If Bush isn't alive, how come so many of you are sending him Christmas baskets full of pretzels, hmmm? ;-)

Regarding Keats little urn ode, that piece of crap has been bugging me since junior high, the artificial depths of equating truth to beauty and the flippant ending "all ye need to know" have been to me a marker of distinguishing how nice things sound from how stupid they can be, the hallmark of the poet-politician.

Lao Tzu is not quite as dumb (remembering after all that it's a translation we're being asked to receive as currant wisdom) but it's a simplistic reification to insist that weapons are instruments of fear. Fear is not a thing and as a concept it is relative. The burglar's weapon might be fear alone, my gun under the pillow might be the burglar's fear and my security.

Ani Difranco said "Any tool is a weapon if you know how to hold it" and Arlo Guthrie wrote on his guitar "This tool kills fascists."

The point being made about not celebrating the death of one's enemy is valid, but it's not the same as rejoicing in victory. There was no harm in rejoicing in VE Day and VJ Day, it meant we were no longer killing and being killed, that our servicemen and women would be on the way home, that families would be re-united. That's not a celebration of blood lust.

So yeah, Lao Tzu was having an off day, if not his translator.

Let's cut the second rate high school roundtable and pay attention to what words really mean, and the distinction between what sounds fine and what is fine.