"Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against
the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better,
but leave it either as it was, or sometimes perceptibly worse
than what it was, before the crusade began. By thinking
primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions,
to create occasions for evil to manifest itself."
-- Aldous Huxley
"The only war that matters is the war against the imagination.
All others are subsumed by it."
-- Diane DiPrima, "Rant", from Pieces of a Song.
"It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there"
-- William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"
It seems like levee is indeed on its way towards collapse. The following sounds almost metaphorical:
Light unto nations, as they say!
Thanks for the comment, Ed, and an apt play on words over at your place with “blight”.
I’m still ruminating on your thoughtful comment about the neo-neo split (Big Oil Neolibs vs the zionist Neocons), with their somewhat at odds strategies of strong central government to enable control on the one hand (Big Oil) and chaos and fragmentation/ divide and conquer on the other (neocons). I wonder to what extent those vaunted differences hold — I know this split was most visible during the ISG group and report, and people like James Petras make a similar compelling distinction (also see here) between two competing power blocs. I’m just not sure that their ostensible differences in this intra-elite confrontation don’t outweigh their mutual interests or that they will coalesce. Will have to read more into this, I think.
Petras’s article sets out this dilemma and the article warranted re-visiting for me: