But there's little of that.
And now we learn that social security, Medicare, and Medicaid are going to reach Doomsday earlier than predicted. What a surprise. Does anyone think the American people will tolerate any bold initiatives to fix those programs? How can the government act when we, the people, care only about ourselves and our families. We're Americans, and we take care of our own...and fuck the rest of you.
Oh, we may stumble out of our domestic financial mess. But how are we to recapture the value system that has been our moral compass?
The torture issue is the perfect symbol of our fall from grace. Even Fox anchor Shepard Smith understands the problem. On FoxNews.com's online show, Smith burst out, "We are America!" he shouted, slamming his hand on the table. "I don't give a rat's ass if it helps. We are AMERICA! We do not fucking torture!!" The video is incredible. Fox News...not MSNBC.
Once Humpty Dumpty has put the King's Horses together again, the journey will have just begun. And I fear I see no support among the American people — which means no leadership in Washington — for the kind of sacrifices, the level of rational discussion and debate, and the willingness to leave ideology behind and embrace the notion that we are America...and our strength is in our ability to disagree with respect and understanding...and admit when we are wrong.
And that's the truth...
In Jameson Veritas
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Ruvy
Nice job, Mark. I guess you hit the money line with "how are we to recapture the value system that has been our moral compass?" Wise men ask hard questions. And nobody wants to face the one you posed. They'll spout mountains of bullshit, digging in the bowels of a corpse like Marx (or Friedman), pretending to wisdom (I won't name names - the guilty know who they are), but "moral compass?" - that concept is way beyond them. You might as well hold a computer in front of a chimpanzee.
Your nation is lost Mark, and badly so. At least you are not as lost as so many of your fellow-countrymen. You still have that moral compass.
2 - roger nowosielski
Very powerful imagery, Mark.
I should hope this is only a transition period, that you have to go down before you can go up. And we haven't reached our low point yet.
What I think should be an even greater concern - the direction this presidency is taking.
I'm about to submit an article which sorts of combats your sense of pessimism, but I'm not certain any longer how successful I'll be.
3 - Ma rk
...and that from Mr Moral Highground who, much as the idea disturbs him, advocates mass murder.
4 - Ma rk
(3 re 1 natch)
5 - Jordan Richardson
Interestingly, America's "low point" is still much, much, much higher than the majority of nations on this planet could ever hope to achieve.
Perspective is everything, yet so few Americans realize how truly fortunate they are and, indeed, are always likely to be.
6 - roger nowosielski
I realize, Jordan, that it's relative. But in a way, what you don't know doesn't hurt you. Anyway, I am kind of in favor of a general leveling of humanity. Perhaps then we shall all realize that we're in this together.
Yes, Mark, I had the same thoughts.
7 - Mar k
When a child dies of hunger or disease every few seconds in a world economy that funnels goods to the rich, it's hard to think in terms of 'good fortune'.
8 - roger nowosielski
Quite right! I think it's obscene how Washington is trying to save Wall Street.
9 - Bliffle
Even that 1.5% savings in healthcare costs is illusory. All they really offer (with their empty promise) is to reduce the rate of GROWTH in cost from 6% to 5%! Costs will continue to grow at 6% until 10 years from now (if they are to be believed) when they will 'only' increase at 5%.
But, of course, even that mild improvement will never occur because there is no enforcement.
My, my. How will we ever pay our insurance premiums? How will we keep the insurance company execs up to bonus par?
They have the answer: Mandates!
EVERY US citizen will be REQUIRED to pay insurance premiums. You won't even have the option to just die.
Every child born in the USA will be under the burden of a 'mandate'. They will be born indebted. We've brought back indentured servitude.
It's the new slavery! Every child will have to work off the personal debt he incurred by being born into this nation. Just as the old slave traders enslaved africans to pay off their boat fare to the USA.
The USA will be one big plantation. An insurance plantation. And it'll be just like the old plantations: good for the masters, bad for the slaves. Very very bad.
10 - Mark Schannon
And yet, ladies & germs, all continue to blame the government when the fault, dear Horatio, lies with ourselves. We do indeed get the government we deserve.
You get onerous financial regulation when business demonstrates it can't even protect itself let alone consumers.
You get EPA & OSHA & unions riding the Iron Horse when companies make it clear that, without the government's various whips, all they'll do is "maximize shareowner value"...in the short run.
Mandate health insurance? Ohmigosh--what a crime against humanity. Except, who do you think pays for all those without health insurance? The tooth fairy? If health care is a fundamental right, then having insurance should be a fundamental responsibility.
Government is not the cause--it's an effect. When we the people start acting like adults (gotta pause while I fall off my chair laughing), we can just say no to government intervention.
Ruvy & Roger: I don't know if this country is lost or if we're just in a slump. I'm not that smart. Or maybe I was just in a lousy mood when I wrote this & saw only the bad.
And, hell, I only talked about domestic policy--didn't have the stomach to think about the rest of the world.
In Jameson Veritas
11 - roger nowosielski
The country is lost; there will be a general leveling of humanity, I predict. Only then perhaps things will get better.
12 - Ruvy
...and that from Mr Moral Highground who, much as the idea disturbs him, advocates mass murder.
Yes, Mark, I had the same thoughts.
Roger, Ma r k,
I DO have a moral high ground. The moral high ground is occupied by he, when faced with the unthinkable, tries to think through a solution, no matter how much it hurts him to do so.
That puts me about 20 degrees higher than either of you. Neither of you have the balls or the brains to grapple with the questions I raise.
