The Zen of confronting George W.

[Demeter]

http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2007/06/the_zen_of_conf.html


June 16, 2007

Some of the ancient philosophies teach that the only way to attain something is to give up all hope of ever attaining it. You must let go before you can embrace, but you must also hornswoggle your mind that you really don't care about embracing that "something" to begin with. Then you can, and will, even though you don't care to, but of course you do, which is why you're letting go in the first place.


It's all a bit of a mind trick, but it does seem to be the only path to sanity these days when it comes to contemplating America's future.


It doesn't have one.


Well, of course it has one -- whether good or ill -- but perhaps we must first forego all hope of it ever regaining any virtue before it can, or will. Put another way -- in the way of the most commonplace vernacular -- perhaps we must hit rock bottom before achieving any ascent.


But the bottom must be an honest bottom. We can't just declare that we've hit rock bottom so can now begin the climb. We must know, with an absolute certainty, that America, at home and abroad, has bottomed out and is now thoroughly, officially, doubtlessly virtueless.


We've been fooled before. We've regularly declared that the Bush administration cannot dig us any deeper or take us any lower or be any more disingenuous and deceitful and virtueless. But it then surprises, digging us deeper after all, and proving that nope, we really haven't hit rock bottom yet.