Can We Dare Believe It?
OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan
The critical analysis of George W Bush's recent inaugural speech by Peggy Noonan, a woman who by all accounts has been a long and steadfast advocate of Bush, is cause for cautious, but nonetheless breathless optimism. When I read her words, I find myself experiencing the minute beginnings of an emotion almost never felt in connection with neoconservatives - hope. I find myself daring to believe that maybe somewhere in the depths of her soul, there is the faint stirring of the possibility that maybe - just maybe - Bush and his government have been mistaken about Iraq and the involuntary export of democracy at gunpoint...and that by extension, this crack in her belief could somehow be widened such that she might eventually be willing to concede the idea that again, maybe - just maybe - Bush is also wrong about a whole lot of other things.
For so long those of us who have been greatly disturbed by Bush's reign of horror and blood have had to try and accept the idea that his advocates were completely immune to reason or the voice of conscience. That for them, perception was entirely subjective and voluntary...that dissenting or contradictory information would simply be met with oblivion, as though it did not exist. Peggy represents the possibility that maybe - just maybe - that is not always the case. Maybe with some of them, we *can* get through.
Maybe, some can realise that underneath all the whitewash, propaganda, and spin, the invasion of Iraq has been wrong...hideously and murderously so.
Maybe, some can realise that Iran would be far worse.
Maybe, some can realise that after Iraq, after Iran, Bush will eventually bring his unending hunger for blood and repression back home, resulting in the confiscation of first remaining freedom, and then lives.
And maybe - just maybe - those who are able to see George W Bush for who and what he truly is will somehow be able to start to drive back his isolation, seperation, and fear...before it is too late.
Thank God for you, Peggy...and I do not invoke Bush's God here either. I invoke here the God of those of us who know that love and the creative impulse - the impulse to create life, rather than to destroy it, as was done in Fallujah and elsewhere - are the primal driving forces of our infinite Universe, and that that Universe is unspeakably greater, more varied, and more filled with possibility than the majority of Christians ever can or likely will know. Know, however, that in questioning Bush's speech, you have done far more than you may realise. You have potentially lit a small, flickering light in the midst of a sea of darkness so great that many have questioned whether they would ever see its end. Thank you.
The critical analysis of George W Bush's recent inaugural speech by Peggy Noonan, a woman who by all accounts has been a long and steadfast advocate of Bush, is cause for cautious, but nonetheless breathless optimism. When I read her words, I find myself experiencing the minute beginnings of an emotion almost never felt in connection with neoconservatives - hope. I find myself daring to believe that maybe somewhere in the depths of her soul, there is the faint stirring of the possibility that maybe - just maybe - Bush and his government have been mistaken about Iraq and the involuntary export of democracy at gunpoint...and that by extension, this crack in her belief could somehow be widened such that she might eventually be willing to concede the idea that again, maybe - just maybe - Bush is also wrong about a whole lot of other things.
For so long those of us who have been greatly disturbed by Bush's reign of horror and blood have had to try and accept the idea that his advocates were completely immune to reason or the voice of conscience. That for them, perception was entirely subjective and voluntary...that dissenting or contradictory information would simply be met with oblivion, as though it did not exist. Peggy represents the possibility that maybe - just maybe - that is not always the case. Maybe with some of them, we *can* get through.
Maybe, some can realise that underneath all the whitewash, propaganda, and spin, the invasion of Iraq has been wrong...hideously and murderously so.
Maybe, some can realise that Iran would be far worse.
Maybe, some can realise that after Iraq, after Iran, Bush will eventually bring his unending hunger for blood and repression back home, resulting in the confiscation of first remaining freedom, and then lives.
And maybe - just maybe - those who are able to see George W Bush for who and what he truly is will somehow be able to start to drive back his isolation, seperation, and fear...before it is too late.
Thank God for you, Peggy...and I do not invoke Bush's God here either. I invoke here the God of those of us who know that love and the creative impulse - the impulse to create life, rather than to destroy it, as was done in Fallujah and elsewhere - are the primal driving forces of our infinite Universe, and that that Universe is unspeakably greater, more varied, and more filled with possibility than the majority of Christians ever can or likely will know. Know, however, that in questioning Bush's speech, you have done far more than you may realise. You have potentially lit a small, flickering light in the midst of a sea of darkness so great that many have questioned whether they would ever see its end. Thank you.
posted by Petrus at 4:17 PM
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