A bit over a month ago, I ran across Renana Brooks' article, A Nation of Victims in The Nation and posted an entry about it to Plundered Democracy.
Today, it looks like the article is making a bit of splash in other weblogs, so I thought I'd point up those links, it being Pride Day and my mom's birthday and all, but mostly because I thought and still think that Brooks' article is one of the best distillations of what's wrong with Bush as a leader, and how to short-circuit it in the coming months.
From Maria Benet's alembic:
I haven’t been able to present my case about the vicious presence of fear amidst us in any convincing way yet. Part of my problem has been that I could not put my finger on what this fear is, where it comes from, and how it works exactly. Then, the other night, a friend of ours printed out an article for me from The Nation. Bingo! The lights went, and I could see that the reason I could not make my case was, in fact, reason itself.
and from Shelley Powers' Burningbird:
How do you fight learned helplessness? I've talked about this here also; you fight learned helplessness with anger. Not everyone will agree with me, but if you can anger the American voters enough, I have a feeling they'll start seeing the reality, the truth behind today's patriotism. I hope. I wish.
As I said in Plundered, "All you challengers out there, you need to be reminding Americans that their strength lies not in what they bomb, but in what they build. That their hope lies not in vengeance, but in justice. And that their future is not in war, but in peace."
