It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of
a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into
privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing
algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the
planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times. "I am confident that Saddam Hussein had a weapons-of-mass-destruction program"-- George W. Bush, July 9, 2003 So says the Resident today, adding one very crucial word: "program." I can have an excercise program and still be a lard ball. I can have a stop-smoking program and still be smoking away. I can plot out a program by which I will leave my wife, become a novelist and move to Maui, but never carry through. Let's be clear about what this means. It means that George W. Bush is no longer confident that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. This is what Bush claimed to have "bulletproof evidence" of -- not a program, not a plot, not a plan -- ACTUAL WEAPONS. Today, George W. Bush parsed more transparently than Bill Clinton ever did, and about much more important things. Today, George W. Bush admitted that he doesn't believe his own hype. ![]() ![]() ![]() |