Watch What We Say, Not What We Do is the instruction from the outpost of tyranny, sez Billmon.
Back to Main
January 21, 2005
Billmon: Watch What We Say, …
Comments
And the mass media conjures, says Frank Rich
Maybe we don’t want to know that the abuses were widespread and systematic, stretching from Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to unknown locales where “ghost detainees” are held. Or that they started a year before the incidents at Abu Ghraib. Or that they have been carried out by many branches of the war effort, not just Army grunts. Or that lawyers working for Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales gave these acts a legal rationale that is far more menacing to encounter in cold type than the photo of Prince Harry’s costume-shop armband.
.. Read the record, and the Fort Hood charade is unmasked for what it was: the latest attempt to strictly quarantine the criminality to a few Abu Ghraib guards and, as Mr. Danner writes, to keep their actions “carefully insulated from any charge that they represent, or derived from, U.S. policy – a policy that permits torture.”
The abuses may well be going on still. Even as the Graner trial unfolded, The New York Times reported that a secret August 2002 Justice Department memo authorized the use of some 20 specific interrogation practices, including “waterboarding,” a form of simulated drowning that was a torture of choice for military regimes in Argentina and Uruguay in the 1970’s. This revelation did not make it to network news.
…
The practice of torture by Americans is not only ugly in itself. It conjures up the specter of defeat. We can’t “win” the war in Iraq if we lose the battle for public opinion in the Middle East. At the gut level, Americans know that the revelations of Abu Ghraib coincided with – and very likely spurred – the ruthlessness of an insurgency that has since taken the lives of many brave United States troops who would never commit the lawless acts of a Charles Graner or seek some ruling out of Washington that might countenance them.
History tells us that in these cases a reckoning always arrives, and Mr. Danner imagines that “in five years, or maybe sooner, there will be a TV news special called ‘Torture: How Did It Happen?’ ” Even though much of the script can be written now, we will all be sure to express great shock.
Billmon’s point of say A do Z is of course valid. But there is also the point that Bush says A and really means A especially in the cases where A is a gurantee for desaster.
This is taken up in not-so-mild-acid editorial of the LA Times: No Country Left Behind
There are reasons to be impressed by Bush’s new doctrine. There are also reasons to be very afraid. It would be good if this country’s foreign policy more closely tracked our professed ideals. It would be disastrous if self-righteous hubris led us into bloody and hopeless crusades, caused us to do terrible things that mock the values we are supposed to be fighting for, alienated us from an unappreciative world and possibly brought home more of the terrorism our neo-idealism is intended to suppress.
…
Ironically, the dangers of self-righteous hubris in foreign policy were a theme of Bush’s first presidential campaign, in 2000, when he called for humility in our global ambitions and pounded the Clinton-Gore administration for what was then called “nation-building.” Bush and other Republicans specifically objected to the use of American troops to promote democratic values, as opposed to national security.
Not only does Bush now think otherwise — in the most sweeping terms — but he does not even acknowledge that there is a cost involved or another side to the argument. He makes it sound simple. Terrorism is bad, freedom is good. Coherence comes easier when you don’t sweat the details.
…
Bush’s rhetoric Thursday chased itself around in circles, declaring that America’s goal — freedom and democracy, so that people can choose their own way — is not forcing people to adopt our way, which happens to be freedom and democracy.
…
In most other presidents, we would take all this talk with a grain of salt. But we suspect that Bush means it, which will make the next four years interesting, if nothing else.
Jerome,
the moscowtimes-link doesn´t work for me. Can´t find server…
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jan 21 2005 12:30 utc | 4
Figured it out and fixed it:
Someone should do the same in Washington
Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jan 21 2005 12:34 utc | 5
Atrocities in Plain Sight
…at least one conservative journalist is not willing to be complicit in the validation of torture.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 21 2005 12:40 utc | 6
@fauxreal – thanks for the Sulivan link
Perhaps the saddest evidence of our communal denial in this respect was the election campaign. The fact that American soldiers were guilty of torturing inmates to death barely came up. It went unmentioned in every one of the three presidential debates. John F. Kerry, the ”heroic” protester of Vietnam, ducked the issue out of what? Fear? Ignorance? Or a belief that the American public ultimately did not care, that the consequences of seeming to criticize the conduct of troops would be more of an electoral liability than holding a president accountable for enabling the torture of innocents? I fear it was the last of these. Worse, I fear he may have been right.
