JAWS

Tristero tells Nicholas Lehman that he needs to stop assuming that Bush has ideas that are worth discussing.

Wha?? There’s nothing impressive about what Bush said at all, except for the sheer stupidity of framing an argument so badly. The Middle East will never be a place that is either progressive and peaceful or violent and terrifying. The world doesn’t work that way. There is never peace or violence; they must inevitably coexist. To frame the Middle East situation as Bush does is, at best, an invitation to an endless, fruitless, insane crusade (yes, that word) to eliminate evil. It can never be accomplished because evil, as Bush uses the term, is a worthless concept. Bush’s reasoning is the reasoning of a moral idiot and you are an enabler of his idiocy by declaring it “impressive”, despite the fact that you refute his point immediately afterwards.

You do this a lot, Nick. You seem to admire Bush’s words and merely regret that his words don’t apply very well to the situation. You are making a terrible mistake. Bush’s premises are profoundly flawed.

I agree wholeheartedly. This is true of a lot of good writers who are trying to sort out just what in the hell is going on with this administration. They are rational people so they begin with the idea that Junior and the Retreads are pursuing some sort of logical ends. In order to try and organize what they see, I think they end up having to attach meaning to words and actions that simply aren’t there in order to keep themselves from going crazy. I know that it is one of the constant pitfalls in my own thinking.

I have have to remind myself that they are like sharks, a predatory eating machine. They have a list of goals, many unassociated and many contradictory, but they just keep moving — relentlessly biting off one item at a time without regard to the consequences. Logic has nothing to do with it.