Absinthe & Cookies (a bit bitter, a bit sweet)

Five Minutes To Midnight

I haven't been doing much serious blogging lately. It gets to the point where you're saying the same things over and over again, and nothing changes. I've felt for awhile that this must be what it was like to live in the 1930s and to feel like you're screaming the danger from the rooftops and no one hears. How else can you explain history that seems intent on repeating itself over and over? When the party in opposition can't wait to take back a majority in November so they can start impeachment proceedings? Do they genuinely not see the danger? Or are they too enamored of power that they don't care about the danger their actions put us in? How else do you explain our elected officials who would shackle the ability of the NSA to listen in on those who would murder us, our families, our children? The war isn't coming -- it's here, right now. And before it's over many of us will have died at the hands of fanatical apocalyptic butchers who's warped and evil ideology demands they murder in the name of their god. The bell is tolling and time's about to run out.

If you want to read something that perfectly illustrates my mind set these days, please read this. It's one of those rare articles that I'm saying you really must read.

An excerpt:

Observing the events of today—the hesitation and uncertainty, the stubborn clinging to the fantasy that the enemy can be appeased if we just keep talking and find the right diplomatic solution—I now feel that, for the first time, I really understand the leaders of the 1930s. Their illusion that Hitler could be appeased has always seemed, in historical hindsight, to be such a willful evasion of the facts that I have never grasped how it was possible for those men to deceive themselves. But I can now see how they clung to their evasions because they could not imagine anything worse than a return to the mass slaughter of the First World War. They wanted to believe that something, anything could prevent a return to war. What they refused to imagine is that, in trying to avoid the horrors of the previous war, they were allowing Hitler to unleash the much greater horrors of a new war.

Today's leaders and commentators have less excuse. The "horror" they are afraid of repeating is the insurgency we're fighting in Iraq—a war whose cost in lives, dollars, and resolve is among the smallest America has ever had to pay. And it takes no great feat of imagination to project how much more horrible the coming conflict will be if we wait on events long enough for Iran to arm itself with nuclear technology. Among the horrific consequences is the specter of a new Holocaust, courtesy of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

So while you may not see as many blog posts from me, I'm still around and still as totally pessimistic as I've always been.

Posted by Ithildin at August 11, 2006 10:22 AM | PROCURE FINE OLD WORLD ABSINTHE