Thought for the Day

[bcholmes]

As difficult as it may be, when assessing Cheney's actions [...], it's important to resist the temptation to blame it on Cheney's individual "evilness." While immensely fun, explaining Cheney's behavior as "evil" is too simple. More to the point, it reduces complex social phenomena to fairy-tale morality narratives. In the terrorism context for instance, words like "evil" are often lazy shortcuts that people use to avoid grappling with the complexities and structural causes of the problem.

Similarly, dismissing Cheney as "evil" is too easy. Cheney is not some one-time moral aberration, he is the product of deeper, more structural flaws in the American political system. For that reason, we can expect future Cheneys if these fundamental flaws aren't recognized and addressed.

— publius, "Cheney: Beyond Good and Evil"

Comments

[lovecraftienne.livejournal.com]

What I've said about Hitler for years. It's too *easy* to say he was a monster; it removes our responsibility to watch that no *more* of our fellow human beings fall so far from the standards we hope they'll keep.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Future Cheneys? Um, he was around through Ford. Actually, his autocratic style derives directly from the Nixon camp.

We've got these bozos in charge precisely because we never learned from the last crop. I have serious doubts we'll learn this time. After all, if Nixon wasn't lesson enough, nothing Bush does will work.