"The inexplicable mulishness of big business was the only thing that held back widespread adoption of solar power," writes James Lileks of his salad days:
Anyway: at the college paper we lived in a warm capacious womb, dogpaddling in the amniotic fluid of our unexamined assumptions, writing sentences as bad as this one and thinking ourselves quite clever. These things we knew: Soviet influence in Central America could be blunted by a complete withdrawl of American support; Ronald Reagan was indifferent to the possibility of nuclear war; Europeans were wise rational Vulcans to our crass carnivorous Earthlings, except for isolated throwback horrors like Margaret Thatcher. All new weapons systems were boondoggles that wouldn’t work and would never be needed, and served as penis substitutes for Jack D. Ripper-type generals who probably went home and poured lighter fluid on toy soldiers, lit them with a Zippo and cackled maniacally. A nuclear freeze was the first step to a safer world, because if everyone had 10,237 ICBMs instead of 10,238 we might be less inclined to use them. The Soviets were our enemy only because we thought they were, which forced them to act like our enemy. Soldiers were brainwashed killbots or gung-ho rapist killbots who signed up only because Reagan had personally shuttered the doors of the local steel mill, depriving them of jobs. Of all wars in human history, Vietnam was the most typical. Higher taxes on the rich resulted in fewer poor people.
Long since mugged by reality, Lileks now ponders "Maybe we laid the groundwork back then. Maybe we smoothed the path for those who saw America as an ignoble brute, something that had to be checked wherever it moved":
As noted here and elsewhere, the fevered rants of the fringe have not only entered the mainstream, they’ve been embraced and amplified. Add to that the non-contiguous information stream problem, and you have an astonishing degree of polarization in the body politic. You say: duh. You say: what’s new. Well, here’s the problem: there seems to be an expectation that the next election will somehow settle everyone’s hash, and we move on from there. But the next election is just the beginning of the next phase of American politics. It gets ugly after next November. If some people think Bush is Hitler now, who will he be in 05 if he wins? Rabid Super Extra-Plus UltraHitler?
Zeig Heil, anyone?
I would guess our Dictator will arise thru the runaway Judiciary. Their Honors should beware of the coming Nuremberg.
Posted by: goomp | April 30, 2004 at 04:59 PM