Larry, I left this comment to your post over at Booman but thought I'd add it here:

An absolutely horrible, horrible tragedy.

How many mainstream media outlets do you think will point out the fact that this is exactly what is happening every day in Baghdad. That answer is, depressingly, too obvious.

So why don't we have the same revulsion in this country about the body counts when they are dark skinned Middle Eastern people? The dead in Iraq every day are children, teenagers, students, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. Just like those that lay dead right now in Virginia. Why do we not weep every day for those innocent lives like we will weep for these innocent young people and their teachers?

Dead is dead. It is high time that the mainstream media begun to pull back the veil on the carnage that is occurring every day all over Iraq. We hear and read the words about it. We see the video of distant explosions and columns of smoke. But will we ever see anything that truly represents the bloodletting and savagery of what we have unleashed and continue to enable every day in Iraq?

How many major bombings have there been over the last year at schools in Iraq? We have probably one major incident like this for every ten that have occurred at schools in Iraq. Where is our country's humanity? Why have we allowed ourselves to become so insulated from what we, the United States, have permitted to be done to hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis?

What has happened to our country's heart and soul? Has it become too hardened to have any feelings at all for the suffering of someone other than ourselves?

Posted at April 16, 2007 12:58 PM in response to Now Do You Understand?

Well BVZ, I guess all I can say is that I guess I'm not quite to the point of sharing your level of cynicism.

This county is done so just stick a fork in it and be done with it.

If that's true then what in the hell are we even doing here right now?

Posted at April 16, 2007 11:34 AM in response to The Hundred Hour Bull

Don't really intend to keep beating a dead horse here, but this post begs for some kind of further explanation. I have enjoyed many of Professor Etzioni's posts on this site but this one just doesn't hold any water at all. I keep reading and re-reading it thinking I've missed some larger point he's trying to make but it just seems like there isn't any there, there.

What's up Professor? How about an update with some clarification on just what in the heck you are trying to say here. Because I just don't get it.

Posted at April 16, 2007 10:11 AM in response to The Hundred Hour Bull

Christianity today is, at it's core, big business.

He is smart enough and wise enough to use the trustworthiness he has developed over the years with those who look up to him and respect his opinion. This has allowed him to build this vast media empire. He has evolved, consciously I believe, into a combination Sam Walton/Oprah Winfrey for the fundamentalist wing of Christianity.

Dobson, unlike Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or Ralph Reed, cultivated a huge following by dispensing family advice and helping people through crises in their personal lives—not by brandishing his political views.

Dobson is a true political force to be reckoned with. His word and advice is Gospel to millions of fundamentalist Christians. His influence is felt in every nook and cranny of this country. He could marshal, through a simple statement, millions of loyal and unquestioning followers to undertake almost any task. I personally know of a number of friends and family who would take his direction quite seriously.

That is what makes me a little fearful of his potential power over our political discourse.

“He has a confidence, sometimes even arrogance… he had such a belief in what he felt God had given him in both his purpose and his expertise,” Jackson said. “Jim had the uncanny ability that even when his fellow professionals were going in one direction and he had a belief in something that was counter, and he was the only fish swimming upstream, it didn’t make any difference... If everybody was on the same train in one direction, it almost made it more delicious for him to go in the opposite direction.”

Unfortunately, that other person resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Posted at March 23, 2007 9:26 AM in response to The Ultimate Standard Bearer for the Christian Right

50 Year Mortgages.......

Interest Only Loans.......

10 Year Car Financing.......

Payday Lending.......

And it goes on and on and on. Very rapidly, the middle and lower middle class is finding itself squeezed to the point that they will be unable to meet the basic obligations they have. Never mind the poor who, if the have jobs, have to resort to getting loans ahead of paychecks in order get by.

The financial dance for much of America is almost over and when it comes time to pay the band, I'm afraid our pockets will turn out to be empty.

But hey, the stock market is at an all time high, right??

Feel better?

Didn't think so.

Posted at February 27, 2007 11:03 AM in response to You Are Pre-Approved--8 Billion Times

I do not deny that to get a democratic community to face tough decisions, it is often necessary to generate a sense of crisis; otherwise such communities find it difficult to get people to agree to policies that impose costs and changes in long established lifestyles. However, crying wolf where there is none has the opposite effect—it distracts attention from the true crises.Medicare is truly a crisis.

Fixing Medicare has to be at the top of the list. If we don't fix the Medicare situation then so much of anything I receive at retirement age will have to go to medical related expenses that it could well be unmanageable. And that is assuming my wife and I have no major health crises. It certainly will be impossible for a significant number of Americans who might not have the good fortune to be relatively healthy or be unfettered by the need for regular monthly prescription drugs.

