Drums and Muskets

On his blog yesterday, ABC News reporter Brian Ross wrote that it has been revealed to him that the government is monitoring his phone calls, along with those of other reporters from Time, the New York Times, and a variety of other news organizations both with and without "Time" in the title.

Now, this is very scary, but hardly surprising anymore. What is scary, to me at least -- very, terribly, awfully scary -- is the reader comments to this blog entry.

Here's a typical quote:

"I hope they catch every government leaker of classified secret information and put them in prison for life. And any reporter publishing known classified secret information should be shot. It is called treason, not first amendment rights."

Here's another:

"I am tired of thae news media leaking secret information in order to hurt PREDIDENT BUSH. I would prosucute the news media leakers for treason like LINCOLN did. We are at WAR with a enemy who whants to take over the world by force or kill all of us"

No doubt these gentleman imagine themselves to be "patriots." Perhaps they are. I really have no idea what a patriot is. When I was a kid, I thought of a patriot as a man in a tricorn hat with a musket, or perhaps a drum. So -- leaving aside the tricorn hats, these comments do seem to be characterized by a kind of drum and musket sensibility. Angry, insistent, and (above all) monotonous rhetoric, and plain force.

The word "patriot" (and its attendant -ism) were long ago appropriated by the drum and musket crowd on the right. I've never considered myself a patriot for precisely this reason -- to me "patriotism" has nothing to do with liberty in any meaningful sense. "Patriotism" signifies a sentimental faith in the inherent virtue of one's government, regardless of what it claims or does. The key thing is the love of authority and its trappings. Interesting that the word descends from "pater" -- the Latin word for "father."

These commenters show us the radical irony of patriotism: a love of authority perfectly combined with a fear (usually expressed as contempt) of liberty.

Welcome Back Frank!

Slow Apocalypse welcomes Frank Rich back to the pages of the NY Times, and none too soon. You've been sorely missed, Frank.

Why it's worse than you think

Bush's egregious incompetence and radically undemocratic, dictatorial actions have been abbetted and to some degree concealed by the very fact that they are so egregious -- they defy our sense of what is possible in America, what is possible in an American president. The muddled quasi-syllogism in the background goes something like this:

America is a virtuous and reasonable nation.

The crimes and blunders that Bush has committed in America's name are neither virtuous nor reasonable.

Therefore, it's not possible that Bush has committed these crimes and blunders (i.e. there must be some other explanation).

I know it doesn't make sense -- but there you have it.

We reason (if that's the word) that things can't possibly be as bad as all that because it's too outlandish to be true. The president is so brazen, so utterly beyond the pale, that we just can't believe it. So we rationalize his actions, we minimize the real consequences of his policies, we downgrade his crimes from deliberate felonies to inadvertent misdemeanors. We end up making his case for him! The irony is almost intolerable.

The Pros and Cons of Apocalypse -- Part 1

Con:

If global warming continues at the rate currently predicted by reputable scientists, polar bears will go extinct in the wild.




Pro:

If the rapture comes to pass as predicted by fundamentalist Christians, they'll all go to Heaven...



... and the world will be rid of a lot of tedious and simple-minded people. Everybody wins!

"A Large Warmongering Nation out of Control"

We're in serious trouble, friends. Listen here to historian Morris Berman talking with Leonard Lopate about his new book "Dark Ages in America," in which he paints a troubling picture of a bloated, gouty imperium in decline.

And who better to preside over that decline than our all-too-fearless leaders? It would seem that if decline and fall is what you're after, you couldn't ask for a more effective crew than the present regime -- a group of people who appear to be hell-bent on causing the apocalypse to occur in the most spectacular way, at the earliest possible date. Judging from their actions and policies, I find it almost impossible to imagine what else they could possibly have in mind.

Jim Carroll does a pretty good job of advancing a competing theory in his very astute column in today's Boston Globe: "Surely, something besides intelligent strategic theory is at work here. Yes. These are the policies of deeply frustrated, angry, and psychologically wounded people..." He gives the Administration the benefit of the doubt, arguing that they're merely blind, incompetent, and unhinged. His argument is cogent and nicely put, but that doesn't mean he's right.

Not with a Bang, but a Burp

As if we didn't already have enough to worry about, here's a bit of cheery news (at least to me) from our valiant friend, Nick Kristof, at the Times. It seems that there's a whole new dimension to Global Warming that most of us haven't heard about: billions of tons of frozen methane at the bottom of the oceans. Methane evidently has TWENTY times the greenhouse effect of Carbon Dioxide. If the water heats up enough, this noxious gas will start to burble up into the atmosphere... Nobody knows exactly what the effect might be -- whether it will be cataclysmic, or catastrophic, or merely disastrous. But one thing's for certain: it will finally end the debate about whether Global Warming is actually occurring -- so there's that, at least.

And, by the way, it's amazing to me that on the day I should inaugurate this blog, Kristof should mention the Apocalypse by name in his column. More evidence of the vast concatenation of events and signs of the end of things as we know them. "Something unknown is doing we don't know what." There is some great process at work -- could be a world in the act of annihilating itself, or could be just some bi-millenial house cleaning. That's not for us to know, apparently, and certainly not for me to say. "For we know in part, and we prophecy in part..." But open your ears and eyes, friends. Pay a little attention... You'll perceive the signals -- the game is afoot, and we're just pieces on the board.