"'Can I get a witness to all this poverty?' There's no need to, brother. Everybody can see," Joe Strummer sang, but I think he was sadly mistaken. As I used to argue in non-defense of the G. W. Bush administration, the rich and powerful are so generally and fully ensconced in their rarefied territory, they are mostly unaware of the underclasses. Thus, actions which, with greater understanding, might be seen as intentionally evil, are merely ignorant (though arguably still evil). This helps to explain Bush's approach to Katrina, black people, the poor, public schools, and those foreigners he tried to help free with two wars in their homes; Catherine the Great's inability to tell that her tours of supposed Russian towns involved the same actors, playing the same roles, and using the same set over and over; Marie Antionette's "Let them eat cake;" the casual cruelty of roving gangs in Fist of the North Star 1 ; and Republican efforts to someho
Anything, everything, and nothing at all for years at a time.