The Social Security myth is so well entrenched that I'm not sure we will ever purge it from the majority of American minds. We wife and I have consulted periodically with a financial planner for retirement planning. At a year-end review meeting a couple of years ago, when we were in the midst of the administration's hard-sell on the SS "crisis", he pointed out that we really should plan on socking away a lot more money since "there probably won't be anything there from SS when you reach retirement age". When I asked him what made him make a statement like that, he proceeded to parrot all of current-at-the-time George Bush talking points. When I pointed out that I thought he was just flat out wrong, that he was giving out information that was not really based on any real and documented facts, he kind of stammered and stuttered and said, "Well, yes, there are some people who disagree.". And he proceeded to change the subject.

There is obviously a lot of incentive in the financial sector to have people believe there is a crisis looming such as the one pushed by our President in recent times (And still being pushed, by the way).

I would be interested in your take as to how we turn around what is essentially an "aircraft carrier-sized boat of misinformation" that has been put out so stridently for so long a time as to be almost impossible to reverse. It would seem an almost impossible task, as the media and financial conglomerates are so deeply and inexorably entwined and have so many common interests.

How do we get this message out? Any thoughts?

Posted at February 12, 2007 10:44 AM in response to Crisis-mongering at Home

Just had a discussion here at work with a couple of my Republican co-workers and am happy to report that my findings coincide with those of National Journal. Their comments were as follows,

"I believe the planet is getting warmer, I just don't think humans are causing it."

How do they come to that conclusion?

"That's just what I believe", they say.

"There are just as many scientists that say humans cause it as say they don't."

Proof? They can cite none.

"Thirty years ago they were saying we were going into an ice age, now they say it's warming. They're just guessing".

But, I say, global warming contributes to weather changes which result in an overall increase of world temperature. Not necessarily warming everywhere. There are some places which might actually experience cooling due to the changing weather pattern.

"Al Gore craziness", they say. "You can't prove it".

By the time we can "prove it" to the likes of these people it will be too late.

I give up.

Posted at February 5, 2007 1:42 PM in response to "Do you think...beyond a reasonable doubt?"

I guess it should be no surprise this is their perspective when you look back over history. And we certainly are not doing anything in the world today which might help assuage this viewpoint.

Posted at January 24, 2007 8:46 AM in response to Still Clueless After Six Years

Howard, your interest and curiousity in learning and understanding things which are foreign to most Americans is admirable. It appears to me that it is difficult for the average American to muster the intellectual curiousity to seek to learn about most anything outside the normal circle of their daily lives. It is ironic that a country born of immigrants seems to have lost the ability to see that there is much to be learned from those with different perspectives and origins. I have had an opportunity over the years to do a bit of travel to different parts of the world and it is truly an eye opener when you have an opportunity to meet and talk with someone whose life situation is so foreign to you that it is difficult to comprehend. Yet, even with the major differences you encounter, whether religious, ethnic or cultural, it is still possible to connect on a human level when a simple effort is made to see them as a brother in the human race.

I'm certainly not naive enough to believe you will ever convince everybody in the world to give each other a big group hug and everything will be okay. But I do believe if we as a country and as a people made an effort to learn and understand the core motivations and desires of people on a personal level when we have the opportunity, it would be a lot harder to simply dismiss someone who is "different" or "foreign" as irrelevant.

We as a country have done much over our history to tear apart the fabric that holds us together in order to isolate us from those we fear are different. Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we had tried a little harder to reach across our self-created divide.

Posted at January 24, 2007 8:24 AM in response to Still Clueless After Six Years

Good point, Howard.

What you outline shows, in stark contrast, where the 180 degree paradigm shift between this administration's view and the view of the rest of the world lies. While it was important from a public relations standpoint to put a "coalition" label on things they tried to do, the Bush administration really has no desire for this type of operation. And they sold it as "we will never ask for a permission slip to defend our country". There was a whole lot of whooping, hollering and affirmation from the media and the general public to that frame. It really played to that John Wayne image that they wanted to portray about this President and what he was trying to do. It appealed to both the testosterone driven crowd and also those who wanted to feel like big daddy was going to protect them. And it ultimately doomed John Kerry; who now appears, some might say, a bit prescient in his view of this topic. But alas, with Bush, it was all a smokescreen.

This administration, I believe, was never tooled with any of the necessities that are required for balancing and blending that line between imperialism and cooperation. It was never on their radar screen. They had no intention, and pretty much stated it outright, that they were going it alone and didn't give a damn about what anybody thought.

Lets just hope that we as a country can get back on track and fix this thing before they take it past the fail-safe point.

Posted at January 24, 2007 7:31 AM in response to Still Clueless After Six Years