Faith-Based Initiative
Trade Center
Minute by minute the emergency metastasized
into black-hole disaster, collapsing into, unto itself,
its algebraic increments detonating exponentially.
The reactionary tabloids saw Satan’s face frozen
for a moment in the smoke, missing the big picture,
the triumph of ideas over disproportionate force:
an infinitesimal investment in offense precisely
applied to yield infinite collateral dividends.
The dominoes still fall through the economy,
the fallout deforms the very genome of democracy.
A terrible myth has arisen from the stricken city,
a symbol which will outlive anything we recognize.
Miscellany
An hypothesis: moral judgment ought always to be particular, about particular acts and actors. Bigotry is in essence moral generality -- group x is less good (brave, trustworthy, loyal, clean etc) than group y. But this brings us back to paradox. Can we say that bigots are less moral than others who do not so generalize? I suspect we can, but I wonder how we could test this empirically.
On the one hand I suspect that people who believe absurdities will commit atrocities, on the other I suspect that what people "believe" is to the exact degree it conflicts with their actions irrelevant. This what the man was supposedly trying get at, 'By your acts shall ye be judged.' It doesn't matter what a televangelist tycoon "believes." He's still separating poor fools from their meager money with bullshit.
It occurs to me that Obama is probably going to lose, for the reason he deserves to lose: because he did not go after the war-profiteering crime syndicate the GOP has become. He was elected to protect us from them, and he thinks he's supposed to "work with them."
The Lobbyist laments the screwing of the children in the divvying of public treasure. We are not eating our seed corn so much as distilling it into moonshine. Or ethanol perhaps.
