This is pretty weird.  I spend a lot of my time reading progressive blogs and I check Google news several times a day, yet I didn't hear about the formation of a group called One Nation until I read about it in my local dead tree Sunday afternoon.

That article was a reprint of an article that had appeared in the Washington Post last Friday.  Now, Fridays are  notorious as news dump day, when things hit the papers that folks hope will not be noticed.  Sort of like the old joke "and your cat died".

Added to this the fact that the Wash Post is one of the most active sources of disinformation/corporate propaganda on the planet, and I suspect that this was an attempt by them to set the tone for the discussion of this organization.  That "tone" being that this is a group like the bizarre, reactionary Tea Baggers.

The lack of response by progressive bloggers is a bit puzzling, but I suppose they all have better things to do in the summertime on a Friday.  Sadly, most of these guys are beyond bitter about the actions taken by the Obama administration so far.  Expectations for the possibility of change are quite low.

What they forget is that they don't represent ordinary folks.  Ordinary folks aren't quite so hooked into all the battles and maneuverings in Washington that progressives follow like the plot of some suspense novel.  Sure, ordinary folks are disappointed, but they still believe in the process.

The timing of this call for change seems good to me.  Organizing a march on Washington in October seems like a good idea to me.  The call for unity among the majority who voted this man into office seems good to me.  I want more, but this is a good start.

(later)
Still remarkable net silence about this.  I found a piece by George Gresham on the Majority Agenda(?) website.

Looking for a longish read on a wet afternoon?

Here's an evaluation of the current state of the union by Eric Alterman.  Hits it just about right, I think.

Endless War.

There's always a precedent.  I've just rediscovered the Hundred Years' War.  It was basically the French versus the English (although back in those days the English elite were French).  They "engaged in hostilities" for a period of more than 100 years, off and on.

They did this while the Black Plague was raging.  It was a war over territory, control of resources, and partly a pissing match.  It was a war between the elite classes, fought by the peasants.  It wasn't the peasants' fight- the peasants had nothing in particular to gain or lose by who they worked for.

We still fight their wars, only the elite aren't titled "kings" and "dukes" anymore.  The wars are still about territory, control of resources, and who has the bigger dick.

plus ça change...

Zombie economics is easy to understand.  Someone profits from this.

The American Dream isn't dead.  It's very much in practice today.  But what used to be implied by the American Dream- that anyone can achieve it- has been stripped down to something simpler.

We all know that not "everyone" can achieve it.  Only the select few who are smart enough, resourceful enough, tough enough to deserve it.  And these select few have no obligation whatsoever to anyone else.

But the myth is kept alive, because, well, if yins stopped working so hard, the select few would have a bit more trouble staying on top.

I had a dream...

Like I'm watching a movie, there are scenes from a girl's life.  In one of them, there are kids on a playground in winter.  It is dark.  The kids stand around in bunches, talking together, until some break off and run around.  Eventually a teacher summons them back to class.  They form up a double file line, and the rear most pair of girls withdraw cigarettes from string purses and somehow light up and have a few drags during the march back to school.

The incident is related in a book- a slim, beige hardbound book that covers a year in the life of its subject.  There is a woman with a stack of these books in her home telling the stories behind them.  Her husband is here with her- she is young middle aged.  She explains how the books worked.  "It really is a club," she says at one point.  She and her friend were both members.  She divides the stack of volumes according to the towns she lived in- at one point explaining that she moved away for a while, but then moved back.  She seems to want to sort the books by the town rather than follow the order of years, so the stack is not in order from newest to oldest.  She opens a volume.

The paper is odd, like the old encyclopedias, sort of yellowish, but smooth.  On each page is a series of dated paragraphs, either describing general events in history or specific instances in the woman's life.  This column takes up the central third of the page- there's plenty of room in the margins for hand-written notes.  A typical entry was like- "August 14, 1969.  Begin two weeks of camp at Nabobiskybobie.  Mom cried."

So it's like a diary, but one with permanence, meant to be shared with others in the club. 

Concerning this 1984-style renaming of torture, it's something that we all know happened.  It happened as we watched.  Should there be more outrage about this?

I think we're pretty outraged as it is.  But our outrage has no outlet.

We have a couple of options here.  Number one: ignore it.  This is a very popular option.

Number two: accept the change.  This is also a popular option.  We convince ourselves that what the world and we ourselves used to call torture is no longer torture.  Or is OK as long as the "good guys" are doing it.  Just go along with our leaders, they know what they're doing.

Number three: express outrage.  This certainly works for some people- it can be a source of strength.  Still, it's hard to express this feeling when there are so many outrageous things going on.

Number four:  refuse to accept the change.  Makes it difficult to maintain a positive view of the country when you face the fact that our leaders are war criminals.  There is a whole chain of logical conclusions that follow from this.  See Chomsky, etc.