn’t make the copies yesterday when the secretary was intermittently available. That would be a tedious answer involving words such as “yearbook deadline,” “senior cap and gown orders,” “formal evaluation,” and “annual eye exam.”
The end-of-semester sprint to the finish line has begun. Much else will be pushed back until the last grade is posted on the 19th. Otherwise, I’d be musing here today about my own folly in hoping that George W. might see any sort of light.
How does a nation effectively curb the perverse stupidity of its own leadership? That’s the task that lies before us, after all. The Bush administration’s propensity for embracing unreality now seems as insidious and intractable as the insurgency itself, that many-tentacled cancer that discovered its mutant seed in a wrongful war, in Bush’s own uncapacious mind.
Bush fought a war on terror against an enemy that wasn’t (in Iraq, that is) and thereby made that war and that enemy real. Such is the terrible power of mistaken judgment. Add pride and obstinance, and you have the makings of tragedy, and all the world’s the stage.
Damn. The copy machine awaits. About one man for certain, Maureen Dowd is right:
W.’s Head in the Sand (excerpt)
By MAUREEN DOWDPublished: December 3, 2005
In the Christmas spirit, the time has come for the reality-based community to reach out to the White House.
The Bush warriors are so deluded, they’re even faking their fakery.
This week, the president presented a plan-like plan for “victory” in Iraq, which Scott McClellan rather pompously called the unclassified version of their supersecret master plan. But there would be no way to achieve victory from this plan even if it were a real plan. If this is what they’re telling themselves in the Sit Room, we’re in bigger trouble than we thought.
Talk about your unknown unknowns, as Rummy would say.
The National Strategy for Victory must have come from the same P.R. genius who gave President Top Gun the “Mission Accomplished” banner about 48 hours before the first counterinsurgency war of the 21st century broke out in Iraq.
It’s not a military strategy - classified or unclassified. It’s political talking points - and not even good ones. Are we really supposed to believe that anybody, even the most deeply delusional Bush sycophant, believes the phrase “Our strategy is working”?
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