What he said (with a correction)

[pecunium]

It's been awhile since I did much linking, and this is going to be brief, It isn't that I'm not reading things, but rather that I'm so busy as to be not digesting them well enough to sift out the ones I think people might 1: want to read and 2: not be reading.

I added Unclaimed Territory by Glenn Greenwald to my blogroll sometime around Christmas, IIRC, and he's always worth reading, and he's damned sharp on the entire wiretap, and adminstrative secrecy issues.

His piece today Snapshot of the US under Bushis on what the U.S. looks like, to outsiders, and why we might want to look after our own affairs, before we try to meddle in other people's, at the moment.

Justice William O. Douglas pointed out the time to be worried about the darkness which can fall on a people (e.g Sir Edward Grey,, "The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.") isn't when the blackest of evils has swallowed all the light, but rather in the twilight, when the shapes and shades can still be made out. That is the time to try and rekindle the fire, for it will be eaiser, when there is less blackness to drive away.

Comments

[badger2305.livejournal.com]

"The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." - Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary at the outbreak of World War One.

Aside from that quibble, I definitely agree.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I knew it was WW1, I suppose the mind conflates the sentiment with Churchill and the "Iron Curtain."

The sad part is I recall the exact quotation, but thinking it was Winston, the exact diction, seemed to be my mind editing it to what I would have preferred to hear.

TK

[badger2305.livejournal.com]

I can understand that. If I had not been distracting myself with some research on the origins of WWI, I might not have remembered.

[editrx.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that link -- extremely well written essay that says what I've been shouting about (well, at home, mostly within earshot of my husband, cats, and the John Stewart show playing in the background) for the last several years, particularly in the last few weeks. Pot calling the kettle black, indeed.

In a way, I wish my mother were still alive, as she lived through WWII as a "hidden Jew." Then again, it would probably be triggering her eternal PTSD and she'd be hiding under the couch, telling me that I shouldn't tell anyone who I was because "they" would come and get me and drag me away to a concentration camp (which is what she did when she drank too much). Her perspective, living in me, has been shuddering for some time now.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I've been ranting about it. It gets me called shrill, and a member of the "lunatic left," and all sorts of interesting names (traitor, faithless, ignorant, stupid and those are the ones which are fit to mention in public).

I look at what passes for discourse and argument (and the double standards of treatment, viz McCain and Lacy Clay Jr.

In the first the "Left" was to be blamed because they didn't sit idly by while McCain offended them.

In the latter the "Left" was to be blamed because it offended the group which Lacy was speaking before.

Never mind that the first was merely voiced, and the second required the congressman to be escorted from the room for fear of his phsycial safety.

The Left was wrong because it "rioted" and it was wrong because those who didn't like what The Left said rioted.

Wonderful rules if you can get them.

TK

[tenderberry.livejournal.com]

thank you for the link - and the comment by Douglas -