http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/03/obama_on_dow_collapse_hakuna_m.asp
unbelievable.
...
37. wretchard:
Glenn Reynolds explains the “Buyers Remorse” phenomenon is far more cruel terms than I have. So I’ll restate my position, even though I know some have disagreed and will disagree. Barack Obama isn’t the problem. He was to entitled to run on his ideas just like anyone else. And to my mind he is still welcome to offer his ideas on the public market place whenever he wants. The question is why so many bought the product as is, where is.
The real problem was projection. People saw in him what they wanted to see. Projection took in both those of genuine goodwill and those Glenn Reynolds calls the sophisticated, liberal “rubes”. I won’t talk about the rubes who outsmarted themselves, but about those who’ve led such decent lives that they never dreamed they could get fooled so drastically. People who’ve led their lives sheltered in the bosom of a loving, protective family are at a disadvantage in a nasty cruel world. All other things being equal, a man who grew up in Soweto or the Tondo Foreshore will have a better chance of surviving against al-Qaeda or drug gangs than a person who’s known nothing but kindness, fair play and honesty all his life. The low-life man sniffs every drink offered, bites every coin given to him in payment, watches all the dark alleyways for the man with the cosh. When you’re dealing with that crew from Chicago, can you do any less?
That doesn’t mean that they can’t participate in debate. But you’ve got to have a filter and discernment in place so their contribution is positive. Listen to their stories by all means, for they too have a tale to tell. Give them tasks that are in their interest to perform well, by all means. But don’t give them the keys to the Federal Reserve, at least not without oversight. Disasters arising from not supervising is just as much the fault of the supervisor as the supervised.
Despite everything, I think we should build coalitions with liberals who may now see certain things have gone too far or at least get them to agree that the stakes are so high they can’t approached in such a cavalier, quasi-religious fashion. Winston Churchill once said that John Jellicoe was the “only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon”. That made Jellicoe cautious. He didn’t win Jutland, but he didn’t lose it either, and that was enough. Obama is far more powerful than Jellicoe. He’s the only man anywhere who can sink the world singlehandedly. Surely his actions must be analyzed critically and dispassionately. We owe the future that.
Mar 3, 2009 - 5:05 pmThis comment troubled me somewhat because I consider my self to have come from a loving family (likewise I hope my children will say the same when they reach my age), and i like to think that having this back ground (and providing a similar one to my kids) is conveying advantages in dealing with life rather than the opposite.
accordingly, mongoose to the rescue...
41. Mongoose:
W: Again, you have this weird dichotomy (and I would say it is a false one).
It confuses. What, are you reading a lot of Cormac Maccarthy lately? Faulkner? Mann?
These Obamabot are not quite so fabulous or mysterious.
There is nothing mysterious about these people, and they have been hustled for years, for generations. Famously, there is one born every minute. They are fatuous, obtuse center or left of center voters. The media onslaught and the GOTV efforts of the Democrats pushed them along their cattle path. They have been more spoiled than nurtured. Good will? Like good intentions, many a path to hell is paved with it.
This all is not the sign of a good and loving home; it is the sign of weak minds and mediocre spirits, and perhaps these defects where nurtured in that “loving home” with all the good intentions imaginable. Most American encounter the Democrat political machine in grade school. If they have not figured it out on some level by the time they have gotten through High School, they lack some measure of moral probity–they were not paying attention. Growing up in America is hardly akin to growing up like some sort of protected and indulged royalty. It is tough stuff from a moral point of view, and it is tough stuff at an early age.
Our response to these people must be truthful and not too heavy on ideology. View them as people that have ended badly their first real love affair or marriage, or who have finally owned up to an addiction. They will need tolerance, support, honesty, real facts and real alternatives. They will need to be addressed as fellows through our shared hearitage and experiences as Americans. We must not sugar coat the facts, but we must not gloat either. What matters is the future. What matters is saving the Republic. We must start preparing for them now. The biggest risk is that they will still see the State as the provider of that grand future that they invision with that “good will” of theirs, that they recoil from just Obama’s vision of the State, not statism altogether. This we must counter with the deeper truth.
….
But back to this strange dichotomy of the gullibility of the innocent and the clarity of the damned that you keep pushing out there. I find it interesting, and I am not sure that I get your point. I am not sure that you do either. It seems to me to be a “poetics in progress” that you are working on here, perhaps subconsciously.
I wonder what you are getting at really. unloved Low-lifes fare better than the “loved innocent”? Is that really what you mean? Or do you mean the cosseted are more gullible than the experienced? Is this about mere learning, or os it about moral truth? There is so much dissonance in, and asymmetry to, the apposition.
Perhaps this is a cultural difference, but one scarcely knows where to begin.
But I think that you mean more than the loss of innocence. I am going to assume that you are talking about acquiring moral truth; being moved by “grace”.
So let me throw something at you.
There is a difference between innocence and decency, in the adult at least, and there is a difference between innocence and fatuousness or obtuseness.
A dog can spot a bad person, cannot get more innocent than that. A young child quickly spots one too, if they are insightful. These insights are not learned, and they guarantee no morality to those that have them.
ThR innocent of yours could well turn into a master criminal himself you know, once the scales have dropped from HIS eyes. You low-life can be redeemed, or may not be a low-life at all, just an unfortunate. His youthful contact with evil and despair might just drive him toward God and what is good in himself. You model is so behavioral. Many a person comes from a “loving and protective” family have turned out to be a viper.
