Monday, August 01, 2011

 

America’s Taliban


Ten years ago, the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed two gigantic figures of Buddha, carved into a hillside 18 centuries before. The world was aghast at this barbarian act taken in the name of religious purity. But was powerless to stop it.

We now have a group of U.S. politicians seeking political purity, who seem to have much in common with the Taliban. They are tea party members; and because of blind adherence to smaller government, they seem intent on risking destroying what American political leaders have constructed in more than two centuries of hard, often painful work. Like the Taliban, they see compromise as an unacceptable alternative.


by Larry Geller

The pull-quote is from the beginning of The tea party Taliban (Politico, 7/29/2011) by Martin Frost. I discovered this article via a reference on DailKos, where they observed:

Rep. Martin Frost was a conservative Democrat who got redistricted out by Tom DeLay's mid-decade shenanigans -- the same ones that landed him in federal prison. He promptly found a perch on Fox News, where he could help the Fox agenda by agreeing with Republicans about all the nasty things Democrats were doing.

So that remarkable “American Taliban” quote is straight out of the mouths of Foxes. Strange (and dangerous) times we live in.



Comments:

that is one of the big problems when moralizing replaces the function of politics -- a problem that has contaminated so many layers of american political life, it's hardly something one can scapegoat onto teabaggers alone, although they are the exemplar of the problem of the current zeitgeist. microfascism.

as for the Buddhas, we speak of anicca or anitya. everything that is built up will come down. we also speak of paticcasamuppada or pratityasamutpada. all things arise or originate dependent on other causes and conditions and therefore nothing exists independent of the causes and conditions of the existence of other things. we and the taliban or you and the teabaggers have much in common.
 

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