A Word For Sarah Palin: No
The short answer is that the sane few in the MSM who actually deserve notice are too often overlooked or ignored; so why waste a line of ink on the patent and obvious fakes and sideshow freaks such as Palin?
Case in point on the former: Krugman has been honestly, expertly, and constructively attempting to teach the Obama administration both the errors of its ways and the opportunities at its feet for a year now, and, as he implies today, he has been largely answered with studied ignorance and recurrent error.
Krugman, Bob Herbert, Glenn Greenwald, and other prominent figures in the op-sphere are losing their patience, and so am I. The time of “at-least-he’s-not-Bush” is coming to an end, and voters appear to be reaching that conclusion as well.
For ten months now we have cut slack, and our line’s reach has come to its end. Our tragically complacent wars have both failed; our military is near the breaking point; our economy and our middle class have been handed on a silver platter to the Wall St. country club, the bones of both piling up beneath the table of excess; the transparency in government that we were promised is now a smoky translucence; there is no action on the environment, none on energy policy; America’s standing amid the community of nations remains just above abysmal, boosted only by the brave efforts of the Democrats’ runner-up from last year; and our national infrastructure is collapsing nearly as fast as our morale.
And all we can talk about is Sarah’s new book?
If this is what we choose to become, as both people and a nation, then we deserve every darkness of misery and failure into which our hapless obsession with appearances will inevitably lead us.
And so, as I often do, I wind up addressing the individual reader: to choose the path of sanity is not, in this culture and time, a popular, glamorous, or easy commitment. Sanity is now a lonely, seemingly desolate path, with little company, no lecture circuit or advertising revenue, and not a book tour or a talk show in sight. But if, like me, you have a child; a vision for the future of our human species; or simply a desire to look into your mirror and appreciate the face that gazes back at you, then you know what your choice must be. You know what to do.
The hottest trends and biggest faces on our televisions, newspapers, and websites have but an ephemeral influence and a passing, often bitter fame. Oprah herself has gotten tired of it and will quit in two years; Lou Dobbs cashes in his hush-money from CNN ($12M, I think it was) and retreats. Meanwhile, the poor pile up ever higher in the shadows cast by the gated mansions of Wall St. and the Talking Stars; and the middle classes feel the floor of the American Fantasy drop beneath them. To the fuel of confusion is added the spark of misery, and the first flames of revolution quietly, invisibly, form.
It appears inevitable, given the course we are now upon. That will play out as it will, something for historians and future pundits to study and document. Our choice, however, remains: sanity. Saying no to the shrill electronic voices that pretend to speak for us; no to the corporate monster who eats our bowels while we suck at its dark tits; no to the government that rewards arrogance and punishes work.
So I have nothing to say to Sarah except, “No.” I have nothing to say to Lou Dobbs or Oprah except “No.” And I have little else to tell Larry Summers, Congress, and even the President himself, except “No.” After all, as the old comedic expression goes, no is just yes but to a different question. The choice of sanity is to say no to the image-makers and cultural sellouts, because there is so much else besides to affirm, and so deeply. I affirm my daughter’s right to live in a world relatively at peace and led by those who understand that they are not the ones who make change happen; where she might hold some hope of living out a decent human life on a planet that remains safe for human habitation. I’d like her to know that art is still valued in her world; that education is about polishing the treasure of life rather than burying it under a mountain of fetid detritus. I’d like her to see that journalists, artists, and yes, even politicians can still work for truth rather than wealth; for Nature over fame. I’d like her to feel comfort in following and practicing the only principle that can overcome the vapid spiritualism and shrill lust of wealth and conquest that have been so deeply implanted within our brains like a perfectly malignant and recurring computer virus — a principle that can lead us onto a fresh evolutionary path, that can return each of us who choose it to sanity: Honor Life.
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Update: Dean Baker today delivers a strong piece that seconds Krugman’s observations on the deficit. Once again, the effort to reduce the deficit at the expense of workers and families — the very trap that Obama is walking into — represents a solution without a problem. As Baker points out:
The United States had the strongest period of growth in its history in the three decades following World War II. This undeniable fact should put to rest the idea that our debt levels will threaten the prosperity of future generations. We hand our children a whole economy and society. If we give them a bad education, a decayed infrastructure, a ruined environment, then we will be jeopardizing our children’s economic well-being. However, the debt levels we are currently projecting aren’t even large enough to make it to the list of serious problems.
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