Two quick notes

Two quick notes for today:

Trey went looking for a job yesterday and came home with some flyer that he was asking about- something poorly assembled and poorly copied about protesting Bush's inauguration and encouraging students to walk out of class.
This enraged me, and it probably did not help that I was reading 1984 right before that. I think it's entirely reasonable to have differing political opinions. I can certainly see how the same set of facts, viewed from a different angle, might produce a different opinion. What frankly astonishes me is the willingness of many people (largely on the left but I am certain there are those on the right as well) to simply STOP THINKING and accept received <> without examining or questioning it. Bush is bad! There aren't any nuances or reasons or facts or debate to this argument- he's just bad. No war for oil! Halliburton, Halliburton, Halliburton- and the venom is striking- it has all the character of the two-minute hate in 1984.
I think there are legitimate arguments to be made against the war in Iraq; The reasons we went to war had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction and anyone could have seen that at the beginning. Neither did they have to do with oil or Halliburton because if Bush really wanted to be corrupt or whatever then he would find a simpler way to do it. He has lots of money already anyway. It's an absurd argument. But the reasons we went to war, as I see them, were that currently the United States is well prepared to defend France from an attack by Germany or the Netherlands from the Soviet Union- none of which are likely eventualities any more. We're also somewhat prepared to defend from an attack by Japan- we still haven't won the war in Korea and Vietnam- we know how that turned out. But we aren't prepared militarily for the conflicts of the 21st century which are going to be in the Middle East- and we can't rely on our <> in the region to support us. So we invaded the least powerful and most disliked country to prepare for the next set of global engagements. There are probably other reasons (good is a matter of debate) as well that I don't know about- scare Libya into cooperating, etc. But War is Bad, Bush is Worse is not a good argument at all. In terms of defensibility- Clinton sent troops into Kosovo for equally dubious purposes and with equally murky goals. No one complained then- and this is clearly a matter of national security.
In other terms, let's phrase this regarding a <> I had with my mother at Thanksgiving. She argued that the more reputable someone appears, the more likely they are to be hypocritical and be doing really bad things- such as hard-core porn. I really didn't want to attack the porn angle, (ahem)- she claimed that most porn is downloaded by priests. I told her that her claims were specious; how can anyone prove or disprove such a thing? What is the evidence for it? Who does the studies, how can the studies be proved valid?
The point is that wanting something to be true doesn't make it so. A personal opinion is not the same thing as facts. You may believe in your heart of hearts that everyone around you is rotten to the core and you are the only virtuous one, or that you aren't virtuous and everyone around you is equally rotten, but that isn't a defensible argument. I'm honestly astonished at the level of vitriol that President Bush attracts; he is being attacked- within his own country- as a sort of Snidely Whiplash figure, a landlord evicting the babes in the night while tying the mother to a railroad track. I have no idea where he got this image; it has no basis in reality which is what annoys me. The man gave you some of your money back through tax cuts and you still are furious. Those serpents! There's no pleasing them!

The other thing I wanted to note was that Bob Lutz of General Motors has a blog. http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/ This strikes me as the sort of desperate attempt to increase market share that characterises GM; some marketeer must have come up with the idea - Blogs! They're the cool thing! All the kids have them! 60 minutes! Dan Rather! Or some clueless V.P. mentioned it- blogs are cool, I've been hearing a lot about blogs-without knowing whether it was a sort of tyre, a kind of hat, or what it is- and so it was decreed that Mr. lutz should have a blog. He talks a lot about interiors so far, which is a Good Thing, because that rental Buick LeSabre had a truly awful interior. Among other things that were wrong with it. My question is why does GM still include Oldsmobile in its list of division names? It rather increases the pain on missing Olds to see it still in print-

Thus far I have had 7 students out of 21 pass an IN CLASS assignment that was given Monday and Tuesday. We WENT OVER IT IN CLASS. I GAVE THEM THE ANSWERS. Only 1/3 of them bothered to follow the directions and write the answers down. Well, their test scores may not show it, but they can't be getting any dumber. I MUST be earning every cent of what I make.

UPDATE;
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/fa04/brook.htm
Here's a good example of a position I can disagree with but which seems well reasoned and has points that can be argued. This is the level we should be having political discussions at- we cannot allow the democratic process to be taken over by ranters, screamers, and imbeciles. On either side.