This is what one of my friends on the faculty at the local university claims. After all, Winslow has some art galleries now, and a coffee house, a wicked railroad ambience (90-100 trains a day come through and it's a BNSF crew change point) plus a restored Mary Colter-designed hotel from the old Harvey House days. It's cheap as hell to buy a house, and it's right off of Interstate 40, and it also enjoys the income from the most lucrative industry in 21st century America--a prison. In other words, jobs for artists while they wait to make the Big Time. It also has an underutilized airport. Can you say "speculation"?
So I'm off to investigate. Pampering myself at the restored La Posada Hotel, I'll be ranging through and around Winslow for the next three days to see if it indeed the future center of all things arty. I'll be reporting from the field if--and this is not yet assured--there is some wireless access available. I'm also planning on outlining the second of two novels, the first of which is actually in work, amazingly enough. Both involve Berlin, intrigue, and plenty of sex, violence, and substance abuse, not to mention pornographic descriptions of food.
Now why have I been laying off Chimpie these last days? Well, if there's anyone left who is (a) not horrified at his presidency and/or (b) unaware that he is a delusional twit, such persons are as delusional and at this point unreachable by any means short of electro-convulsive therapy. He's just too easy a target. When his father's own handpicked board of intervention cannot sober him (and do you hear any more discussion of the Iraq Study Group less than a week after issuing their report?), and Chimpie cannot recognize the cover it provided him to extricate some shred of positive moments from his apocalyptic legacy, it won't be long before the mobs with pitchforks and torches are storming 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Full-on raving before national TV will happen within 45 days, I predict.
Okay, off to decadence in Winslow. Wish you were all there.
5 comments:
My vote is on Williams. At least there are trees
Hey, Olaf, I was wondering what you might think about all these comparisons to Truman that General George has been making of late. It seems he's trying to assuage, or bury, his own sense of failure over his debacle in the Mid-East by looking at the way history vindicated Truman, even though Truman's popularity plummeted during his reign.
I agree that Bush bashing has gotten to the point where it's like, duh. It's just too damn easy. But I am curious what insight you might have into the ways in which this is perhaps 'not' the same as Truman. Or anyone else out there for that matter. Or maybe it is. Maybe the Mid-East's boiling is just history working itself out for the better, as Chimp Mouth likes to spout out.
I'll get my pitchfork.
One big difference between Truman with Korea and Chimpie with Iraq is that Korea was not an insurgency but a more "traditional" war in which victory or at least cease-fires and clear borders could be drawn. What exists in Iraq is essentially sectarian anarchy, and not the good kind.
Also, although the forces in Korea were mainly US, it was a United Nations-mandated operation, with a clear violation of South Korea's border by North Korea.
Truman was a veteran of WWI, serving in an artillery unit in France, while Bush avoided his generation's war in the Texas Air National Guard. Truman, whose eyesight should have disqualified him for service, he passed the eyetest by memorizing the chart. Bush used family connections to leapfrog over 1000 other applicants to the TANG, which was highly coveted as an alternative service to combat in Vietnam.
Truman fired his Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson, when the war bogged down, and replaced him with a true combat veteran, George C. Marshall. Bush stood behind Rumsfeld for 3 1/2 years of a failed policy before kicking him to the curb after the November, '06 election, and just days after declaring that Rumsfeld was on board for the duration.
Truman led (with George Marshall) the reconstruction of a devastated Europe. Bush led the devastation of the Middle East. No one knows how or when it can be reconstructed.
Finally, Truman's unpopularity had more to do with his firing of General Douglas MacArthur than anything else. MacArthur had challenged Truman's authority as commander in chief, and, as a war hero and somewhat of a prima donna, thought he could use his popularity to cow Truman. But Harry held his ground, and it really hurt him in the polls. In any case, the Korean War ended with a truce that has endured for 53 years.
Iraq's war has lasted longer than the Korean conflict, with no stabilization or direction in sight. History will not vindicate Bush, because he is an international disaster. His only success has been tax cuts that have left us with the greatest national debt in our history, so "success" is subjective.
Anyway, there are a few reasons why the comparison is specious.
Pornographic descriptions of food...when do I get to see a draft?
cb
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