DELAY HUBRIS

Another one on the way down. Tom Delay's response to charges of wrongdoing are exactly the opposite of what an innocent and good person would exhibit. When an honest and good person commits an error, he will immediately direct efforts at correcting the situation and do it openly and publicly. And, if the situation cannot be corrected, he will take steps to warn those who might be affected and attempt to ameliorate any bad consequences. Even if there is only an appearance of wrongdoing, an honest person will face the situation head on and work to ameliorate any effects harmful to others before defending himself.

This is far from Delay's response. Delay's response is not only to deny any wrongdoing, but to attack the person(s) who suspects wrong doing. His response is to arrogantly assert that they'll never get anything on him and his modus operandi is bravado. The more clever his denials, the more clearly he reveals his dishonesty. This is all very unbecoming to a person who claims to be a servant of the people. Only those as dishonest as Delay will fail to see through the ruse, or if seeing through it, regard it as an acceptable response.

Time wounds all heels and Delay's day is just around the corner. Hubris takes even a crook only so far. Remember Senator McCarthy. Put Delay in the public eye long enough and he'll be seen for what he is. Even his cronies will walk away when he becomes a liability.

ASSORTED THOUGHTS

I fail to see what the radical right's objection to Harriet Miers can be. After all, she is a solid hill-billy Christian, holding firmly to that hate filled belief system that defaults to the fires of eternal Hell all except its own exclusive crowd. She also without question be expected to support the interests of business, corporations, and other money-grubbers, while disdaining civil rights for other people. So what is the right's fuss all about? What is the neo-fascists' complaint? They're getting what they want in a Supreme and if they're too stupid to realize it, then let them stew in their own juices until she is on the bench, where I predict she will demonstrate faithfulness to Bush's destructive agenda. After all, he's all she's got.



Stories of the recent police beating in New Orleans makes me wonder why it would take 3 policemen to subdue and old drunk man. My suspicion is that we have here another instance of police aggression gone amok. By its very nature police work selects for aggressive types who carry around in their personalities loads of unresolved hostility. This hostility is all too frequently vented in entirely inappropriate ways (as if there were appropriate ways). If you doubt what I say, just watch any policeman (or woman) and what you will discover is that their every day acts are loaded with unnecessary aggression. Watch the police on the highway crowding the center line or pushing up close behind; watch them in the parks and streets, always crowding, always asserting their presence, aways bullying the poor, the Black, or foreign looking. The aggression that civil people assiduously avoid in everyday life is the normal behavior of types who become police.

Too often the sort of aggression that cops universely exhibit is socially rewarded. Let one of them get hurt and all the papers extol them as heroes. What nonsense. Hells bells, cops voluntarily choose a life of violence and if violence catches up to them sometimes, its only what is to be expected. Live by the sword, die by the sword.


It's hard to avoid a bit of a smirk now learning that the subway panic in New York was all a hoax. I suspect this is not the first time Iraqis, and others, have played mind games with Americans. How much of the so-called intel that guantanamo prisoners have given to their interrogators was anything but a deliberate lie to set the dumb Americans off on a wild goose chase and leading us to spend tons and tons of taxpayer dollars in a prisoners' game of gottcha?


We rant about Islamic extremists as if they were the only extremist on earth. But, the fact is, we have just as many extremists in this country as in the Middle East. What else are all these hill-billy Christians? They're just as sick as the most fanatic Muslims, differing only in lacking the courage of their convictions. The whole world right now is formed into two large camps of fanatics engaged in a unholy religious war that grows larger and larger. Even within our own nation we are divided into religious camps with orthodox religion and science under unremitting attack by semi-literates determined to take us back to the 13th century.

It is far from clear which side will win this war. I fear that we are so over confident in the power of our big weapons, our bombs and tanks and warships, that we fail to realize that other fanatics, what we call terrorists, have equally powerful, if not more powerful, weapons. I think that although we've seen its power many times, we still do not appreciate the power of the suicide bomber as a weapon. We are too hyped up on our own machinery of war.

True, the suicide bomber is not really a new weapon, but the delivery system is beyond anything we can develop. Our most intelligent bombs and rockets, even if armed with nuclear weapons, are no match for the subtlety of the human mind that guides the suicide bomber. It more than levels the playing field. One needs only remember what 19 guys did on September 11, 2001. Not only did they destroy two huge buildings, symbols of western might and arrogance, but worse, they disrupted our economy for years, scared the daylights out of us, and forced us to direct huge portions of our national resources toward devising defensive measures against further attacks.

Given the power of our enemy and the stupidity of our efforts in countering them only with military power, I have great anxiety about the future of western civilization. Empires come and empires go because the barbarians have the benefit of righteous anger and superior weapons.