Change? No Change -- 30 Years Ago @ The Nation

"The more things change, the more they stay insane."

May, 1978

Recently: Never Shut Up, New York, October, 2001

Rudy Giuliani poking around the rubble looking for his unconstitutional term extension and for sheiks to scapegoat for the loss of liberties that he was already busy eliminating himself. of Donald Trump calling for us to build new phalluses into the sky where David Rockefeller's twin vanity towers stood; and of New York bankers lobbying in Washington so that the hunt for the terror money trail looks under every rock except theirs.

Read Between the Lines of Those 28 Missing Pages, 2003

The report finds no such connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda terrorists. It is now quite clear that the President--unwilling to deal with the ties between Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden--pursued Hussein as a politically convenient scapegoat. By drawing attention away from the Muslim fanatic networks centered in Saudi Arabia, Bush diverted the war against terror.

In Fact..., 2004

"Terrorist" is surely the blackest epithet in the Bush Administration's lexicon, so it would seem that Education Secretary Rod Paige owes the NEA more than just an apology for calling it a "terrorist organization." Especially, one would think, when the union's only sin was exercising its right of free speech to criticize aspects of the fancifully titled "No Child Left Behind" Act. Perhaps Paige is following the John Ashcroft model of branding critics of the Patriot Act pro-terrorist. Paige has been under fire in many states that say the Administration hasn't put enough money behind the act. So he needed a scapegoat.

The War of the Liberals -- 2005

A rogue state is a much more convenient scapegoat, distracting public attention from nonstate sponsors of terrorism (including rogue religious charities) that hit too close to home.

The Dubai Farce, 2006

As soon as Hussein is tried and hanged, democracy will flower in the Arab world and the war on terrorism will be over. In the meantime, we have to put up with some contradictions, like trusting Arabs to own port-management companies, even as we scapegoat them everywhere else.

Kevin Rudd, Agent of Change?, 2007

Howard belonged to a generation that has a "tendency to the dark prejudices of our childhood, to them-and-us thinking, to a narrowness and vengefulness.... He has a gift for spotting the opportunities to scapegoat to advantage. And his targets are...union bosses, asylum seekers and the Muslims to whom he extends one hand open and the other sheathed in [intelligence agency] ASIO's steel mitt.... One can hope that [Rudd] will repair the breakdown in trust between the Muslim community and the federal government after years of Howard's rhetorical demonization of a minority vital to isolating terrorists."

No terrorist-scapegoat connection for 2008 yet. But the year is young.

Posted by Vanderleun at January 7, 2008 12:57 PM