Hopeless with Hope
George: "I don't want hope. Hope is killing me. My dream is to become hopeless. When you're hopeless you don't care. And when you don't care, that indifference makes you attractive."
Jerry: "So, hopelessness is the key?"
George: "It's my only hope."
- Seinfeld, "The Fix-Up"
I think we have to have hope now that it's hopeless. We have a president whose approval rating is neck and neck with Nixon at the height of Watergate and insists on sending additional troops into a religious civil war even though everyone except William Kristol and the voices in Bush's head think it's a huge mistake. Even the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, thinks it's a mistake and will go so far as introduce a resolution saying just that. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!" Vizzini tells the man in black in the film "The Princess Bride" after he drinks from a cup possibly filed with poison. Vizzini then lectures, "The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" Vizzini laughs loudly and then falls dead over. Add this to the list of famous blunders: Never send more troops into a religious civil war in the Middle East.
And if that isn't enough to eradicate whatever hope you had left how about this example. Dan Tilli, age 81, wrote a letter to the editor of The Express-Times of Easton, Pennsylvania. Tilli wrote about Saddam Hussein's execution and remarked "I still believe they hanged the wrong man." That got him a visit from Secret Service agents concerned he was threatening President Bush. "I didn't say who -- I could've meant (Osama) bin Laden," Tilli said Friday. No matter, he still was questioned, his apartment searched and his picture taken by the agents. Last year, after writing another letter to the editor advocating a civil war to unseat Bush, Tilli got a visit from the FBI. Reminds me of another writer penning the most famous letter to the editor who said, "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." Knock-knock, Mr. Jefferson, FBI open your door please we have some questions for you.
Jefferson also had some pearls of wisdom like: "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good," and "He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices," and "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance," and here's one that might sound familiar today, "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power." Of course this is all from the Declaration of Independence but we all know that such declarations are overrated as means of political communication. I know Iraq will never be a Jeffersonian democracy but who would have thought it gets you a visit from the FBI here?
So I am hoping I lose all hope about what's going on in the world. It's my only hope.
Jerry: "So, hopelessness is the key?"
George: "It's my only hope."
- Seinfeld, "The Fix-Up"
I think we have to have hope now that it's hopeless. We have a president whose approval rating is neck and neck with Nixon at the height of Watergate and insists on sending additional troops into a religious civil war even though everyone except William Kristol and the voices in Bush's head think it's a huge mistake. Even the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, thinks it's a mistake and will go so far as introduce a resolution saying just that. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!" Vizzini tells the man in black in the film "The Princess Bride" after he drinks from a cup possibly filed with poison. Vizzini then lectures, "The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" Vizzini laughs loudly and then falls dead over. Add this to the list of famous blunders: Never send more troops into a religious civil war in the Middle East.
And if that isn't enough to eradicate whatever hope you had left how about this example. Dan Tilli, age 81, wrote a letter to the editor of The Express-Times of Easton, Pennsylvania. Tilli wrote about Saddam Hussein's execution and remarked "I still believe they hanged the wrong man." That got him a visit from Secret Service agents concerned he was threatening President Bush. "I didn't say who -- I could've meant (Osama) bin Laden," Tilli said Friday. No matter, he still was questioned, his apartment searched and his picture taken by the agents. Last year, after writing another letter to the editor advocating a civil war to unseat Bush, Tilli got a visit from the FBI. Reminds me of another writer penning the most famous letter to the editor who said, "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." Knock-knock, Mr. Jefferson, FBI open your door please we have some questions for you.
Jefferson also had some pearls of wisdom like: "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good," and "He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices," and "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance," and here's one that might sound familiar today, "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power." Of course this is all from the Declaration of Independence but we all know that such declarations are overrated as means of political communication. I know Iraq will never be a Jeffersonian democracy but who would have thought it gets you a visit from the FBI here?
So I am hoping I lose all hope about what's going on in the world. It's my only hope.
posted by Crankyboy at 11:28 AM
1 Comments:
The only comfort I can accept is that the universe and everything in it will eventually die. Everything we do or say or are or will be is ultimately meaningless and will be forgotten even before there is no one left to remember.
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