Posted by Declan on December 1, 2005, at 1:38:27
Lewis Lapham wrote in Harpers
'On further acquaintance with the modus operandi of the Bush Administration, I've come to think that the attributions of a competant criminal intelligence misses the point. They give credit where no credit is due, and they fail to account for both the increasingly evident childishness of American culture and the corrollary attitudes of entitlement that over the last thirty years have infected ever larger sectors of the country's equestrian class. President Bush and his friends bear comparison not to Jesse James or Commodore Vanderbilt but to a clique of spoiled trust-fund kids. Certain of their superiority by virtue of their wealth (whether derived from corporate salary, family inheritance, or a sweetheart real estate investment), they fit the profile of wised-up teenagers who don't want to hear it from anybody telling them what to do--which shoes to wear, how to behave in a dance club, when to speak to a caddie or the French ambasador, why it might not be a good idea to wreck the Social Security system, redirect the flow of the Missouri River, or invade Iraq. Smug in their cynicism, proud of their selfisness, pre-Copernican in the sense that they know it is the sun that revolves around them, not they who revolve around the sun, fortune's children interpret corrections as insult, amendments as impetinance--old news, uncool.
The attitude shows plainly in nearly every expression that wanders across the President's schoolboy face--the sly smirk, the cute smile, the petulant frown.'Apologies in advance to those offended, especially Jake and Racer.
Declan
poster:Declan
thread:584041
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20051121/msgs/584041.html