Kerry probably was right with that evaluation, but he was wrong in letting himself be guided by such evaluations.
we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value,
Unless, of course, they’re gay.
Posted by: kat | Jan 21 2005 15:25 utc | 8
I have been reading Noam Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival”, he shows that this conflict between the stated desire of “democracy” and the actual practice of the US has existed in policy for a very long time, mentioning the Monroe Doctrine, Woodrow Wilson, JFK’s actions during the Bay of Pigs, and of course Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. Bush II has just taken it to a new level with the official sanctioning of torture, we didn’t mind torture before if it was done outside our borders by a “friendly” government such as Saddam.
It is also worth noting that Bush’s speech used the words “freedom” and “liberty” many times, but not human rights.
Posted by: Carl | Jan 21 2005 15:41 utc | 9
They hate our freedom.
GWB on March 18, 2002 at O’Fallon, Missouri
…capital does not emerge from the process as it entered it. It only becomes real capital, value valorizing itself, in the course of the process. It now exists as capital realized in the form of the aggregate product, and as such as the property of the capitalist, it now confronts labor once more as an autonomous power even though it was created by that very labour…. Previously, the conditions of production confronted the worker as capital only in the sense that he found them existing as autonomous beings opposed to himself. What he now finds so opposed to him is the product of his own labour.
Capital, Vol. 1, p. 1061
Apparently Bush is one of those philosophical sophisticates who always means “autonomy” when he says “freedom” or “liberty”. You have to thank the man for his precision.
Now, let’s clear up that nasty misunderstanding about what he means when he says “they” and “our.”
Some call you the elites. I call you my base.
Alfred E. Smith memorial dinner, New York City, Oct. 19, 2000
Are we listening now?: They hate our freedom.
Posted by: Citizen | Jan 21 2005 19:43 utc | 10
Citizen
Just as curious is the way Freedom is a sign without a referent. Usually, reifications mean something, but not so with Liberty and Freedom.
These mean only what presently is. Such is our happy positivism.
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 21 2005 20:40 utc | 12
America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.
inaugural speech
But I will.
inaugural thought
Posted by: Citizen | Jan 21 2005 20:56 utc | 13
I am grateful for the honor of this hour, mindful of the consequential times in which we live, and determined to fulfill the oath that I have sworn and you have witnessed.
At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together.
inaugural statement, 2nd & 3rd sentences
If I tell people to watch my actions not my words, then the oath doesn’t count.
inaugural thought
Posted by: Citizen | Jan 21 2005 21:10 utc | 14
This keeps going on and on.
It’s like discovering an unknown continent: America’s most honest Republican.
Posted by: Citizen | Jan 21 2005 21:12 utc | 15
No, wait, I just figured out how the end of inaugural sentence 2 works. If he cursed in front of the audience, then it’s all accurate. Anyone lip readers here who can testify?
Posted by: Citizen | Jan 21 2005 21:17 utc | 16
There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.
the words
These Democrats wouldn’t recognize a challenge if it bit them in the privates.
the thought
Posted by: Citizen | Jan 21 2005 21:22 utc | 17
At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together.
Reminds me of old man in the film Waking Life who when asked why he has climbed the telephone pole responds ‘don’t rightly know’–he is ‘all action and no theory.’
Posted by: slothrop | Jan 21 2005 21:23 utc | 18
Meanwhile, it turns out that our president is not the only man in the world who can tell speak the truth.
At a hearing to confirm her appointment as secretary of state this week, Rice referred to Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran, Burma, Belarus and Cuba as “outposts of tyranny”.
In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Zimbabwe’s anti-corruption minister, Didymus Mutasa, angrily dismissed Rice’s remarks.
“When comments like that come from fascists like Condoleezza Rice, we are not really worried,” Mutasa said. “They [the United States government] have no morals.”
from the Mail & Guardian
Posted by: Citizen | Jan 21 2005 21:34 utc | 19
I think Bush really does believe he can end tyranny through militarism, and he’s probably just dopey enough to believe that’s what’s happening, but wiser heads in Europe and elsewhere probably know it can’t happen that way. Hence Europe’s policy of economic containment.
