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May 23, 2006
War on Manners
The Wall Street Journal has responded to a college student's candid criticism of Journal-supported policy by declaring a strong preference for actual failure over any acknowledgement that might be perceived as failure. In their image-dominated world, any whiff of even the possibility of failure is, well, bad manners. Instead, the Journal stands four-square behind sycophantish applause and back slapping. They are a "heckuva job" outfit -- at least when it comes to jingoism in support of a John Wayne kind of image. (One seriously doubts, for example, that the same yawning gap between image and substance would be tolerated in their company or in their investments.)
After scolding the young woman -- or more accurately her family - for ill manners, the editors go on to equate calls for changing our current disastrous path with 'precipitous surrender" in the war on terror. In doing so, the Journal casts it's values with those who prefer image to substance.
For against the yardstick of actual substance -- actual performance -- how else can we describe the current state of affairs with anything other than the word 'failure'? Were the nation a corporation, it would be bankrupt (far more debts than assets -- literally), have virtually no market share (see polls both inside and beyond the US), suffer from spent and aging infrastructure (see state of US military and lack of preparedness for natural or human disasters), and entirely bereft of core competencies -- or, better put, it's executive ranks are the very picture of core incompetencies.
But, hey, the editors at the Wall St. Journal are still promoting the 'buy' side. Or, would it be more accurate to say they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the 'sell' side's arguments and wisdom. It's all hat, no cattle at the Journal. A war on manners instead of a war on incompetence and bankruptcy.
Their screed appears as an editorial. But, it's actually an advertisement for the Journal's disloyal, anti-American attack on democracy. More than five years of staged Bush speeches in front of folks who either work in the military or sign loyalty oaths, of rules against showing the coffins coming home, of Gestapo-like tactics to tamper with voting, of the utter incompetence that always flows from the absence of open and real problem-solving, have left the Journal editors bereft of ideas or suggestions.
No wonder they use what little imagination they have to rage against manners instead of acknowledging responsibility for the disaster their own Constitution-hating, preemptive war-starting, and drown-the-government-in-a-bathtub fantasizing has fostered. The Journal applauds Rovian character assassination of folks who actually risked their own lives for their country -- but gets sniffy about a young woman's respectful disagreement with a man whose personal war record stands out as an isolated exception among the cabal of draft-and-duty dodging men who had 'something better to do' when their country called.
A friend has a wonderful expression: gradual suddenness. It applies to the precipitous defeat we experience every day under the atrocious, morally bankrupt and incompetent officials whose manners are so loved by the editors of the Wall St. Journal.
Gradual suddenness. That is what the 'larger electorate' is now experiencing. The gradual suddenness of precipitous failure and defeat.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the bravest of them all? In the mahogany, tax-cut lined executive suites at the Wall St. Journal, the mirrors continue to lie on command. And, sadly, the editors themselves remain blind to the ugliness in their souls and, consequently, bereft of any chance to move beyond their adolescence to full adult maturity -- the kind that demands acknowledgement of error in one's self and sincere, heart felt apology and repentence for the harm done to others, to the nation, and to the planet.
