Reading notes

The letters that Paul Krugman receives these days have to be picked up with tongs, and his employer pays someone to delete the death threats from his email inbox.

One of the clues to me that we’re dealing with a dangerous cancer here in U.S. leadership is its — and its proponents’ — constant willingness to threaten, advocate, and use violence.

Krugman employs Kissinger’s idea of “revolutionary power” as what’s taken over our country, a chief characteristic of which is its rejection of the system it intends to displace, a chief symptom of which is its lack of compunction to play by any existing rules. Kissinger’s thinking continues —

Nobody can quite bring themselves to believe that the revolutionary power really means to do what it claims. “Lulled by a period of stability which had seemed permanent,” he wrote, “they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertion of the revolutionary power that it means to smash the existing framework.”

Good interview.

Editorial aside:

What Krugman calls “revolutionary power” I see as the tip of the iceberg of a spiritual force Walter Wink calls a “domination system.” Its manifestation in our thinking is known as the Myth of Redemptive Violence, the notion that violence “saves,” and to hell with what Jesus says. As such, in my assessment, this situation can’t be fought purely on the human level; it is largely a matter of spiritual warfare.

The present situation’s overwhelming irony is that many so-called Christians have effectively signed on to further the works of darkness. The darkness they should be working unto death to undo — ultimately possible only with God’s help — they are instead promoting (often with violence and extreme prejudice) as a “biblical worldview” (to use Tom DeLay’s words).

The overall European [heat wave] death toll is probably the equivalent to five or more World Trade Centers: at least 20,000 victims and probably more. Official estimates are at least 11,400 in France; more than 4000 in Italy; 1400 in the Netherlands; 1300 in Portugal; and some 900 in the United Kingdom. The Spanish figure of only 100 is hardly credible and should be the stuff of scandal.

President Bill Clinton was impeached by a Republican-controlled Congress for lying about sex. President George W. Bush and aides lied the United States into a stupid, unnecessary colonial war that has so far killed more than 305 Americans and seriously wounded more than 1,400. It has also cost many thousands of Iraqi dead, and $1 billion US weekly.

Lying about sex is an impeachable offence; lying the nation into war apparently is not. …

Unfortunately, many Americans still do not understand how gravely the Bush White House has damaged and sullied their nation’s once noble reputation.

Amazing —

Replacing the old mantra that there is no way for Bush to lose, Republicans studying the electoral map wonder whether there is any way they can win.

Very interesting and on the mark.

Dean has given these people [who felt powerless, like no one speaks for us] a sense of community that scarcely exists anymore in American life.

Yes.

The Justice Department is investigating whether Bush administration officials broke the law by revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative whose husband disparaged claims by the White House that Iraq was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.