Posted by: bcf | Jan 22 2005 1:48 utc | 20
Jonathan Schell cuts to the chase: What’s Wrong with Torture
The senators’ language regarding torture reflected, with exceptions, the horror of the matter as dimly as their flowery praise of one another. None, it is true, went as far as to suggest that restrictions on the abuse of prisoners were “unilateral disarmament,” as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial did. Most of the senatorial defenders of Gonzales’s record concentrated on denying his responsibility for one or another of the damning memos. More striking were the arguments against torture by those skeptical of the nomination. Two dominated. One was that torture hurts the image of the United States in the world. In the words of Senator Lindsey Graham, “I can tell you that it is a club that our enemies use, and we need to take that club out of their hand.” Or in the words of Senator Herb Kohl, “winning the hearts and minds of the Arab world is vital to our success in the war on terror,” and “Photographs that have come out of Abu Ghraib have undoubtedly hurt those efforts.” The second argument was that enemy forces would torture U.S. forces in retaliation. In Biden’s words, “This is about the safety and security of American forces.” Even Gonzales, who declined at every opportunity to repudiate the policies that had led to the torture, was ready to agree that Abu Ghraib had harmed the image of the United States.
But are these the fundamental reasons that torture is unacceptable? Can this nation now understand pain only if it is experienced by Americans or, through some chain of consequences, it rebounds upon the United States? Have all the people in the world but Americans become invisible to Americans?
well, Jonathan, basically, er, No, and Yes, and Yes. to our/their everlasting shame and possibly our/their undoing.
the words of those Senators are so deeply shameful. there’s a Wannsee Conference flavour to the whole discussion. it is sick-making.
De- A woman who looked like she was the prototype for the outdoorsy set who husbands are still happy because they can have medicinal boners told me, yesterday, that Sy Hersh’s Chain of Command and Mark Danner’s Torture and Truth are “just their opinions.”
In addition, she knew that the torture was just the result of those “few bad apples,” and documentation and leaks to the contrary were “just an opinion.”
But, she added, “we’re at war, and things are different.”
So, I asked her, my hands visibly shaking with rage, if she meant to say that torture was okay because we’re at war?
She said, I wish Americans had been so concerned with what was going on in Iraq before…as though that excused the current actions.
I said, well, yes, let’s talk about Iraq…going back to Kermit Roosevelt. She had no idea what I was talking about because her entire world view was tied up in believing “her side” could do no wrong.
I told her too many Americans were like people who live with alcoholics and deny what is going on because they don’t want to face the truth.
She said, I was upset about things a few years ago (as though there is an equivalence between Clinton’s willing blow jobber and the torture and rape of children and women in prisons.)
She asked..what do you want?
I said Rule of Law. Respect for treaties. Accountability. I told her that I hoped her children or grandchildren don’t have to suffer for the things she supports.
I am repulsed by my fellow Americans who think like she does.
Later I saw the documentary, The Corporation. While there were hopeful moments in that one, considering that woman, I am not hopeful for the course of the future.
One businessman who is trying to change the way capitalists view the world, Ray Anderson, gives me some hope for those with power, but he’s certainly not the norm at this time.
He noted, though, that visionaries do see that the current system has created the seeds for its own destruction, and it’s taking the rest of us down with it.
The book that gave him a new vision for his business was The Ecology of Commerce.
Given the difference between this man and the current administration and its supporters, in a just world, the spirit of those birds who have died from oil spills would “incorporate” in the physical realm and peck out the eyes of the neocons. If earth is our mother-sustainer, what could be more apropriate for those whose Oedipal moment includes the exchange of pieces of silver for the right to fuck the great mother.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 22 2005 13:08 utc | 22
Sometimes it’s the sheer petulant pettiness that gets to me…
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Washington has refused to allow an Australian terrorism suspect due to be freed from the Guantanamo prison in Cuba to be flown across the United States because Canberra will not shackle him, an Australian official said on Thursday.
Petty, vindictive, petty, vindictive…
We are led by events and common sense to one conclusion: The survival of [exploitation] in our land increasingly depends on the success of [exploitation] in other lands. The best hope for [profiteering] in our world is the expansion of free[-market economics] in all the world.
America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every [white] man…on this earth has rights and dignity and matchless value because they bear [our] image of the maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations, we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government because no[t just] one [white man] is fit to be a master and no one [who bears our image of the maker] deserves to be a slave.
Americans, of all people, should never be surprised by the power of our ideals.
America has need of idealism and courage because we have essential work at home.
