Reading notes

In one concentrated column Bob Herbert brilliantly captures the dawning realization on ~all of us what some of us have been announcing for years:

Maybe, just maybe, the public is beginning to see through the toxic fog of fantasy, propaganda and deliberate misrepresentation that has been such a hallmark of the George W. Bush administration, which is in danger of being judged by history as one of the worst of all time. …

The body count of Americans killed in Iraq has now passed 1,900, with many more deaths to come. But there’s still no strategy, no plan. The White House hasn’t the slightest clue about what to do. So the dying will continue. …

Even loyal Republicans are beginning to bail out on Mr. Bush’s fiendish willingness to shove the monumental costs of the federal government’s operations — including his war, his tax cuts and his promised reconstruction of the Gulf Coast — onto the unsuspecting backs of generations still to come. …

This is what happens when voters choose a president because he seems like a nice guy, like someone who’d be fun at a barbecue or a ballgame. You’d never use that criterion when choosing a surgeon, or a pilot to fly your family across the country. …

The next time around, voters need to keep in mind that beyond the incessant yammering about left and right, big government and small, Democrats and Republicans, is a more immediate issue, and that’s competence.

No shit. At some point I’ve got to find a more encompassing way to look at this [than I’ve got now]. Because right now I’m stuck at “Nothing’s visible now that wasn’t visible a year ago or even five years ago. What blocked you all from seeing then — when we had the chance in front of us to correct the problem — what you’re now seeing clearly?”

On the one hand, I’m full of expletives. OTOH, I’m glad for seeing, whenever it comes, to whomever it comes. Because it’s in that Aha! moment of seeing the problem that positive change becomes possible.

Meanwhile what I’ve learned about myself is my so-called “forgiving heart” is stone beneath the surface: I have not the slightest idea how I’m going to forgive those who enabled this mess. But I’m going to spend the rest of my life working on it, if that’s how long it takes. Unforgiveness will kill ya. (Where “ya” is plural — community — as well as singular.)

Wow, Ezekiel’s words surrounding his famous “heart of stone, heart of flesh” passage sound to me as applicable to the U.S. today as to ancient Israel when he delivered them. The accusations still fit; does the message of hope still apply?

[GOD speaking thru Ezekiel]: I’m not doing this for you, Israel. I’m doing it for me, to save my character, my holy name, which you’ve blackened in every country where you’ve gone. …

I’ll pour pure water over you and scrub you clean. I’ll give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you. I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed. …

On the day I scrub you clean from all your filthy living, I’ll also make your cities livable. The ruins will be rebuilt. The neglected land will be worked again, no longer overgrown with weeds and thistles, worthless in the eyes of passersby. People will exclaim, “Why, this weed patch has been turned into a Garden of Eden! And the ruined cities, smashed into oblivion, are now thriving!”