The American public cannot get enough drones

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 4 Comments
The drone that captured our hearts or, if that was not possible, incinerated them with a missile

The drone that captured our hearts or, if that was not feasible, incinerated them with a missile

Despite our misgivings about using them to kill US citizens overseas, the American people love drones. It’s like the way we can hate Darius Rucker but still like acoustic guitars. An ABC-Washington Post poll from February of last year found that 83% of respondents approved the use of drone strikes against suspected terrorists overseas. Two thirds of them said they approved such strikes even when the alleged terrorists were American citizens. And why not? An unmanned drone comprises all of man’s deepest yearnings: to fly, to play video games, to kill people on the other side of the world without having to look them in the eye.

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Washington Post: “Republicans are the problem”

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments

I think most of us would agree that the federal government does not work as well as it could just now. For example, if you regard 86% of Americans as “most of us,” you might be troubled by the 14% approval rating of Congress. Politicians are rascals, and the two parties vie for control of the United States government in the same way two cats vie for control of a woodpecker. Except what if—stay with me here—the parties were not precisely equal participants in villainy? What if the vying were between one admittedly inept woodpecker biologist and a cat? That is the essential contention of Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein at the Washington Post, who get to this bold statement by the third paragraph:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

It’s a heck of a read.

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Close Readings: Sarah Palin’s view of expertise

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading 5 Comments

"Are you going to stand there babbling about what carbon does, or are you going to get the first woman president a fuckin' Jamba Juice?"

There is much to enjoy, guiltfully, about this review of Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin, the tell-all book by former staffer Frank Bailey. Memoirs like his threaten to become an ugly micro-genre of an already ugly mini-genre, but there is something in the essential sameness of Sarah Palin Stories—the pride in ignorance, the deceptions of others en route to self, the different supporting characters in the same vexed orbit around our heroine—that suggests a form whose themes transcend detail. They’re like Sherlock Holmes stories. As Holmes was to Victorian London and solving crimes, so is Sarah Palin to suburban America and being a mindless church bitch. What I’m saying here is that I think here oeuvre is more than genre work. That’s good news for Close Readings, which received from Stubble yesterday this wonderful gift:

Remember: amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.

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