Thursday, October 11, 2007

Absolutely MUST-READ Dyno-mite conversation between Naomi Klein and John Cusack on Huffington Post:

Part I

Part II

Money quote:

Cusack: Right, you have a quote in the book: "It's impossible to tell where the government ends and Lockheed begins." And the most unbelievable thing about it besides the carnage and the hubris and the insanity of it all is how blatantly they lie about their dedication to strict economic Darwinist rules. It's the mother of all con jobs -- free market rhetoric is being used as the cover story for crony capitalism... They are the biggest welfare freaks on the planet. On Democracy Now recently you recited Alan Greenspan's definition of crony capitalism to his face and asked him if the U.S. fits the bill:

"When a government's leaders or businesses routinely seek out private-sector individuals or businesses, and, in exchange for political support, bestow favors on them, the society is said to be in the grip of "crony capitalism". The favors generally take the form of monopoly access to certain markets, preferred access to sales of government assets, and special access to those in power."

He dodged the question, of course, but that seems to be a precise description of the Bush administration and its relationship to its favorite corporations. Not exactly the free-market propaganda they've been selling around the world, is it?

(And later in the conversation…)

We've had Poppa Wayne (Reagan) and Baby Wayne (Bush). Ronald Reagan was the old John Wayne...when kindness comes. But the key to the old Wayne is that he was once a killer; you can see it in his eyes... beneath the kindness lingers that hard truth: he was once a killer. He tames the natural world, but he does it with a veneer of benevolence.

Bush is the young John Wayne -- Ethan from The Searchers. Obsessive. Merciless. Ethan is a deranged person. He will fight the battle no one has the guts to fight...do whatever it takes...kill whoever violates the natural law of the frontier (jungle). This cowboy is the great righter of wrongs. He is wrath incarnate. Part of the mythology is that he's wrong a lot and pig headed and stubborn, it's part of the package. But he is a force of nature and you can argue about it all you want, but you must respect a force of nature.

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