Saturday, January 28, 2006

Outrage Fatigue

Well, there were lots of things I wanted to b!t*# about today, but to be quite honest I'm rather worn out and burned out. This administration has screwed up so profoundly and on so many fronts that it's basically impossible to even point them all out much less consider them all in detail...especially for those of us with day jobs.

If it's a strategy, it's actually a good one--do so many things wrong that people can't focus on any single one of them. I'm told that's basically why zebras have stripes--predators attack more successfully when they focus on one single prey animal and stick to it. When they shift attention from one target to another they are less successful. Zebras' stripes make it harder to focus in that way. The herd becomes more like an undifferentiated blur.

Um, strained zoological analogies to the side, there's just too much incompetence and corruption in this administration to make it possible to keep track of it anymore. It's almost as if every week brings another astounding story. Even ignoring the original crimes and incompetence, the cover-ups alone are hard to keep track of--from refusal to turn over information about the composition of Cheney's energy task force to opposing formation of the 9/11 commission to opposing inquiries into Iraq intelligence...Katrina info, domestic spying info, Abramoff info... They absolutely cannot continue to get away with this, can they?

Gosh, who'd have thought that allowing a power-hungry coterie of villains fronted by an incompetent rich boy to install themselves in power by stealing an election could have turned out badly?

2 Comments:

Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence."---N. Bonaparte

A much more attractive riff, O My More Raptorish Than Philosophical Lately Host.

Bill Clinton won on "we can do better." Dick Morris holds that an affirmative case will always rise above the spitballs-from-the-gallery one. I'm listening. You never know...

10:38 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Well, Tom, I know you're strongly committed to defending these guys, but at this point in things, I just think that comments like that amount to encouraging us to give up on trying to do our duty as citizens.

I think American is important. That's why I'm mad. One of the things I find so disheartening is that folks like you AREN'T mad.

It makes me wonder what your conception of America is really like.

11:02 AM  

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