Ben Lynfield, Jerusalem based reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and the Scotsman, said on The Connection this morning that the decision to "expel" Yasser Arafat from the West Bank has been described by at least two members of the Security Cabinet to "liquidate" him. I found myself experiencing an extremely odd sensation while listening to this discussion, which also included former ambassador Dennis Ross. Supposedly rational people were sitting around calmly discussing the decision of one state to assassinate the head of another state. It is a measure of the degraded state of the discourse on the Middle East that such a discussion was not disrupted by howling outrage. But those of my fellow citizens who called in seemed entirely capable of discussing the matter calmly. What if a bunch of my townsmen were sitting around at the local cafe discussing whether or not to murder one of our neighbors. He's a drunk, or a liar, or doesn't control his dog--let's get rid of the son of a bitch. Well, none of us know Arafat, nor any Palestinians. It doesn't concern us except in some abstract way. This attitude goes beyond mere criminality into a kind of insanity that blinds us, not only to the suffering of others, but to our own best interests. Rationality is broken.
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
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