13 - Cindy
It's funny when I hear child voices echoed in what grown men say. Dave was over in his thread telling me the equivalent of 'your dolls are all ugly'. Now Ruvy is here doing the 'my dog's better than your dog' routine.
14 - roger nowosielski
Saving one's ass, regardless of circumstances, is hardly a basis of high moral ground. It's the animal instinct, pure and simple, so trying to glorify that doesn't cut it. Not in moral terms.
15 - roger nowosielski
And BTW, in case you haven't notices, Mark was addressing Mark Schannon for what looks like a duplicitous view of speaking of "moral compass," on the one hand, and condoning "mass murder" on the other.
He wasn't addressing Ruvy.
16 - Ruvy
Cindy, it's a dog-eat-dog world. If Roger and Ma r k are going to come after me like a couple of Rottweilers, I'll chomp their heads off. Neither of them have any moral standing to condemn anything I say about nuking Tehran, if they are unwilling (and they are unwilling) to consider the problem from my point of view - survival.
Just to remind you, Roger and Ma r k, and anybody else who doesn't like the fact that I'm willing to use your weapons of mass murder to keep my people alive:
We Jews don't owe anybody jack shit in this evil world. You goyim of various varieties have tried to murder us off for 19 centuries straight. It is a miracle of G-d that we have survived at all. When bought out idiots and traitors like Benjamin Netanyahu debar themselves of attacking Persia at all, it's a wonder G-d doesn't let you goyim murder us off altogether. The stupidity of our leaders certainly seem to lead us down that path.
So, for me, that is the bottom line. In my eyes, it is the grace of G-d alone that gives you the right to live. Murderers and those who put murderers in office have no moral standing.
I didn't vote for George Bush, and though I supported the son of a bitch, I didn't vote for Obama either.
Mark Schannon, by contrast, has a moral compass that too many of you lack. And he knows when your country's moral compass is busted. That is the basis of my comment #1.
17 - roger nowosielski
Right, the moral compass to endorse mass murder. Well, we can have that and call it whatever he wants. But it seems, Ruvy, that you're operating by a very simple definition: whoever agrees with me, must be alright; and whoever doesn't, well . . .
18 - roger nowosielski
" Neither of them have any moral standing to condemn anything I say about nuking Tehran, if they are unwilling (and they are unwilling) to consider the problem from my point of view - survival."
You've just separated yourself, Ruvy, from the rest of humanity, as standing apart and above the rest. You are your own judge, the jury, and the executioner. It's Ruvy and Israel against the world. And may the world be damned because the Jewish people and their views are the only things worth considering. The "ubermensch" term was misapplied by such as Wagner or Nietzsche to refer to the German nation. They should have properly meant "the Jews."
Do you perceive the arrogance inherent in your stance? Do you really think that your God condones it?
19 - Mar k
Arrogance? I think that you mean racism.
20 - roger nowosielski
Perhaps it does come down to that, Mark, though I don't want to use that term loosely. What I'd rather say that Ruvy displays the worst kind of fanaticism, grounded as it is in some uncanny sense of superiority.
So I suppose that "racism" is the right word.
21 - roger nowosielski
And why not! Let's call a spade a spade!
22 - Cindy
The "ubermensch" term was misapplied by such as Wagner or Nietzsche to refer to the German nation.
Huh? Nietzsche and Wagner referred to the German nation as the ubermensch?
That is news to me. Surely that was not what Nietzsche even had in mind with the term. Wasn't Wagner dead by the time Nietzsche used that term?
On another note:
They should (if they had any concept of a world without rulers) have properly meant nationalists/religionists--without exception...not just the ones who shy away from blatant annihilation.
23 - Ruvy
But it seems, Ruvy, that you're operating by a very simple definition: whoever agrees with me, must be alright; and whoever doesn't, well . . .
Arrogance? I think that you mean racism.
Stop whining, the two of you. If you don't like being called out for the moral midgets you are, grow some. I didn't say agree with me. I said provide a same alternative. Neither of you can or are able to, and neither of you are man enough to admit that you can't. Therefore, you are both moral midgets.
The world is a hard place with very difficult choices, moral or otherwise. I raise hard questions you do not want to answer - so you whine like infants that I even speak. Roger, instead of looking at the real world, you find solace in the mellow merde that constitutes the Infantile Left.
O Sage of Christian County, grow up!
Ma r k - I would tell you to grow up too, but I fear the monster you might grow into.
24 - m A Rk
And I think that you quite clearly already have arrived, Ruvy.
25 - roger nowosielski
Ruvy,
You're totally out of touch when you mistake your militaristic stance with morality. Besides, you're totally out of touch with the American experience.
We talked about the alternative time and again, but your native arrogance and totally unsubstantiated and fixed knowledge-belief system in the mythical notion of Jewish superiority, fueled by equally mythical and unsubstantiated distrust and paranoia of all who are non-Jews makes you blind to anything that doesn't issue from your crazy head.
In fact, for the past two months or so, almost every comment or article you write is reeking with paranoia and hatred - so much so that you can't even tell they all but a variation on the same theme. One might as well turn on a recorder and listen to it time and again, because that's the effect of your literary output of late. And it seems your'e getting worse by the minute. This disease you're having is surely progressing.
I bet even the Israelis can't bear listen to you; that's why you dump all your hatred and ignorance on BC.
You know now that we can't and won't help you to achieve "the Ruvy solution." So why don't you just start preaching to your own people from some hill in Samaria and Jerusalem. Create a movement or something, or run for office, but please leave us alone.