In a world moving toward [western free-market exploitation], we are determined to show the meaning and promise of [western free-market exploitation].
In America’s ideal of free[-market enterprise], the exercise of rights is ennobled by [the] service and mercy and…heart[s of] the weak. [Exploitation] for all does not mean independence from one another…Americans, at our best, value the life we see in one another, and must always remember that even the unwanted have worth.
Posted by: b real | Jan 23 2005 19:12 utc | 24
@b real
Michael Bérubé has another transcript of the inauguration speech:
There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment and expose the pretensions of tyrants. And that is the force of human torture.
America’s influence is considerable, and we will use it confidently in torture’s cause.
Some, I know, have questioned the global appeal of torture—though this time in history, four decades defined by the swiftest advance of torture ever seen, is an odd time for doubt. Torture will come to those who love it.
Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world: When you stand for torture, we will stand with you.
We have essential work at home—the unfinished work of American torture. In a world moving toward torture, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of torture.
From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication, the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of torture?
We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of torture. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction set by torture and the author of torture.
America, in this young century, proclaims torture throughout all the world and to all the inhabitants thereof. Renewed in our strength—tested, but not weary—we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of torture.
May God bless you, and may he watch over the United States of America.
…the spirit of those birds who have died from oil spills would “incorporate” in the physical realm and peck out the eyes of the neocons… I forgot to say fauxreal what a powerful image this is. positively Greek-tragedy material. I see Cheney and Rummie cowering like Tippi Hedren as the oil-soaked Furies converge… thanks.
The endless accounts of violent butchery, naked thievery and bold lying committed by this administration, and the fact that it has gone unchallenged by those whose job it is to challenge, these worst of deeds and criminal omission have seeped into my soul like a spilled crude that is cognizant of its own evil soaking into a feeling beach. I feel violence and hatred toward those who are complicit, I yearn to perpetrate their own crimes against them, inflict upon them the pain which they inflict, and I realize, beaten, that I have been polluted by them. I have willingly participated in my own defeat; voluntarily, eagerly pinned my eyelids open and actively sought out the record of these crimes, cataloged the evidence of their stunning failure and have dutifully picked up and piled upon my conscious this flotsam and jetsam of suffering that has resulted from their blindness. I have accepted this debris as my own, my charge to bear. I struggle to breathe, I sob and suffer the anger and frustration of helplessness and rage that I must carry this weight, at the injustice of the enemies’-of-compassion continued physical existence on this planet, in this realm of being, for another second. I am an emotional Job, all of my children-of-optimism have been crushed in four cruel years. My faith in the systems of un-civilization has reached zero, my trust in humanity is a castaway and I doubt my ability to find it. I am transfixed by the shine of approaching destruction and struggle to turn away, to turn within myself and seek the only source of hope avialable to me. I sense new life in the ashes and must keep reminding myself of Voltair’s command: tend your own garden. So I ask my community, walking with me in solidarity on this shore upon which we have choosen to recognize the evidence of distruction spread about us, I ask my friends: what place does awareness of the awful events in the world have in my mind and body when I have barely the capacity to control myself and effect a positive force on those closet to me?
Posted by: stoy | Jan 24 2005 8:12 utc | 27
stoy rhymes w/ joy. you effect a positive force in me.
thanks for the call
Posted by: annie | Jan 24 2005 10:00 utc | 28
Anytime Annie. Geez, I should have gone to bed last night instead of written the above mess.
Posted by: stoy | Jan 24 2005 18:42 utc | 29
Stoy, wow.
I am in precisely the same place. Thanks for voicing it so fluently.
I think in the end, all we have against the forces of darkness is our family, our friends and now this circle of resistance … like a small and flickering candle against the darkness of the world.
And the power — as you so beautifully displayed — of voicing our pain and despair to and for each other.
Something … something … I don’t know what, but something strong and pure WILL come from this dark night as long as we don’t become numb to it. And your voice, tragic though it appears, is anything but numb.
Thanks for that.
Posted by: SusanG | Jan 24 2005 18:52 utc | 30
stoy – I read your powerful post and wanted to thank you for it as well, but did not. Thanks to Susan for reminding me.
Let your conscience be the judge of you before you are the judge of others. If you are at peace with yourself, then you can go do something about the world, not the other way round.
