A Quote by Greg Grandin
'Blowback,' as many 'Nation' readers are aware, was a term introduced into popular circulation by the late political scientist Chalmers Johnson, an old Cold Warrior turned dissident.
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The scientist is not much given to talking of the riddle of the universe. "Riddle" is not a scientific term. The conception of a riddle is "something which can he solved." And hence the scientist does not use that popular phrase. We don't know the why of anything. On that matter we are no further advanced than was the cavedweller. The scientist is contented if he can contribute something toward the knowledge of what is and how it is.
Throughout out history, when people have looked for new ways to solve their problems, and to uphold the principles of this nation, many times they have turned to political parties. They have often turned to the Democratic Party.
We are aware that many national farm organizations are putting forth various plans to provide both short- and long-term relief to our nation's agricultural producers. While we believe long-term solutions are essential, the current situation demands a more immediate response.
I guess I'm just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.
The term blowback, which officials of the Central Intelligent Agency first invented for their own internal use, . . . refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign act of terrorists or drug lords or rogue states or illegal arms merchants often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations.
We cannot shun our values as an immigrant nation. This is a wrong path. And while possibly it is a short-term political victory based on division and based on creating a wedge issue that splits people in this country, it is a long-term defeat for this Nation.
In a liberal democracy rapid, radical and fundamental economic change must benefit the many not the few, if it is to gain popular, long-term political support.
The seasons don't matter to most of us anymore except as spectacles. In my county and in many places around this part of the nation, the fair that once marked the harvest now takes place in late August, while tourist dollars are still in heavy circulation. Why celebrate the harvest when you harvest every week with a shopping cart?
As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.
The people we call the prophets I think are the earliest dissident intellectuals, and they're treated like most dissident intellectuals - very badly. They're imprisoned, driven into the desert. King Ahab, the epitome of evil in the Bible, condemned Elijah as a "hater of Israel." This is the first self-hating Jew, the origin of the term. It goes right up to the present. That's the history of intellectuals.
Blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows.
When people hear the term 'political prisoner,' especially on the Left, it becomes a kind of abstraction. Folks are aware of injustice, and they're aware that there are folks in prison who are in prison, you know, largely because of their activism.
There was a period of time when I was very political, when I was at the university. It was like the late '60s, early '70s and I was a dissident like everybody else I guess. Now I follow it but there's nothing that really grabs me. The most fascinating thing to me right now is China.
In most of the world, poetry has such a different reputation than it does in Western culture. Poetry is a popular genre in Afghanistan. If you turned on the radio, there would be a poetry program that would be as popular as The Real Housewives. People aren't listening to poetry as if they're taking their vitamins. Instead, it's a popular vessel you can fill with anything. You could fill it with sass. You could fill it with rage. You could fill it with political statements.
When I was introduced to Johnson he was a freshman Congressman.
If Americans will face the truth, our nation can be turned around and can be saved from the evils and the destruction that have fallen upon every other nation that has turned its back on God.
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