Insanity overload

I barely have time to try to keep up with the insanity going down right now, much less blog coherently about it. If you're looking for some explanation about what the Iran crap is about, read Billmon, who explains that we may have TWO world "leaders" playing Nixon's "madman" game--"pretending" to be crazy enough to use nukes in the hope of getting one's way. The problem is that there are no guarantees (only history guarantees that Nixon wasn't quite THAT crazy) that either Bush/Cheney or Ahmadinejad aren't REALLY crazy. (I don't believe that Iran is able to threaten the US with nukes, or will be any time soon. But Ahmadinejad might continue to play his role of convincing uninformed world--especially American--opinion that it is.) Billmon also suggests that the Cheney administration is now as desperate as a gambler on a losing streak, trying to recoup all his losses on one huge gamble. Billmon actually suggests several interesting possibilities--none of them good.

And if you want an entertaining, depressing look at how this country got in this mess, with one party ruining the country while the other cheers them on, read Gore Vidal's Imperial America : Reflections on the United States of Amnesia. It includes several of Vidal's essays from the '80's and '90's which I guess I wish I had read back then. Not that I could have done anything to change anything. I'm finding it very depressing that during my 4 1/2 years of activism and blogging, things have only gotten worse in just about every way. How much more depressing must it be for the likes of Vidal, Chomsky and Tom Tomorrow, who have been documenting the insanity for decades? (BTW, Vidal is much more entertaining reading than Chomsky if you are looking for material to help introduce people to our brand of misery.)