Posted by: Jérôme | Jan 24 2005 19:01 utc | 31
@stoy I sob and suffer the anger and frustration of helplessness and rage that I must carry this weight, at the injustice of the enemies’-of-compassion continued physical existence on this planet, in this realm of being, for another second I think I’ve felt this way, on and off, for most of my adult life. at some point if your mind is open, if you are capable of understanding that the Other’s pain is just as real as your own, then you realise the incalculable, inexpressible, unutterably horrible weight of cruelty pressing on the world — a legacy of untended wounds and unfed hunger, of screams that no one heard or that someone laughed to hear, of unbearable shame somehow borne, of whole lives stifled and stunted, bodies broken and maimed, whole species snuffed out with vandalistic enthusiasm, living forests reduced to desert, vibrant cultures reduced to penury and clientism… the full weight of human agency for evil and selfish stupidity, centuries of it, pressing down like a cloud of pesticide. the sheer scale of it! it’s literally unthinkable. it boggles the mind and freezes the heart.
it is imho the ability to face this horror (or the inability to ignore it) that rightwingnuts mock and deride as having a “bleeding heart”; they admire the opposite, the heart of stone, the ability to ignore or belittle or even celebrate cruelty.
even those of us who occasionally come face to face with the enormity of our legacy of cruelty and destruction, cannot face it full-time. our moments of poetic despair, or suicidal notions, come and go… sometimes imho we have to focus our gaze closer to home in time and space, do what we can to reduce cruelty and increase thoughtfulness within arms’ reach, or do what we can to reduce our own unwitting endorsements of cruelty — the “act locally” thing that many political crusaders hold in contempt as trivial or futile, may be one way of hanging on to sanity and self-respect while trying to regain strength to tackle the Big Picture again. sure, my feeble little boycott (of corporate food, of GMO, of the car culture) makes not the slightest dent in the machinery — but at least it grants me enough self-respect to keep feebly kicking.
… who’d never heard
of any world where promises were kept
or one could weep because another wept.
only by being those who can still “weep because another wept,” I think, can we keep the hope of such a better world alive. painful though it is.
stoy & citizen
thanking you for what you have both offered here – it is post like that that help me see more clearly & they are no less intelligent because they are spoken by the heart
all i can offer stoy is that i have been a witness to what man does to man – & the misery that that entails – & i have learnt – as a dialectician i guess – that for me all is transformable – every day in the work that i do i have to find the reasons for living & be able to articulate that in a sense that these communities i work with feel it & use it
it is not for nothing that i use the signature – still steel – because i think we as individuals have to remain humble to the savageries of this world – to be calm in front of it – to not become agitated/tense/anxious/torn apart – to do all we must to be that calm but in that calm to make steel of what we are & what we do
neither is easy – but it is possible. i will not let this world wear me down. i will not let it wear my friends & community down if i can do anything about it
posts like yours are a small step to effect change – i have cited martin buber here – “that to have power over the nightmare you must call it by its real name” – i think all of us here for the most part try to do that
we try to create something in the face of destruction – of course it will be speculative & of course it will be messy & for my part – of course i will be incoherent but this really is a territory – a new territory
the fault of the old left was to search for commonalities where they existed only in appearance whereas the real solidarity is in our difference – & the celebration of that difference – & the capacity to communicate between them
what you speak – stoy – is speak to all of us – i can hear it in the voices of deanander pf slothrop, of colman, annie susang & all our community – we suffer & we suffer in real & concrete terms the butchery of bush & his bandits
bring the war home – make the enemy suffer
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 24 2005 20:22 utc | 33
De and Stoy,
One of the reasons I’ve been drawn to Buddhism in the past few years is its utter surrender to the reality of unfathomable suffering, and its clear-eyed sense that the healing of the world will begin with those individuals who are capable of sustaining themselves as witnesses to it.
It’s a very noble endeavor, one I find myself falling short of repeatedly, to be wide open to the pain of others, to step up and hand your heart over to the realities of the world and basically say, “Here. Do with my heart what you will.”
Despite its preoccupation with suffering (and its counterpart of compassion), I find the Buddhist principles kind of darkly optimistic. Its notion of the deep and real interconnectedness of everything leaves a window open for the beneficient effects of small acts — of tending your garden, as Stoy puts it. Every small piece of compassion, every small act of setting our needs aside, of fighting the materialistic swamp pool of the current Western mind … all of these small things are a revolution too.
