Krugman
wrote:
After all, suppose that a politician — or a journalist — admits to himself
that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false
pretenses is, to say the least, a breach of trust. So if you admit to
yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand
accountability — and to do so in the face not only of a powerful, ruthless
political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that
its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It's a scary
prospect.
The New Republic
article by Judis and Ackerman that Krugman referred to as “magisterial” is
too large to attach and pass through FW’s filter, (I MB) but if anyone wants
to read it in a easy to read
Word format, (11 pages) please contact me. Otherwise, it’s at
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030630&s=ackermanjudis063003.
I don’t think it’s
a matter of naivete. You have
to open people’s mind to their deception gently. It you accuse someone of being
willfully stupid and willingly deceived, they will be even more defensive
and retreat into denial.
It is my
instinctive feeling that the American public is weary of scandal, beginning
in importance with the travesty that was the Clinton sex scandals that led
to a sham impeachment proceeding, calling into question the motive and
intent of all subsequent and more relevant, legitimate reasons for it in our
checks and balances. Many people felt "used" by the excesses of the
Starr Report as they saw life return to normal, Clinton's job approval
ratings surviving right up to the end when the pardoning scandals unleashed
yet another wave of mental overload.
Who knows what it will
take for comatose America to wake up? I suspect something dramatic
will have to come to light, more than leaked stories by enraged intelligence
officials, stories from soldiers returning from the war, a jobless recovery
confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt and the best efforts of the corporate
media to hide it. Besides a smoking gun, which hopefully the article
above will provide catalyst for,
we need people to be brave enough to look at their communities and
neighborhoods, to the families affected by joblessness, being shut out of
higher education by rising tuition and fewer scholarships, by homelessness
and the increase in personal crimes (domestic abuse, rape) venting personal
emasculation, and the declining prospects for real health care and
retirement for millions of people who have put a lifetime into Social
Security who are feeling betrayed.
It is very
discouraging to read that the Bush campaign is already halfway to its
fundraising goals, with the reality of what that money can buy, but this
simple overdone greediness may wake a few people up to the presence of a
real threat to the election process and practicing democracy. I remain
hopeful, because I must. Maybe that is part of the syndrome, too,
however; that we don't want to know how bad it is and hold onto the dream
that it is still working, real and viable.
Some of us are
working fervently and diligently, some of us carefully and incrementally.
Some of us are ostriches, some dreamers, some of us rabble-rousers. We
may fail, but I'll be damned if I am going to sit by silently and
passively. What we need
is an abundant sense of outrage and civic call to duty. - –
KWC
