"The Fish Rots From the Head?" Sloppy rewrite: What I wrote in this post earlier was either too simple or too glib, but how else is there to say it? Bush has the army he deserves. As he represents the sophistication of his electorate, his army represents that of its leadership. 

What shocks me more and more as I watch the transformation of my neighborhood, is the fact that the spoiled children of middle class now model their behavior on the frustration and anger of the poor. It's silly, but it disgusts me doubly since they have no idea how much how much the poor hate them.

We're a nation of adolescents but I have sympathy with some. That was one point of the post now removed. But when does one say 'enough!'? When NYU students walk blithely through the Barrio as if it were their own urban country club, mouthing rap lyrics to themselves, assuming their right to their innocence, what should be my response?

Conservatives are right to decry the immaturity of at least their youthful critics, but all they offer as an alternative is a moral defense of greed, and in that protection for their fratboy alcoholic. Any accusation of liberal hypocrisy is unanswerable in substance. I would agree with a conservative who calls ours a culture of narcissism (and I know the reference), but what can they offer but their own hypocrisy? It's a politics of decadence all around. And it's defined by the continual cutting of intellectual corners. Thinking only of ends, means are ignored. And this is the flaw in our Iraq policy, the flaw in our economic policy, the flaw in the radical right, and in our spoiled left liberals. We have no left wing, but it would affect them as well. Enough. I've got to go back to work. 

Computer tomorrow maybe. Today I'm in a computer store on my lunch break