Rgiap’s writing, people designing web sites so that we can gather for free, people sharing their thoughts, fears, pains and dreams — all of this must add up in the end, I’m sure, to at least a small outpost of compassion, sanity and dignity that presses its boundaries continuously against the hardness and cruelty of the dark side of the world.
Posted by: SusanG | Jan 24 2005 20:24 utc | 34
“It was plain that while Hautboy saw the world pretty much as it was, yet he did not theoretically espouse its bright side nor its dark side. Rejecting all solutions, he but acknowldged facts. What was sad in the world he did not superficially gainsay; what was glad in it he did not cynically slur; and all which to him was personally enjoyable, he took to his heart. It was plain, then–so it seemed at that moment, at least–that his extraordinary cheerfulness did not arise either from deficiency of feeling or thought.” Herman Melville, The Fiddler
Posted by: alabama | Jan 24 2005 23:24 utc | 35
c’est l’heure de l’insomnie, maîtresse de la terre
la torture est l’odeur de ce temps
où lentement, lentement se fige
le sang du vivant
laisse ces arbres s’échanger les oiseaux
laisse les fenêtres faire accueil à une aube qui soit autre
regardons la durée se rompre entre nos mains
en direction d’un lieu ceint de sa rupture
rupture d’où vont surgir des temps second
ceux de la houle des masses
quand la toux se mêle au paradis
et qu’au pain se mêle
l’auréole des anges
nous savons ce que sont nos communautés
elles condondent le bras et l’instant
elles guident le déluge
leur aube est le langage qu’humecte la clarté du jour
leur visage la limite tranchant sur le noir
il s’agit pour elles de commencement, non de mémoire
de leurs foulées se façonne l’arc
de leur route s’engendre la flèche
elles forment, elles dénomment
et voici qu l’étendue prend ses forms
que les choses se nomment
adonis histoire syrian poet
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 25 2005 0:59 utc | 36
About Bush’s speech, it struck me as odd – and scary – that he seems to have given up “terrorism” in favour of “tyranny”, which expands the spectrum quite a lot. Castro, for instance, cannot be said to support terrorists, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to paint him – or just about anyone else – as a tyrant, would it?
Stoy: nothing I could say would add to what you have expressed with such rage and passion, but strangely it gave me hope. I feel quite awed to be in such company here.
Posted by: pedro | Jan 25 2005 6:38 utc | 37
Thank you, everyone, so much. I feel internally balkanized, but they are leaky bulkheads. As some of you know, I have lung problems, and I *feel* that this suffering that I absorb daily is preventing my recovery. No one, but me maybe, can really answer that. I have this borrowed heart and barrowed lungs. Now my lungs are broken and I wonder if it is me, if it is my karma and at the same time my mission to take some of the immense weight of suffering inside myself, to relieve, in a small way, the collective burden. Or maybe I am just foolishly conflating the two. But I struggle with both. Anyway, I have more hope than that post probably lets on. And working for the Green Party, both local organizing and graphic work for national committees has calmed me, make me feel less impotent in face of the terrible weight of suffering De so eloquently described. I am so thankful for everyone of my online friends, from the bottom of my progressive second-hand bleeding heart. May we always be available to carry each other. Thank you.
Posted by: stoy | Jan 25 2005 7:42 utc | 38
Billmon: Watch What We Say, …
Should be titled:
Billmon: Watch What I Say,… cause you peons don’t deserve to have a say…
The liberal freak Billmon has gone off the deep end. First no comments. Then he ducks out when a strong voice is needed in the lead up to the election. Now he cuts off Trackbacks.
He’s become a one-man masturbation show: Watch the lefty jerf off with his one good hand.
For you folks to sit here and parrot his posts… as if his words are Jesus-gospel-shit…is disheartening.
Jérôme, Bernhard, et. al…
You all have too much talent to play second fiddle to a minor-league skin flute. Blow the blowhards horn no more.
Jettison the freak and do your own thing. That’s when I find you most worth reading.
A shorter me: You are more valuable than he. His time has come and gone. He blew it. Now he’s got his mouth on his own member… don’t patronize the porn.
Posted by: koreyel | Jan 28 2005 4:45 utc | 40
Thank you Koreyel FOR THAT BREATH OF FRESH AIR.
Nice to see you back!
Posted by: FlashHarry | Jan 28 2005 4:53 utc | 41