Wednesday, June 16, 2004

A Hundred Million Points of Light

Today's headline: Kerry raises $100 million in three months.

That's real money, much of it from people who don't have a lot to give, but they care enough about the campaign of Bush's opposition to support it.

John Kerry's charge is now to continue to be worthy of our support, to pace his fight and remain dogged in his toughness to not let this administration's bullying media campaign distract the public from examining the Bush record -- and firing him.

When Faith Gets in the Way of Understanding the World

In her Salon review of "Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President," by Justin Frank, Laura Miller writes, “Bush's born-again Christianity, an anomaly in his patrician East Coast clan, serves a similar function. For Bush, faith is less about the joyful worship of God in a community of believers (as Frank points out, he seldom attends church) than it is about forcing a structure on both the world and his own life without the risks inherent in a genuine attempt to understand either one.”

The world is a complicated, combustible place. This November Americans would be wise to elect the candidate who genuinely makes the effort to understand geopolitical complexities in order to better shape the future, and not welcome with self-righteous glee the so-called Armageddon.