Seventy Percent

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Thu Mar 20 22:44:53 PST 2003



>On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Carl Remick wrote:
>
> > IMHO, that's straw-grasping, Doug. Much like saying it's a relief there
> > aren't Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
>
>No it's not Carl. Politically what matters is the underlying support, the
>level that precedes and follows the spike. That will be the resonance
>chamber of the news; that will be what decides in a year and a half from
>now what this all was worth. And that underlying reality is an evenly
>divided nation that just got dragged into war. They are polarizing the
>nation, not uniting it behind them.
>
>Check out http://www.tcf.org for a fuller analysis.
>
>I think Doug and Kelley are right that the spike is a predictable illusion
>that shouldn't be taken seriously. They're not grasping for straws. I
>think it's rather you who is grasping for cement shoes :o)

Let's hope I'm wrong, but the outlook seems bleaker than it did during the Vietnam era. For one thing, due to 9/11 Americans feel personally threatened now in a way they never did during the Vietnam war and are obviously more willing to countenance any amount of aggression in the name of "defense." For another, the US government now bestrides the globe as the sole hyperpower; there are no constraints on the USG that characterized the time of US/USSR duopoly. And still more important, despite all the wasted years and high body count of the Vietnam war, today's US leadership somehow apppears even more determined and demented than it was during the Vietnam era. E.g., Robert S. McNamara seems a tortured, Hamlet-like figure compared to that grinning gargoyle Donald Rumsfeld. I remember reading that McNamara had to have his teeth capped because he wore down the enamel grinding his teeth in his sleep -- such was his anguish over the destruction going on in Vietnam. Rumsfeld, OTOH, I could easily imagine drinking a hearty toast from the skull of a vanquished Saddam Hussein.

In short, I think US leadership today is the most instinctively primitive, brutal and ruthless of all time, possessing more power than any of its predecessors and facing fewer checks on the exercise of this power. It's hard to see what amount of public outrage would really make a difference to this crew.

Car;

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