Wild thing and the mild things

(New Yorker illustration)

This week's New Yorker features a Talk of the Town article about Chip Taylor, the renowned songwriter of Wild Thing.

Far more chilling is Sy Hersh's report on the clandestine invasion of Iran by the CIA and by secret Pentagon forces. The scariest part of the report is that Congressional Democrats funded the invasion, and now say they were misled about Bush's intention to make an actual secret military invasion. Democratic congress members couldn't imagine that George Bush might lie to them? What kind of idiots are we sending to Washington.

Sorry, I forgot, they're politicians.

Read it and tell me again how wrong Ralph Nader is.

What we can get used to

It's depressing and scary to consider what humans can come to know as "normal" and "right."

I watched the film Munich this weekend, and I'm just finishing up Ishmael Beah's amazing and frightening book, A Long Way Gone, about being a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, and then I read Sy Hersh's latest New Yorker report on Abu Ghraib. It makes one fear for the future in a world where individuals can so easily discard standards of morality, ethics, law, family and community, and live in a nightmare of perverse and violent "righteousness".

I feel lucky to live where I do, and how I do. I know there are people who live on my street who live in fear and desperation, and whose idea of a civil society is far different than my own. I know there are people who despise what our country stands for (and I don't mean that they hate freedom, I mean they hate wasteful, boastful, arrogant bullies). I know there are religious zealots who feel they are living and acting inside a higher order. I know this and it threatens to paralyze me, when it should be motivation to do more to make sure that our country and community are on the right path.