not thinking

That's the theme for today. I'm clearly not thinking because I've locked my keys in my car and I'm sitting here waiting for the AAA people to show up.

My colleagues are not thinking because with a deadline looming (I'm talking about three weeks or so away, which is like half an hour in academic time), they're dithering over whether these are long-term or short-term changes. And they're wanting someone, from somewhere to pay them some extra cash for thinking about curricula, which is, you know, our job.

And the on-going non-thinking of our government is manifest in

• the mad spinning on the Plame leak, even as it looks like someone is going to jail


• The increasingly feeble Potemkin village pretense that this administration has any interest in governing
  


• the laughable recommendation that that shill Armstrong Williams give back some of the money or that he be indicted, while the brains in the Deprtment of Education who came up with the plan go unnamed and unscathed

When I started this blog, it wasn't to whine about my job, though that's certainly proved to be the easiest thing to write about.

No. The name came to me after watching the Katrina debacle unfold day after day. It made me aware of politics in a way I haven't been in years, convincing me that even as far off and abstract as elections seem, the effects are right here and right now. I wanted to write about politics, but I've only been able to write about the very close up and personal politics of this campus I'm leaving. But it might be an as above-so below sort of thing. The non-thinking that's driven this campus into panic, the dismissal of inconvenient facts or unpleasant information is not all that different from the non-thinking that's gotten the country were it is now. Except that I don't think that there's anyone on staff here who's actually the AntiChrist, and I'm not all that sure about Karl Rove.