Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Rats? Mice? Everybody? How soon, Lord, how soon?


Soon!! Posted by Picasa

"You get the impression that we're more than listless. We're sunk."

Too pessimistic? Maybe not. Rumors are flying through various departments of longtime senior Bush loyalists looking to jump, but with few opportunities in the private sector to make the jump look like anything more than desperation. Almost daily, complaints from Cabinet level Departments come in to the White House about lack of communication coordination on even basic policy matters.

"What happened was that some of the best people who were working in the Administration during the first term, but who weren't necessarily Bush campaign members or weren't particularly close to the White House, jumped when they saw opportunities being filled by under-qualified but more politically connected people," says a current Administration senior staffer in a Cabinet department. "In this department we lost three quarters of the people who should have been encouraged to stay, and most of them left simply because they had received no indication they would be considered for better or different opportunities. And many of these folks would have stayed."




3 comments:

Catreona said...

OOH, that "0 comments" just looks so lonesome! Had to post something. And, after all, it *is* a great post, Puddle. It's obvious that what's left in the Admin. is, shall we say, not the cream.

One note, though. Your title. It's, wwell, to put it bluntly, rodentophobic. Speaking as a mouse (yes, I really *am* a mouse. Just ask my family. They've been calling me Mousey all my life), I think it's time to exsponge(sp?) this anti-rodent myth or, ratehr, to explicate it correctly.

Rats and their cousins do not leave a sinking ship out of cowardice. They leave out of intelligence. I mean, hey, who wants to be on a sinking ship, man? Mice aren't the most intelligent species on the planet for nothing, you know.

puddle said...

LOL! I just thought the point was they were *leaving* ;)

Catreona said...

Yeah, that's how it is with steriotypes. They get so ingrained that people don't really see them any more, and just use them as if they were metaphors. But, for instence, nobody speaks of giraffes leaving a sinking ship. It's always rats. In fact, rats get a bad rap in general. When was the last time you heard somebody called a salmon fink?

It's jealousy, man, jealousy and fear 'cause we're so smart. People always seem to fear, then hate, then persicute and defame others who are different, especially others who are superior. Look at how men (as a species) fear, hate, and persicute women (as a species). There *are* men who aren't intimidated by women, and *they* don't practice persicution. But the ones who are intimidated, the ones who aren't *really* comfortable with or sure of themselves, they have to make derned sure everybody knows *they're* superior to women.

It's the same with white people's persicution of nonwhites. They're afraid the "other" will turn out to be smarter, or stronger, or in some other way *better* than they are. So, down comes the jackboot. The same way so many people are afraid of and made uncomfrotable by people with disabilities. If you're afraid of the other, if you feel intimidated by the other, if the other is different, or smarter, or better adapted, or whatever, hate and crush it!

And, that's the story with rodentaphobia. Humans know, somewhere deep in their being, that mice and our cousins are the most intelligent species; that, in fact, we actually run the show. So, they have to persicute us. It's very simple, and very sad. Humans have always had so much potential, but they've wasted most of their time hating and destroying each other, other species, and the planet. There must be some fundamental programming flaw somewhere. I don't see how we're supposed to get the Ultimate Question... I mean, Garbage in, garbage out. If the software is flawed, we can't hope to get a valid result.

I wonder if Magarathia still has the original blueprints?