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That is the question. And it is the crucial question that we need to ask regarding all products of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. Why does the composer of these "talking points" have a forum? (Or, possibly, who is the real composer of these "talking points"?) Whose money is shoveling this manure into the public dialogue? How does inferior thinking and writing achieve such a prominent venue?
These questions are more to the point than anything this writer has to say. We--most of us here at DU, anyway (and I would guess much of the left majority)--tend to engage in honest dialogue with remote agents whose names we don't know, and possibly cannot know, that is, those billionaire fascists who control all news and opinion in this country, and who fund entire "think tanks" to promulgate lies and disinformation throughout the news media and thus into public consciousness. When you read something in the WSJ--or are exposed to almost any product of the corporate news monopolies, including much of the "news" itself--you are NOT encountering an honest piece of work. You are encountering a highly contrived and lavishly funded, and sometimes clever effort to force you to think along very narrow pathways, but much more than this, an effort to assert power over you, by giving you the impression that your own thoughts don't matter much--though they may be far superior and far better founded in facts and reality than anything you are reading or hearing--and that all that matters is that the idiot you are reading/listening to has a forum, and you do not, is part of the "in" crowd, and you are not, and gets paid for writing lies and garbage, while far better writers and thinkers starve. The writers and editors of these fascist billionaire "talking points" have been carefully selected to weed out any lively, original thought, and any subject or attitude that might help the reader/hearer along the path to enlightenment. The idea, really, is to suppress you--to dumb you down, and, most of all, to reinforce your powerlessness.
Just one thought on this writer's content: He doesn't know what "our civilization" IS. He is therefore unqualified to comment on it having "lost confidence in itself." For instance, what he calls "endemic Western self-loathing" is the very heart of the Enlightenment, if it is understood correctly, and not given this negative, fascist spin. "Self-loathing"--i.e., "self-criticism"-- is why we don't have Inquisitions and witch-burnings any more. It's why we don't have slavery any more. It's why women have the vote. It's why we got rid of racial segregation. It's how Social Security came into being. It's why we have universal public education. It's the thing that prompted the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations. We weren't good enough. We weren't educated enough. We weren't generous enough. We weren't enlightened enough. We came to loathe ourselves for owning slaves. We came to loathe ourselves for burning women at the stake. We came to loathe ourselves for the Great Depression, and the suffering that the rich inflicted on the poor. And we changed, and stopped committing these crimes, and created new ideas and policies to correct the wrongs that our "self-loathing" exposed.
Our confidence in our "civilization" is alive and well. We loathe ourselves for letting George Bush and his fascist/corporate cabal slaughter one hundred thousand innocent Iraqis (in the initial bombing alone), torture prisoners, and run up a $10 TRILLION deficit amidst multiple tax cuts for the super-rich. And, as a result of this "self-loathing," we are taking responsibility for our country, as we must if we intend to continue as a democracy, and are analyzing the ways that we, as citizens, have failed, the way our institutions (including the entire press corps) have failed, and the way our election system has failed, and we are trying to correct these failures, and restore American democracy, Constitutional government, the rule of laws not men, enlightened, progressive values, and common decency.
If George Bush and his nutso crusade against Islam is the sum of our "civilization" then our civilization has, indeed, failed. For there could not be a less enlightened or more brainless leader of our society, nor a more self-destructive policy than slaughtering and torturing Innocent people, and ripping up the Constitution.
The writer--like the Popes of Medieval Europe--tries to rouse us to the Great Crusade once again. Been there. Done that. Bloodshed and rapine all across Europe to Jerusalem. No thanks. Never again. We're not talking swords and catapults here, awful as those were. We're talking nukes. And our "self-loathing" warns us that enlightened, civilized people should not incinerate the Middle East--and, if Carl Sagan was right, the entire planet--over a difference in religion.
But you knew all this, dear reader, didn't you? You knew that this horse's ass--Victor Davis Hanson--should not be given money or prominence, or a prized bit of space in a major publication, to write about something he doesn't understand. Our civilization. To miss its major point: self-criticism is the very foundation of human progress and democracy. To write drivel about it--in the service of war profiteers.
Just keep your thinking caps on, is all I'm saying. And...
Follow. The. Money.
Always.
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