A pleasant late-summer morning.  In my office, looking out on fields and trees, reading The Analects and making notes on which passages might fit into this or that chapter of the book I am writing.  And this jumps off the page at me, as if Confucius was speaking directly to Bush and company:

    Adept Kung asked: "To be called a noble official, what must a person be like?
    "Always conducting himself with a sense of shame," replied the Master, "and when sent on embassies to the four corners of the earth, never disgracing the sovereign’s commission – such a person can be called a noble official."
    "May I ask about those in the next lower rank?"
    "Their family elders praise them as filial children," replied the Master," and their fellow villagers praise them as brothers."
     "May I ask about those in the next rank?"
    "They always stand by their words and bring undertakings to completion.  They may be stubborn, small-minded people, but still they can be accorded the next rank."
    "And those who are running the government now – what do you think of them?" asked Kung.
     "Nothing but utensils!" sighed the Masters. "Peck-and-hamper people too small even to measure." (13.20)

     I take Hinton’s "peck-and-hamper" to mean petty and harrassing, pointless and narrow-minded.  And "utensil," like the contemporary American usage of "tool," is clearly derogatory.  But that last phrase seems a perfect slogan for the of days of the Bush era:

Bush: too small even to measure.

01.20.09