dissent will not be tolerated

hillary's boy overstepped his bounds when calling the punative confinement of american hero bradley manning stupid and counterproductive. now he has to resign, according to a report:

Washington (CNN) -- P.J. Crowley is abruptly stepping down as State Department spokesman under pressure from the White House, according to senior officials familiar with the matter, because of controversial comments he made about the Bradley Manning case.
Crowley will step down as early as Sunday afternoon, the officials said, because White House officials are furious about his suggestion that the Obama administration is mistreating Manning, the Army private who is being held in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, under suspicion that he leaked highly classified State Department cables to the website Wikileaks.

one frankly wonders what crowley was thinking. it can't be that he believed his comments would be acceptable to a government that polices its messaging with such fervor. the whole point of the wikileaks persecutions, after all, is to restrict public information, and release it only in easily digestible nuggets for nincompoops.

we, of course, are similarly expected to toe the company line, even if in private one can still think one's own thoughts. did you ever, for example, question the boss' underlying political assumptions about distribution of wealth and corporate welfare?

there's overwhelming pressure to look at cars, sports and TV -- whatever it takes to help you ignore the increasingly desperate plight of average persons, such as yourself.

this is why, i suspect, a rally in support of workers' rights draws about 1/1000ths the participants as a "wine expo" held in the same city on the same day (as happened here a couple of weeks ago).

in the aftermath of the great earthquake of 2011 in japan, as the ensuing nuclear calamity that still unfolds in that country, you can see great numbers of people in their desperate search for entertainment and diversion here in the US. where we should be in a state of collective shock at the implications of this disaster on the US -- over energy, environment, economically -- no one here seems to get it.

a government like we have here, run as we must assume by intelligent and responsible adults, continues to dither away at minor nuisances like the unauthorized release of embarrassing diplomatic smalltalk, at the same time the assumptions of what it will take to maintain a sustainable future for "advanced" societies are increasingly becoming doubtful.