Normally I try and resist linking to posts from the major blogs because I assume everybody already read them before coming over here, but I can't help but make exceptions sometimes.
From billmon
My Country 'Tis of Thee
The Wall Street Journal has a telling juxtapostion of stories on the front page of its print edition today.
The right-hand item in the "What's News" column is a jumbled roundup of bad news and/or criminal allegations related to the ongoing war of the all against the all in the Middle East:
Massive car bombs in Iraq - blamed, of course, on the forces of the evil Goldstein, I mean, Zarqawi,
Rumsfeld defending his own war crimes (hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, in this case),
The Republihacks on the Senate Judiciary Committee knocking down a subpoena of the Justice Department torture memos - thus proving themselves fully worthy of Ashcroft's contempt,
The looming deadline for the execution of American hostage Paul Johnson by Al Qaeda terrorists in Saudi Arabia - who, for some strange reason, have not been lured to their doom by our president's brilliant "flypaper" strategy in Iraq,
More rumblings of the foulest sort of corruption in the oil industry, this time involving Exxon-Mobil and the Iraqi oil-for-food program (Why should Halliburton get all the gravy?),
Senators falling all over themselves to add 20,000 more soldiers to the Army, so that next time the neocons want to invade a Middle Eastern country, they won't run so short of troops,
One (1) CIA contractor is finally indicted for kicking and beating an Afghani prisoner to death - a year after the case was referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.
Meanwhile, immediately to the right of this litany of woe, the Journal has its silly story of the day (my term for the fluffed up features the paper often sticks in a center column on page one.) It's about the hot trend in women's underwear - thongs:
A Tiny Scrap of Fabric Wins A Huge Following
For the last decade and a half, a little-known company called Hanky Panky has thrived making a $15 lace thong known simply by its style number, 4811. In the cutthroat world of lingerie sales, that is no small thing....
"It's like lace butter," says Joni Wheat, a 33-year-old personal shopper in Chicago. Ms. Wheat, who thinks nothing of dropping $100 or more on high-end European bra-and-underwear sets, figures she owns about 30 thongs in model 4811...
Like I said, it's pretty much standard operating procedure for the Journal to put a, well, frilly feature story right beside the news of the day - no matter how bloody and awful that news happens to be. So I probably shouldn't make a mountain out of a, um, brassiere about this.
But for some reason seeing those two items side by side like that on the Journal's front page starkly reminded me of the enormous disconnect between life here in the "homeland" - as mindlessly materialistic as ever - and the rising tide of chaos and death generated by our imperial adventures abroad.
On the one side, terrorism and war crimes. On the other, personal shoppers and $100 bras. In between, a corrupt political establishment, desperate to keep the hog trough of American consumerism filled even as it sinks deeper and deeper into the Middle Eastern mire.
A splendid isolation indeed. But how much longer can it last?
