What he said

Kieth Olberman:

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and
shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald S. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable comments to the Veterans of Foreign Wars
yesterday demand the deep analysis - and the sober contemplation - of every
American.

For they do not merely serve to impugn the morality or
intelligence - indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who
oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land;

Worse, still, they credit those same transient occupants - our
employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither
common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad,
suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of
human freedom; And not merely because it is the first roadblock against the
kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still
fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile… it
is right — and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was
adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis.
For, in their time, there was another government faced with true
peril - with a growing evil - powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the
facts. It, too, had the secret information. It alone had the true
picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in
terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s - questioning their intellect and their
morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone
England. It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all
treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which
contradicted policies, conclusions - and omniscience — needed to be
dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew
the truth. Most relevant of all - it "knew" that its staunchest critics
needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost
of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile - at
best… morally or intellectually confused.

That critic’s name… was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this
evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way
Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History - and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England
- taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty - and his own
confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the
man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute - and exclusive - in its knowledge, is not the
modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis. It is the modern
version of the government… of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today’s Omniscients.

That about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused… is simply this:

This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And as such,
all voices count — not just his. Had he or his President perhaps
proven any of their prior claims of omniscience - about Osama Bin
Laden’s plans five years ago - about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago
- about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one* year ago - we all might be able to
swallow hard, and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful
recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own
arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or
intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to
Katrina, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to enveloppe this
nation - he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently
or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and
the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the
Emporer’s New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised?

As a child, of whose heroism did he read?

On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day
to fight?

With what country has he confused… the United States of
America?


The confusion we — as its citizens - must now address, is
stark and forbidding. But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when
men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and
obscured our flag. Note - with hope in your heart - that those earlier
Americans always found their way to the light… and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and
this Administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the
terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for
which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City,
so valiantly fought.


And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country
faces a "new type of fascism."

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew
everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he
said that — though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.


Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble
tribute… I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist
Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I
come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of
us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew
everything, and branded those who disagreed, "confused" or "immoral."

Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954.
"We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction
depends upon evidence and due process of law.

"We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be
driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history
and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men;
"Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to
defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular."

Food

As might be obvious, I like food.

For some reason some of the politics of food choice is zooming around the internet (bouncing from one link to the next shows how such things spread, and the way in which conversation happens in the strange mental place which the internets inhabit in our heads, but I digress).

But I don't want to make this post about food politics (which is never far from the surface of lots of conversations, things one might not expect to be about them often bounce to them in the strangest of ways), no I want to talk about the foods I don't like, and the strange ways in which that afflcts me.

All of us have foods we hate (even Steingarten, The Man Who Ate Everything has things he just won't eat, avgolemono soup, for one). I happen to dislike a smallish number (ot maybe not so small, but I happen to like enough other things, and some of them strange, or seen as exotic, that my dislikes seem less, in comparison).

Most I can eat around. A few are deal breakers. I won't eat the dish they are in, no matter how much you dress it up with other things I like, cooked spinach and artichokes fall into that category. The first makes me retch, and I am one of that portion of the population for whom artichoke makes other foods sweeter. This means it bothers me. By iteslf I find it sort of pointless. Not that tasty and too much work. If I need an excuse to eat hollandaise (or good mayonaise) apsaragus, french fries, or celery sticks work just fine

Liver is funny. I love the smell of live being cooked, can't abide the way it tastes, nor the feel of it on my tongue, or in my teeth. But make a forcemeat of it, or a pate/terrine, and I'll scarf it down, YUM.

Bell Peppers. Yucky, and potent. They flavor the foods they are on/in, with an amazing strength. I can eat around them, but they diminish the dish for me.

Mushrooms, sautéed in butter. The smell overwhelms me, and the flavor is rank. It's why I never cared for cream of mushroom soup. Mushrooms and I have an odd relationship anyway. Texture is something I am very aware of, and they have a distinct one. Up until I was about 15 I thought I flat out didn't like them, until my mother left them out of a dish. It was awful. So I ate around them. In the past 15 years or so I've learned to eat them, and enjoy the texture of well done mushroom dishes (and there's a pointless turn of phrase; practically tautolgic, if I liked the dish, it was well done). Putting them on pizza has all the same problems of sautéing them in butter, but more so.

Broccoli. This one's iffy. There are some broccolis I like. Some I don't. They way most restaurants treat them is revolting. Overdone, too stemmy and falling apart to affect all the other veggies in the dish. Cooked cauliflower is the same way, though I like it raw.

Eggplant. Again, there are a few dishes I like. That has led me to try more, but in the main, I can do without it.

Most fish. This is probably my greatest regret. I read of fish dishes, and I get hungry. But the actual stuff runs from, "I won't send it back" to "get this away from me". I experiment by tasting other people's. Were I to do restaurant reviews, I'd need accomplices who like things with fins and scales.

Milk. Slimy and nasty. Things done with it are wonderful, and I can eat cream straight out of the bottle, yogurts and kefir are fine. Lassi is a swell drink, but milk... vile.

Okra. Slimy. Wouldn't be gumbo without it, but that's as far it it goes.

Mango. No. Just no.

My problem is that many of these are ubiquitous. Broccoli and cooked cauliflower are almost staples in the chain restaurant side dish. Mango shows up in drinks, desserts, chutnies, salads, marinades, you name it.

Spinach, mushrooms and eggplant define an entire school of vegetarian cooking (the restaurant which wants to have a couple of items for vegetarians. Spinach lasagna, spinach quiche, eggplant parmagiana; ravioli, etc.).

Bell peppers... almost impossible to avoid.

That's pretty much my list.

So there are a lot of people who see me not eat from that list, and think I am picky, or just don't like vegetables.

How about you? (we can get into the politics of food choice some other time, or raise issues in comments)