I have always been bothered by the manner in which the US government, the government of my country, tends to claim to adhere to very high ideals, but then repeatedly acts in ways that are completely antithetical to those ideals. Individual responsibility is one of the basic tenets of all of American political and civil society, yet, we do nothing in our foreign policy to try to foster responsibility on the part of other governments. Nor do we respect the sovereignty of those nations. It's not our business to be enacting "regime change" in Iraq, at least not through direct means. The world hates us precisely because of the arrogance and hubris of a nation that claims to know what is best for everyone else, while our own house is in such an incredible mess.

Sullivan, naturally, goes off on a tangent, criticising Didion's article for not proposing how to get out of the current situation. Well, guess what, Andrew? Your reading comprehension is about zero, since that wasn't the purpose of the article. Sullivan is, as always, peculiarly selective in his reading of the text he criticizes. He picks and chooses the parts out of context and then mixes and matches them to create messages that were not present in what Didion wrote, only so he can then have something to hold up to ridicule.

And the criticism that Didion is in a "liberal cocoon" is ludicrous itself, as Didion is largely reporting reactions from people she has met around the country during tours promoting her books. Yes, perhaps she is likely to encounter only people who are inclined to share her part of the political continuum, but since when are the opinions of those in that part of the continuum irrelevant? Sullivan may not want to hear it, but, in fact, public opinion polls, pointedly not limited only to one end of the political spectrum, have repeatedly shown huge doubts about the President's war plans. The sentiments Didion relates are right in line with the positions held by the majority of Americans as demonstrated in those polls. Sullivan may very well think the polls are incorrect, but he doesn't address them. He also chooses to ignore Didion's distinction between what the American public thinks and what the administration in Washington and the media in Washington and New York are presenting as the spectrum of debate. It is Sullivan who is in the cocoon, because he is completely wrapped up in the Washington/New York political-media cocoon and can't see that what Didion reports does, in fact, matter -- that the American people are not really satisfied with the move to war.

But, it gets worse. Sullivan says the core of Didon's argument is that Israel is the source of all problems. Well, that's not at all what Didion said. Instead, she takes the situation of the US relationship to Israel and the history of it as one example of the kind of political subject that has become impossible to discuss rationally. Sullivan's reaction demonstrates that Didion is spot on in her analysis, since he can only demonstrate exactly how far his knee jerks when anyone merely raises the question of whether or not the historical US policy on Isreal has been good or bad for the US as a whole.

I don't know why I bother reading Sullivan. He is so clearly out to lunch and unable to think clearly on any issue that I should just do myself a favor and not read his articles. My blood pressure would be lower if I did, I think.

Two other areas really annoy me, the History window and passwords. I absolutely despise the practice that IE implemented of opening the history in a pane on the right of your browser window. If I browsed full-screen, this would make a certain amount of sense. If browsers did not hit the remote server again when they reformatted the page you are viewing, this would make a certain amount of sense (Mozilla is good in that it does not hit the server again, just uses the cached version). But I almost never browse full-screen. I prefer a browser window that is as tall as the whole vertical space above the TaskBar and as wide as about 2/3s of the screen. This gives a good line length on most pages while leaving room for other windows to be visible behind it. But when you hit Ctrl-H in IE or Phoenix, about 1/5th of your window gets taken up with the history pane, and that means that the document window is now too narrow, while the history window is too narrow to be useful. In Mozilla, you can do something that opens the History window in its own window, rather than in a "sidebar," as the Mozilla team calls these panes. But in Phoenix that capability has not been implemented. Also, in Phoenix, they do not allow you to display the history in ungrouped layout, like the old Netscape 4.x history list (which I vastly prefer). This makes using the history list in Phoenix very unpleasant. I have checked to see if it is possible to change prefs.js or one of the preference files to fix this, but have had no luck with the history window (I was able to change the cache location with that method).

The other thing that drives me crazy is that you can't tell Phoenix to never remember any passwords at all. I am philosophically opposed to a password manager and so in Mozilla (and IE) I tell the browser to never remember any passwords at all. In Phoenix, your only choices when you type a password is "Remember this password/don't remember this password/don't remember any passwords for this site." The result is that I have to take the last choice for every password site I visit. Perhaps there's something in prefs.js that would allow me to set it to never remember passwords at all, but at this point, what with Phoenix not saving a cookie for my Salon premium membership so that I have to log in every damned time, I just can't be bothered. There are simply too many capabilities that are not there in Phoenix, capabilities that I think users need, even novice users. Simplifying the PREFERENCES dialog may seem like a great help, but, in fact, it really isn't. Choosing good default settings is crucial for non-technical users. But the browser needs to be adjustable in areas that affect usability. Phoenix makes it much too hard to have a decent, personalized browsing experience.