Caroline Arnold wrote a really wonderful piece on Habeas Corpus that was published on CommonDreams.org today.
In it she tells a story about her son, Seth and a piece of buttered toast. And in a surprising twist after the essay has concluded she adds this:
Postscript: My son, now 42, points out that if you secure a piece of toast with the buttered side against a cat’s belly and drop the cat from some height it will spin indefinitely in midair and never land. That’s because, as the necromancers of White House science would tell us, cats must always land on their feet and toast always lands with the buttered side down.
It made me laugh. And shortly thereafter, it struck me that it illustrates rather precisely in a Terry Pratchett sort of way what must be overcome to in order to implement a sane response to Iraq.
This little bit of necromacy is at the heart of the "dark arts of Bush and Cheney." And the wheelspinning it induces -- may in fact, be the point of doing it in the first place.
Our world is on the brink of a great turning, and a significant political faction of elites believe the road to the "best" future rests on winning (as opposed to losing) in a complex game of power.
For a glimpse of what I mean check out "The New New World Order" by Daniel W. Drezner It's a mindset as old as civilization that grew up in response to the political, social, and economic forces that emerged from the growth of cities and gave birth to Empire. It clearly underlies the thinking of a host of American elites whose hands are on the reins of power. (Glance through Drezner's Bio and run a Google search on him if you don't believe me.) This mindset is what those of us who want a humane and sane world for planet earth are up against.
Their frames are all wrong. Every frame they create sets hope and fear up as competing opposites -- just like the falling cat and the buttered toast. Hope and fear are not opposites. And it is only by moving forward in fear and in hope that we will defeat the Dark Arts that are swirling around our world.