A valid comparison?

George Will comments on the Obama administration's politicizing the arts, and

This.

Of course, to some people there is no comparison. The ends, as always to some humans, justify the means. We will be told that the ends of the former are noble, humane, and socially true, therefore whatever exigencies, whatever horror must be perpetrated to carry them into effect are just. The ends of the second example were horrible and perverted, etc.

The thing is, if you dug up anyone in history who had ever attempted to direct an entire society and its culture to their own agenda.....they would tell you exactly the same thing.

The last Race Card?

Jimmy Carter, the Greatest Living Failed President, arguably the worst since Harding, has sought to breathe life into a "story" that should have died aborning, accusing Congressman Wilson of racism without the slightest evidence other than his baseless opinion that any "excessive" opposition to Obama must surely stem from fear of a black POTUS. Another case of insignificant diarrhea of the mouth raised to hulabaloo by the media.

I haven't the stomach to begin to analyze Jimmy Carter's motives; I'll leave it with:

“You have been sat to long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

-Oliver Cromwell addressing the rump parliament, April 1653.

Probable Impact

The automatic media-machine furor over the Coast Guard daring to conduct an anti-terrorist exercise in Washington on 9/11 may well have one systemic effect. Administration officials will shovel crap downhill, which will have an overall result of reducing preparedness exercises -maybe just for the Coast Guard, if we're lucky- which means reduced preparedness. The media will have damaged us, once again.

ANY Business?

Is there any substantive business before the U.S. Congress from which they cannot find a meaningless diversion, usually lasting a week or more? Now we have the seemingly chronic disease of the "Age of Apology" rearing its sordid, mendacious head once again. There's no need for a reference, the actors and the script don't matter. Someone is always demanding an apology of someone, for the sole purpose of being able to use the word "unforgivable," then running it into the ground, for the sole purpose of distracting attention from the fact that there's nobody at the helm.

I contend that there is increasingly little public business in this country, only a meaningless carnival sideshow. The average person doesn't really think a whole lot about what goes on in the halls of government, and is cautious and reluctant to say anything unless it directly bears on their interests or situation. Therefore a broad general fault running through the life of their society generally remains invisible until it can no longer be ignored. Then, the result can be an upheaval, sometimes with irreparable results- and in the aftermath, no one will understand where it came from, let alone take any responsibility for it.

A severe fault once lay beneath our society, stemming from the ratification of the U.S. Constitution with slavery still intact. It was ignored until there was division, and one that could easily, given slightly different parameters, have meant the end. However, society was reassembled, however imperfectly, and reformed since.

I am no longer certain that there is a social climate in this country that will accept currently needed reforms (this involves NOTHING that any contemporary politician will discuss), and that perhaps only another crisis is possible. If this should occur, how we will survive it with the current class of professional politicians in office is something I cannot begin to imagine.

Remember Journalism?

A soldier dies in Afghanistan. As someone remarked, "There are two rules in war, 1, that young men die, and, 2, you can't change Rule #1." Presumably, any adult understands that war, and its attendant casualties, cannot be prevented so long as the human race does business in any of its known avatars.

The role of journalism should be to report, basically, and do it clearly, unflinchingly, and with the bare minimum of adjectives and adverbs. So- what happend to journalism? In today's example, a U.S. soldier, Joshua Bernard, is fatally wounded in Afghanistan, serving his nation gallantly and in the best traditions of the United States Marine Corps.

The Daily Mail online reported, and I can only wish they were not typical of today's news reporting. Unfortunately, this kind of reportage can be seen on a daily basis, without even searching. The first sentence of the article:

"It is a deeply disturbing image which depicts the grim reality of war - a fatally wounded U.S. soldier lies slumped in the mud as fellow marines desperately try to save him as his young life ebbs away."

This, of course, is all too typical of much reportage, not only that coming out of Albion, but all too many -perhaps even a majority of news outlets. It's bad reporting, pure and simple.....and those "Limeys" didn't bother to capitalize "Marines."

The sentence, as it should have been written: "It is an image which depicts the reality of war- a wounded soldier lies in the mud as fellow Marines try to save him." All else is hype, gloss, dross, unwarranted hyperbole.

It is as if The Mail were attempting to construct an inflammatory and divisive article, instead of reporting on an event; to attempt to construct division through verbiage instead of providing evidence of such division.

Oh, America is divided, all right, but not about Marines lying in the mud. They're mainly divided over why the government can't afford all the things they want, why the recession won't go away.

It seems fitting to let the last word here go to some U.S. Marine graffiti in Iraq: "America is not at war. The Marines are at war. America is at the mall."