32 bar rises 29.72 4mph WNW windchill 32
First Quarter Moon of Winds
On the Daily Show last night Jon Stewart asked Bush’s press secretary du jour, “Why doesn’t the press ask questions about Iraq anymore? Why don’t we read about it?” Her answer suggested that things have gotten a lot better since the surge and that was why the war had fallen from the news.
I don’t think so.
There is a legitimate question that asks why the Greatest Protest generation hasn’t been more vocal during this war. A part of the answer, of course, lies in our lives. Many of us have worries about saving money for retirement, putting the kids through college and caring for ailing parents. War doesn’t seem high on the list.
An absence of a draft makes this war effort different, too. Only volunteers in Iraq, so they tend to be folks our educated generation either does not know or chooses not to know. Complacency and political drift has a place in the void, too. We no longer march to different drummers, but to elevator music.
The steady drumbeat of mendacity, torture and rhetorical overreach engaged by the Bush administration explains most of it, I think. In the sixties we could tell that the administrations heard us. They didn’t always react the way we wanted, but, like God, they always answered in some way, even if it was to display wrath. The Bush administration seems to be agnostic when it comes to the will of the people. Yes, they seem to say, there may be an electorate out there, then again there may not. In any case, we draw wisdom from our ideology, not from the average American.
Continuously unanswered prayer can extinguish faith from all but the most Job-like of spirits. When it becomes evident that no one is listening, we get up off our knees and head to the ballot box, as millions have done this year.
