Antiquitopia

From Newsweek : Erasing Bush With a call for 'relentless' diplomacy, Hillary further obliterates W's legacy. Michael Hirsh Newsweek Web Exclusive After Inauguration Day, departed presidents usually become footnotes pretty quickly. What we are witnessing now is far more dramatic. It's closer to a liquidation, or a cauterization. George W. Bush is being turned into an unperson, like a character out of Orwell. It's been only two days, and there is scarcely a trace of not only his personal presence, but of his policies. Or at least that is the impression Barack Obama would like to convey. The process of erasing the last eight years from American history began with President Obama's inaugural address on Tuesday. Between condemning torture and expressing a willingness to talk with enemies, the new president began eliminating Bush even as the former president sat listening behind him. Then, on his first work day, Obama signed executive orders reversing the Bush adminis...

Buried deep within new legislation before Congress is a provision for Bush and his cronies to exculpate themselves of any possible wrongdoing regarding detainees. In short, Bush is trying to pardon himself for war crimes (i.e., violating the Geneva Convention's prohibition of torture, which has now juridically--and correctly I think--been interpreted to apply to alleged terrorist detainees). If charges of war crimes are brought to Bush and his administration, it carries a felony charge with punishments ranging from imprisonment to death.

One of the things I have been teaching my students this semester is to pay very close attention to the details of the text, how the details of a text can question, invert, and toy with broader themes. I especially force them to pay attention to repetitions and what is added and taken out, for example when Achilleus tells his mother Thetis about his interactions with Agamemnon? It appears highly repetitive, but when you look closely, he alters certain words to give different nuances, and he adds a little and omits a lot. We did the same with Persephone's personal account of her abduction by Hades and the narrative point of view of the same event. Both cases are children recounting events to their mothers, and manipulating their speech for different ends. In some ways, they may be playing a part, a role, in order to tell the other person what they want to hear or in order to get what one wants. Both Achilleus and Persephone did this. What's this have to do with politics? (...

Although when I usually speak of politics, it is with a connection to religious issues, but here are some non-religiously-related data that reflects American disgruntlement with our leaders. Lately Congress, or at the very least Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and the President seem to have been more openly criticizing each other. Pelosi has called Bush "a total failure" while Bush has noted that the current legislative session is the longest in 20 years that Congress has gone without passing a single bill. Last Month, Reid criticized Republicans who sided with Bush on Medicare, saying, "Who would be afraid of him? He's got a 29 percent approval rating!" Now, Bush has a 28% approval rating. At this point in our nation's history, the U.S. and, in fact, the world, is ready for a new President of the U.S. But Congress is not doing much better. If you thought a 28% approval rating is bad enough, the Congressional approval rating is a mere 18% (its all time low...