With the Bush administration clearly heading toward a catastrophic attack on Iran with little chance they'll be stopped, now is a good time to consider how much everyone involved in this process sucks. By this I don't mean Bush blah Republicans blah suck. That's far too easy. Any honest evaluation would find significant blame lies elsewhere.
I suck
I can't emphasize this enough. I won't go into detail because it's so embarrassing, but the difference between what I've done and could have done is gigantic. In particular, it took me decades to figure out how American society works, which is as humiliating as taking thirty years to figure out tic tac toe. And I'm extending my suckiness by complaining about it publicly. In a blog post. I really, really suck.
Everyone I know sucks
My family and friends don't feel powerful because none of us is Rupert Murdoch. But on any rational scale--comparative or historical--we have enormous freedom and resources. Have we utilized even 5% of these? No. That's because we don't truly believe people in other countries are as real as we are. We've also failed to imagine the likely consequences to ourselves from our inaction. This is particularly distasteful because we're living in the first time in history when non-saintly humans can figure this stuff out, if they want to. Clearly we don't want to. We suck.
Liberal blogs suck
Arthur Silber is absolutely right about this. The blogosphere esucks.
The anti-war movement sucks
Afghanistan? Okay, that was impossible. Iraq? Well...September 11th, etc. But Iran? If you can't stop the third war in six years--one that's going to happen because shredding infants with flechettes is the last remaining activity that provides William Kristol sexual gratification--you should change your name from "anti-war movement" to "pro-sucking movement."
Democrats suck
Tautological. Democrats=suck.
Americans suck
We started out as thirteen colonies clinging to the eastern seaboard. Then we conquered the entire continent. Then we ended up with military bases in a hundred other countries. Now we're researching how to drop tungsten rods on people from space. Yet we remain convinced we're really nice. My country 'tis of suck.
Human beings suck
We've been at this "civilization" thing for 6,000 years. We've figured out fire, and making extremely tall buildings that don't fall over, and even crossing plums with apricots. Yet we've made zero progress on our main problem: slaughtering each other in generous megadeath quantities. This suggests the error is indeed bred in the bone. In Latin, our species is called homo suckapiens suckapiens.
Planet Earth sucks
Life is centered on everybody eating others until they themselves get eaten. And their entire lifespan is spent worrying about being eaten, which always happens in the end anyway. This whole setup sucks.
The universe sucks
Its apparent meaningless wouldn't be so bad if existence were solely pleasurable. In my experience, this is not the case. 13.7 billion years of suck.
In conclusion, I hate to claim there's any point to this, because that would detract from its meta-suckiness. Nevertheless, success is more likely to follow from a clear-eyed appraisal of a situation, rather than hubristic fantasies.
That's the theory, anyway. It admittedly sucks.