Cause your style is like dying in my sleep - I don't feel it

1)

The cold war epithet "real politik" - - - -> = "war on terrorism's "real moral"


Maybe it just comes from an extended session perusing old West Wing scenes on youtube but I have this resurgent sense that we've glossed over the significance of a discussion of torture, but I'd rather ignore it because addressing it would pull me into a morass of conceptual Doublethink, the likes of which I'd rather get caught up in. So, in time-honored fashion, I resort to the block quote, the origin of which should be clear from the use of footnotes and syntactical OCD:

Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea* one such
thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard
the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims
but as democratic martyrs, "sacrifices on the altar of freedom"?* In
other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability
to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus,
that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices
in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of
our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?

n still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every
few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or
thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a
democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without
subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer
to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because
the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high
price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of
the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned
about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between
Franklin's time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national
conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of
(a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and
protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?

In the absence of such a conversation, can we trust our elected
leaders to value and protect the American idea as they act to secure
the homeland? What are the effects on the American idea of Guantánamo,
Abu Ghraib, Patriot Acts I and II, warrantless surveillance, Executive
Order 13233, corporate contractors performing military functions, the
Military Commissions Act, NSPD 51, etc., etc.? Assume for a moment
that some of these measures really have helped make our persons and
property safer—are they worth it? Where and when was the public debate
on whether they're worth it? Was there no such debate because we're
not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we actually
become so selfish and scared that we don't even want to consider
whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?

FOOTNOTES:
1. Given the strict Gramm-Rudmanewque space limit here, let's just
please all agree that we generally know what this term connotes—an
open society, consent of the governed, enumerated powers, Federalist
10, pluralism, due process, transparency ... the whole democratic
roil.

2. (This phrase is Lincoln's, more or less)

2) I had a dream recently involving a steeply terraced classroom (think upper deck Comiskey, which always gave me the willies) with a computer at each spot, black screen, cordless mouse, and all the students were simply playing with their mouses, having no discernible effect on the blackness of the screen. I entered through the side, and realized I was supposed to be teaching something. But walking to the front, in front of the podium, didn't seem possible. The students were almost grotesquely diverse - every kind of skin color, hair color, style, etc - though they all seemed to be between 18 and 24, or thereabouts. Except they were very small, such that none could touch the floor with their feet. I think it may have a nightmare, as the staring/watching them continued for a long time, and the anxiety re: what I should be doing seemed to be directly proportional to the time I spent watching. Take that and run a 5K with it, if you want.


3) A case for sluttishness, corroborated with scripture