We are all sinners. In adults, true morality comes from a conscious assent to moral codes; in the primary case to acknowledged absolutes of a religious nature, and in the secondary case in emulation of exemplary human beings, and these exemplars generally come by their morality by way of the primary case–by way of conscious assent to religious truth. This is what morality and true “good will” stems from. Goodness comes from overcoming the evil within oneself, not from a lack of exposure to evil. Good will comes from acknowledging this struggle in others. To do this one must have clear knowledge of oneself, and, to the Christian at least, the gift of grace.
Exposure in childhood to proper morality is deeply helpful, but decency is not merely a matter of following examples. The human soul is much to filled with sin to merely be guided past those sins by a nurturing environment or moral exemplars.
In some sense man is lower than and animal, for an animal is truly innocent, it cannot sin. But man has the potential to be far higher than an animal: he may overcome the evil with in him and be redeemed. He can turn from evil and willfully do good. He can in some sense come to know the meaning of his actions. This is the gift and challenge of being a human being. In this we get a small taste of the moral nature of God. This is what is meant when it is said of us the we are “made in the image of God”. A high gift indeed.
It is to achieve this that we so deeply value liberty. It is to met this challenge that we wish to save the Republic.
At least that is how I see it.
Mar 3, 2009 - 6:39 pmKA-CHOW!
Dont get me wrong, Wrechard gets most things right... but on somethings he has difficulty seeing things from an externally objective position and remains trapped within his own experiences.
the exchange continues...
51. wretchard:
The old-time Cathecists used to warn us that temptation never came to you as something blatantly ugly. It would always be coated in something sweet. CS Lewis argued that the devil knew something even better: he would convince you he didn’t exist. But these days what’s been stood on its head is our description of dangerous things. In the movies we can recognize the villain 9 times out of 10 simply on the basis of his appearance. With rare exceptions, Tom Cruise is the hero. With almost no exceptins, Jack Palance used to be the villain. We are conditioned to thinking of the handsome guys, the good dancers, the folks with the clever repartee as the ‘heroes’; and if you’re ugly, then you “look the part”.
But reality isn’t like that. Good and bad guys come in all shapes and sizes, like they always have. But somehow we’ve lost the ability to discern the difference. If Obama turns out to be something other than what we think he is, it will not have been because the world has suddenly become evil or perverted, or that God is punishing us for our crookedness. No. It will have been because we’ve lost the ability to see what used to be used to obvious to people in harder times.
He looked the part of the good guy. Ergo he was the good guy. Maybe he is the good guy, but I refuse to accept it on the basis of appearances. To my mind the key questions are: what are the odds that a politician who grew up and prospered in Chicago can be a Lightworker? If BHO were pitched as a better than average politician from his millieu I’d find it plausible. But to claim he’s the untainted one. That’s pushing the likelihood envelope.
But how do you make these judgments? Can we really expect everyone to be so cynical — I did not say self-recognizing — but cynical as in one who believes that “human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest”? It takes disappointment and hard knocks to accept the sad fact about humans: to recognize their salvability and damnation; to see them both as fallen and as angels. Consider why cops come to think the way they do. It has nothing to do with self-recognition. It’s the sad consequence of having seen perhaps more than person should.
The media had a special responsibility to ask questions about both John McCain and Barack Obama. They were our cops. They were the guys we relied on to ask “tough questions”. Peer under the hood. Kick the tires. I’m not wholly convinced they did their job. But for those who believed they did, well BHO passed all the tests. The media swooned over him. He was the handsome guy. The tall guy. The man who danced well. He had a baritone. What more was there to look for.
That’s why I think many people voted for him in absolute good faith, like they would buy a product with good reviews and smart packaging. Who but a guy of a certain type would shake the box and hear the broken springs? The bottom line is that I don’t think any judgment should attach to those who chose BHO. And I have many friends who did, who are probably far better human beings than I. Yes, you are right that it’s about grace. There but for grace go so many.
Mar 3, 2009 - 7:47 pm52. JAK:
People have no faith in evil, it must be proven.
Mar 3, 2009 - 7:56 pm53. Mongoose:
It takes disappointment and hard knocks to accept the sad fact about humans: to recognize their salvability and damnation; to see them both as fallen and as angels.
No, it takes grace. Often one as to go through hard knocks to get to the point where ones pride can be silenced to the point that we are ready to receive it.
This was my point, and I was righ[t]–at least to a degree–the notion of grace is what you are grappling with here,.
Mar 3, 2009 - 8:14 pm57. Mongoose:
WRETCHARD, there is nothing of the human that we should not see. Nothing that we should not squarely look at. What we see need not fill us with cynicism.
No one is beyond redemption.
The irony of our culture is that we seem to be a nation of cynical fools … or gullible skeptics if you will. This is what happens when “true truth” (to borrow Francis Schaeffer’s term) is tossed out the window. People still have notions of good and bad, but the definitions are all over the place. To be skeptical of what is authentically good is just as foolish as to be gullible about what is authentically bad. I think we saw a lot of both behaviors in this election. Cynics paving the road smooth ahead of Obama, dupes skipping blithely along that smooth road behind him.
further excellent comments here, here and here
tommorrow I start on "the sub prime country crisis".
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