AlanC -

I’m serious about what has to happen at the top of the problem. But that doesn’t mean I know what tomorrow will bring, either.

I’d be happy to be wrong. Very happy indeed.

I think that all of us are operating in an information vacuum so profound that we don’t even recognise it.

A) We have been trained to think that we get important updates to our worldview on a daily basis. That’s a life habit – not a marketing ploy.

B) The People In Charge very rarely leave this misconception totally behind, even after years of experience at the pointy end learning how little charge they have over events.

C) The way this administration executes policy is machinelike. By that I mean that they have identified objectives, formulated plans, and gone about the business of getting things done.

Media opinion has been ignored. Frankly, the tactic of just going out and kicking the crap out of issues and allowing the accomplishments to speak for themselves worked well enough to establish “accountability” where it counts, in the election. Meanwhile, the Democrats whine and seethe and Howard Dean draws closer to the DNC chair.

D)Back up at B I mentioned The People In Charge; that label covers the top tier of our republic and beyond, from entertainment to media to politics to government. These are the people that can effect everyone else. Some of the PIC are incapable of anything beyond influence but blithely assume authority without blush.

Government almost always acts just the opposite; shy away, shy away from action but be ready with a sound bite or platitude.

This administration is so far from any semblance of that template I don’t think I can describe what I think is happening now- and has been happening for about three years.

Elected, resolved to be a uniter. Stabbed in the back by Kennedy.

We are attacked by al Qaeda, forced to acknowledge the existence of a lethal, global threat. Attempt to rally the nation. Election 2002, and that dream is f*cking DOA. No politics too base for Democrats to indulge in; no Democrats interested in associating themselves in ANY success that can remotely be attributed to the hated BUSH… even to the extent that they consciously prioritize defeating Bush over anything else.

I’m glad that the lines were drawn in 2002. Plenty of time for Bush to finally disabuse himself of any lingering doubts about the tools at hand to do the job…

All our discussions here are still influenced by what we think we know; what we have picked up over the last news cycle, tempered by our own filters and diligence in fact checking. We can only do what we can do.

Media has freedom to report. Government is constrained from interfering, but there’s nothing written about how comprehensive the government has to be in keeping media up to speed as long as there is no criminal intent. And I would propose that Media’s foot troops are secretly happy that their bosses are committed to taking down this administration and willing to spill oceans of ink and fill days of videotape toward that end. Why?

Because this administration has been in action in so many places and getting so much done for so long, the moment when the media could publicize the effort in harmful ways has passed. There’s no damage to be done to Bush by reporting that most of the goobers responsible for Blackhawk Down are all dead. Or by reminding anyone that most of the al Q varsity is behind wire or fertilizer. Nor by putting a figure on the obscene amount of cash taken out of the terror pipeline so far. We haven’t been attacked at home for many reasons…but Ridge’s Retards and our INS Joke Factory deserve a lot less credit than the Notes delivered to select countries late in September 2001.

I kid myself that I understand G.W. Bush, I know. I’m willing to bet that Assad, Rafsenjani, and Kim all wish they had never heard of him. Even more than our own domestic minority does. Lots more.

Apologies for length, of course, but the message to the world in the inaugural is just sinking in here.

We have a president. Now if we could just find a minority party….