I Might as Well Just Quote Him Verbatim

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

(My favorite frequent commenter on New York Times columns, that is.)

Here he is responding to a column by Maureen Dowd which said, essentially, that US policy in Afghanistan  is a mess:

1.

Phil in the mountains of Kyushu

Japan

June 23rd, 2010

12:48 am

Yes, it’s “complete incoherence.”

But if you put things in perspective, no surprise here.

The U.S. got smacked up in the tar baby because of three reasons that al Qaeda cited as provocations against Islam. Two of those three (and maybe the third) directly came from U.S. corporate “interests” run amuck — 1) having the U.S. prop up dictatorships that oppress their people — and 2) having the U.S. expand military aid, secret police training, and bases and arms to succor the despots. And all this just for U.S. corporate “interests” (oil, of course, and construction, and finance — all interlocked, along with the usual military-industrial mix).

No surprise at the “complete incoherence” here, as you put it. Subservience to the sociopathic corporate elite is total in the U.S. The Congress is bought. The prez is naive. The Supreme Court outright rules for the de-personalized anonymities wielding corporate monies — “life” based on no humans, no waters, no land, but on counting profits, neutering all the world for exploitation, ledgering stats and gains and costs — the whole, sick corporate “ethos.” It leads to the cynical amorality of loopy-casinoed Wall Street. It leads to the cynical amorality of BP casually dipping into extinction events. It’s all totally sick — and pervasive, and continuous, and strangling of all non-corporate “life.”

And, well, whaddaya know: this malady, this disease, has its own “coherence” after all — just check into any biz or law school to see it being taught.

I consider this to be pretty good, very intense writing.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

But I am sad that writing on public policy issues, no matter how good, it is,  is always trumped by money in the USA of today. I still have hope, however, because I know that the money trump card can eventually lose its power. Shifts of deeply-rooted cultural assumptions, often begun by writers of various sorts,  occur slowly, yet can eventually defeat great wealth arrayed on the side of an outmoded ideal.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

It took almost 100 years* from the first judicial decision in England limiting the rights of slaveholders, to the emancipation of the slaves in the USA. But they WERE emancipated in the end, despite the great power of the slaveholding Southerners’ money.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Maybe in another hundred years the rule of the USA by huge corporations will have led to so many economic  crimes  being committed against the American people that the rule of our New Corporate Aristocrats will be similarly sluffed off.

_______________________________________________________________________________

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline