[« Hidden costs?] [Hobson's Choice? »]
01/18/2006: Thought for the Day:
[I]t's clear that there's a homoerotic ardor for Bush by neonconservatives that bypasses reason and reduces them to hero-worshipping mush. By any rational measure and traditional conservative standard, Bush has been a disaster: exploding the budget, burdening future generations with back-breaking debt, packing the government with imcompetent cronies (so much for meritocracy), committing the nation to an aggressive, fiction-based war in Iraq that it can't win and will weaken the country in the region, alienating traditional allies (to the point where Spain tells to bug off re its air transport sales to Venezuela), and inflating the powers of an imperial presidency to an arrogant degree that would have horrified the original editors of National Review. The Bush mystique is a cult of manhood based upon the fantasy belief that America still stands tall, proud, brave, and unopposed in the world, basking in God's love and the Western sun. Even Clint Eastwood, whose movies have gotten progressively darker, doesn't buy that masculinist myth anymore. Only warmongering pundits and bloggers do. And Peggy Noonan, still searching for the perfect Dad.
--James Wolcott
Len on 01.18.06 @ 06:49 AM CST
