Looking past the election, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham explains in this week’s issue that the incoming administration could use some advice:
Even stipulating that giving advice is easy and taking action is hard, though, it is pretty clear that what we are calling the “Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue” (the economy, the wars, the lack of public confidence in the direction of the country) requires the best minds around.
We came up with several this week.
Who are Newsweek‘s “best minds?”
- Richard Haass, Republican foreign policy professional (as Meacham notes, he “served two President Bushes”);
- Nicholas Burns, who also served two Bush presidents—he was W.’s undersecretary of state for political affairs. Burns also served in the Clinton administration;
- Henry Kissinger, whose lengthy career probably does not need to be summarized;
- Michael Bloomberg, Republican mayor of New York fresh from his success in eliminating term limits for his office (against the wishes of New Yorkers)
- Vernon Jordan, known primarily as a close adviser (legal and otherwise) to Bill Clinton, is an investment banker who sits on a number of corporate boards.
That’s really the “best” advice Newsweek could scare up?
No mention of “good advice” for the issue that trumps every other … because it encompasses every other: the end of the world as we know it.
This isn’t ignoring the elephant in the room. This is ignoring the whole friggin’ jungle.
And Greenwashing 2.0 … brought to you by Chevron, BP, T. Boone and all the other bastards who see gold in “green” … ain’t gonna do a damn thing about it.
No matter how much warm and fuzzy propaganda is endlessly recycled on our TV screens and in the pages of the corpress.
Given the above, I seriously doubt we’ll make the changes necessary to survive … we’re kept ignorant, and many of us seem to have this perverse desire to remain so.
But even if there isn’t any hope, you have to act as though there is, don’t you?
Else, what’s the point?