Chris Floyd:Matters of great moment are suddenly in the air all around us: stark evidence of war crimes by the leaders of the West; the growing certainty of a humiliating geopolitical defeat inflicted on the world's greatest power; terrorism and torture as the mirrored emblems of the age, a deadly double helix giving rise to a hideous global reality.That's how they operate, these cheap hoods. Like Saddam, like Osama, they mouth great pieties, they strut and preen on the world's stage. But underneath they're still nothing but witless, murdering, money-grubbing goons.It's tempting in such times to inflate the image of those in the forefront of events, painting them, for good or ill, in the colors of legend: bold, outsize figures, Great Ones playing dice with nations, characters whose roiling depths -- tragic, evil or heroic -- transcend the puny limits of the common herd. Although on rare occasions this viewpoint might hold true, the squalid history of our ill-cobbled species provides endless examples to the contrary.
And they don't come any more squalid than the crew now steering the American boat straight into the shoals of disaster. For despite all the grandiose political rhetoric and world-historical perturbations emanating from the Bush Regime's imperial project, we should never lose sight of one simple fact: Deep down, these guys are nothing but cheap hoods, two-bit chiselers hustling for loot, thug-brained goons with no more grandeur about them than the meanest pack of Mafia knee-breakers. ...
[ As always, lots of good links.]
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