Timing is Everything

Josh Marshall says, "It's not too soon to start calling this for what it its: the Bush administration's creeping monarchism."

Not too soon! That's the sort of understantement that ought to be delivered by John Cleese in very fussy court dress, affecting an accent somewhere between Henry Higgins and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Requiescat in pace, Pastor Neimöller.

Priorities

I know I ought to be crowing now that the Dick and the Dauphin have been further implicated in the plot to out/smear/discredit/whatever Valerie Plame-Wilson and her husband Ambassador Goodhair, but honestly, I don't give a damn. The notion now prevalent in Democratic circles--that other than some dastardly Bush appointees making trouble at the top of the organizational chart, Langley is populated by moral paragons toiling in anonymity for the good of the US and the world--well, it strikes me as ludicrous, even for the Democratic party. While it may be underhanded or even vaguely shameful that a sitting President is outing covert operatives of his own government in order to score political points against his enemies, the ongoing chorus crying that this has done some great damage to America should kindly shut up and consider the history of the Agency under any administration. They're a pretty dastardly bunch themselves, and I trust they can take care of themselves, right up to the cover of Vanity Fair.

Meanwhile, in news that matters, our effort, to speak kindly of it, in Iraq continues to ratchet toward the inescapable grip of civil war. There are a number of voices that I respect, including those of Juan Cole and Pat Lang, that say we cannot abandon the Iraqis now. Heaven knows what that means? The belief that we have some capacity to forestall an already-present civil war is laughably hopeful, and the idea that we'll have the capacity to extricate ourselves neatly once that war begins in full is equally so. As it is our troops can't tell friend from foe--lord help-'em if the country devloves into even greater chaos.

It comes as no surprise that the dauphin should tell some toady to go yap about pussy-whipped Joe Wilson. At heart a frat boy, I can imagine him sending some eager pledge to squeal "fag" on a social rival. This is all a huge sideshow distracting from the principal issue of the moment, which is that there is a US militayr presence in the heart of the Middle East that will be there until Victory, which seems, more and more, to mean "forever."

Inside every gook . . .

The idea that every victim of oppression is at heart a liberal democrat is one of the most persistent of American illusions. It simply won't die. It has the persistence of bacteria.

Read the rest, as they say.

I've never quite understood, to be entirely honest, what Americans even mean when they discuss a "democratic Iraq," although I suspect that neither do the Americans doin' the discussin'. A somewhat incoherent Iraqi president who spends three-quarters of his time clearing brush from his, uh, ranch? Do they even have brush in Iraq?

More Proof that God Is Real

Ah, further proof that there are still some gullible folks falling for the ol' 6,000-year-old-world-with-a-3-billion-year-fossil-record prank. Evolutionists: one whoopie cushion away from total irrelevance.

His Majesty, Andrew Sullivan

In this edition of "What the Fuck is Andrew Sullivan Talking about,” we find the Prophet of Provincetown offering this addendum to a reader’s suggestion that the golden age of Isalmic pluralism, or some such, was in the Middle Ages, and that whatever liberality those damn Mahometans once possessed, it’s gone, gone gone:

No view of religion is ever gone for ever. Islam may not be promising material for modernity; but I'm not prepared to give up on its eventual reconciliation with liberal democracy.

What can it possibly mean to say that no view of religion is ever gone forever? And what is it about Catholicism, Andy’s religious orientation, that particularly commends it to modernity? His Church wishes you to believe that virgins impregnated by invisible spirits have babies and that a man can be tortured for all eternity for placing a piece of latex on his penis. He’s not prepared to give up on Islam’s capacity to reconcile with liberal democracy? I’m sure that Allah, his Prophet, and the billion plus living Muslims are relieved, and deeply so, that Andrew Sullivan, the Tory Tiresias, has not yet given up on them, as if the people of the world are a team that he himself is coaching toward the championship, and yet . . .

I’d rather get political advice from the guy banging his fist on the next table at the restaurant and telling his bemused and half-frightened date: “It’s the tax structure that they’ve gotta fix. The tax structure’s dragging the whole city down.” Neither he nor she knows precisely what he means.

It'll be the death of us all.

Can it be true that nothing at all has happened since I left for southern climes? I hate to break it to all you close-watchers of politics, but this country is fuck-all the same now as it was a week ago. I detoxed from news (and a few other things besides) at poolside, and then I found myself scanning newspapers in the Ft. Lauderdale Airport for the flight out and seeing the same goddamn headlines as I saw in Pittsburgh when I left. I feel like Marlowe returning to Europe after his trip up the Congo.

Since there’s nothing new in Politics, I want to note that Miami/Dade presages the end of American civilization. The first thing that strikes you is how provisional everything is. Other than a few dots of historicity on the map, the whole place seems like a vast set, an art installation in a constant state of build-up and tear-down. There are cranes everywhere in the sky above new condo towers. Who lives in these places? How much of the population is transient?

It’s tied together with Mobius strip freeways like something out of Escher, and there are cars everywhere. Everywhere. The sandy front lots of raised doublewides sport three, four, five cars and pickups. The quiet homes in Coconut Grove have four Lexi on their half-circular drives. The traffic from the weekend day-trippers out to Key Biscayne is an obscenity—people driving just a few miles for hours, only to spend a couple of overcrowded hours at the ocean, thence to repeat the whole awful commute.

And every bit of new construction is powered by oil. Every demolition is powered by oil. The gazillion boats in the harbors and waterways and bays and canals are powered by thousands of gallons of fuel. Everything is air conditioned, and the air-conditioning is always on. Everything is lit all night long. Miami is a vast energy pit built on reclaimed swamps and dredged islands; it suggests—without the tranquility or order, of course—Buddhist sand art: built, admired, effaced. There are so many window walls, and the capacity of those millions of people to live a hurricane away from total destruction boggles the rational mind.

When you fly in or out of the area, you can see the absurdity from the air: cul-de-sac roads surrounded by McHouses surrounded by cul-de-sac waterways for access by personal watercraft.

Excess and temporaneousness.

Excuses

Too much work, too much sun. I'll be back on Tuesday and will resume regular posting on such pressing issues as why Joan Didion's The Last Thing He Wanted is the greatest thing since Graham Greene did something great, why Miami presages the death of Western civilization, and why weddings are for fools.