saturn return to sender

The only brilliant thing to come out of America’s involvement in the Montreal climate talks:

The National Environmental Trust distributed custom-printed noise-making rubber whoopee cushions printed with a caricature of President Bush and the words “Emissions Accomplished.”

- U.S., Under Fire, Refuses to Shift in Climate Talks

Brilliant!

Meanwhile, according to New York magazine, there was some sort of very classy move by the Bush administration to try to keep Clinton from speaking in Montreal at all. I dunno. It seems like they were just looking for some reason to walk out. They didn’t care what. It’s like they were bored or something. “Can we go yet?” I picture our delegation whining. “This is boring.”

Ellis Henican used the phrase “the polemic business” to describe “the great cacaphony that is American political dialogue.” Well, at least if by American political dialogue you mean Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly (*flinch*), and the like. I think he must’ve let that phrase slip, ’cause it’s too close to a truthful description of what life here is like. We sell ugliness, we run a trade in dog shit. We buy it, too. We eat it up. Yum.

If none of that is depressing enough, read this:

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead?

It seems to be, yes.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2005 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, metafilter-filter, rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.