I Have No Idea: On Sarah Palin

We've been hearing a lot about false choices these days, especially from the man in the White House. Barack Obama seemingly loves mentioning the many "false choices" made by his predecessor's administration. And I have shown (see link above) that Mr. Obama fails to see the irony in his pop-pronouncements on false choices, since, according to his wife, his very career is built upon a patently false choice.

In keeping with Mr. Obama's penchant for criticizing false choices that are not false and for creating "true" choices that are indeed false, the Democratic Party's statement yesterday regarding Sarah Palin's sudden announcement of her resignation from her Alaska governor's seat is exemplary:

Either Sarah Palin is leaving the people of Alaska high and dry to pursue her long shot national political ambitions or she simply can’t handle the job now that her popularity has dimmed and oil revenues are down. Either way - her decision to abandon her post and the people of Alaska who elected her continues a pattern of bizarre behavior that more than anything else may explain the decision she made today. [emphasis added]

The great and logical minds of the DNC have no problem creating such a false Either/Or, in large part because such minds are neither great nor logical. If I were to advise my readers to meditate on the DNC statement as if it contained profound religious truths -- I am not and it doesn't -- I am certain that readers would have some experience approaching epiphany: The Democrats who issued this statement are incredibly stupid and vapid. And petty.

Just think: the DNC has NO IDEA -- none! -- as to why Ms. Palin has suddenly resigned. And yet, like spiritualists probing through animal scat, they've divined the reasons behind Ms. Palin's actions: She is either overly-ambitious or she is incompetent. But note what the DNC has actually said (and they don't even realize it): Her resignation is solely due to her being a fool. There is no real or even false Either/Or here. Since Ms. Palin's alleged bid for national office represents a "long shot," at least according to the DNC, she is a fool for reaching well beyond her merits. And since she is leaving office because her job has become too difficult, she was a fool to have ever thought she merited the governorship. Really, the DNC's syllogism is dizzying in its rigor:

A. Either p or p
B. p
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C. Therefore, p

What is amazing is that Ms. Palin's alleged "pattern of bizarre behavior," as the DNC so confidently puts it, has not been shown to be either a pattern or bizarre. But the Democrats' demonstrable fixation on and targeting of all things Palin indicate a clear pattern of bizarre behavior among Democrats who accuse her of behaving in a bizarre pattern.

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WHAT IS MS. PALIN THINKING?

If this question can be asked without resorting to the cheap-shot answer -- Ms. Palin is not thinking because she can't think -- then it must be asked in humility: As of right now, no one but Ms. Palin and her husband know what she's thinking. I have no idea what's going on, do you?

I think a sane person of decent intellect and breeding, possessing even a modicum of compassion, would choose reticence and not pompous declamations upon hearing of Ms. Palin's resignation. Is it not possible that she is ill? Is it not at all possible that someone in her family is ill? Perhaps her marriage is in disrepair; perhaps the battering she has personally experienced from the media and the DNC has truly taken its toll on her children, and thus, on her. And if the latter is the case, then Ms. Palin's decision shows an immense amount of competence and gives the lie to the assertion she can't handle the office of governor. A good governor would indeed resign to protect her family from the unjust abuse that constantly comes her way.

I am not suggesting here she has not some other plans. I am not defending or promoting her ambitions (or lack thereof). My fascination, really, has always been about how her enemies -- and they are enemies -- perceive her, and how they've treated her (and her family). In fact, I will admit that Ms. Palin's decision prima facie spells doom.

But I am also quick to point out that if the media and the DNC pile on top of her and there is some sad story behind this decision; or if Ms. Palin makes some stunning announcement in the coming days about an appointment or position that is truly to her political advantage, both the media and the DNC will look incredibly foolish, weak, and, as already said, petty.

I can't help admit that when I read and hear the ridiculously over-wrought and presumptuous criticisms of Ms. Palin, I am hoping she gets the last laugh.

We'll see, of course. But in the scheme of things, at least for me, what Sarah Palin does or does not do matters little. This is not to say she is not important. It is merely an admission about what fills my life. And what does not fill it.

Bottom line: I am hoping that there is not some sort of tragedy behind her announcement. You would think that would be everyone's hope in America. Sadly, it is not.

©2009/Contratimes. All rights reserved.

Shifting Sands; Obama's Idealism; The Court; The Water Board

Perhaps the next party defection Americans will hear about is George McGovern, the once-upon-a-time "'most liberal' nominee for president in American history." Admittedly, this writer has over-stated the case. But Mr. McGovern sure sounds like a true free-marketeer in this comment:

My perspective on the so-called Employee Free Choice Act is informed by life experience. After leaving the Senate in 1981, I spent some time running a hotel. It was an eye-opening introduction to something most business operators are all-too familiar with -- the difficulty of controlling costs and setting prices in a weak economy. Despite my trust in government, I would have been alarmed by an outsider taking control of basic management decisions that determine success or failure in a business where I had invested my life savings.

Sounds like Michael Steele needs to make a phone call.

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Mr. Obama is happy to talk about false choices, particularly those choices around America's ideals and national security. As already noted in this place, Mr. Obama is rather guilty of making his own false choices: national security is one of America's ideals. But excuse the digression.

What peeves about Mr. Obama's comment that ideals trump everything is the disembodied-ness of his philosophy. He speaks in terms that are rather neo-Platonic, where what is best, pure and (most) real exists outside the corporeality of life, of the stuff of the world. Mr. Obama has intimated in his discussions regarding the alleged "torture memos" that America's ideals would be compromised, sullied and damaged if the very corporeal and bodily act of slapping was ever committed against a known terrorist or enemy combatant. What is more important is not the flesh-and-blood reality of living and breathing Americans. What is important is a transcendent, intangible, theoria: a realm of perfect Ideas.

Another way to look at it is to simply think of pacifism. A pacifist -- really -- is a person interested in self-preservation, in moral self-preservation. The pacifist says that he would rather die -- or let someone else die -- than suffer a moral stain on his ideals. Turning the other cheek, then, becomes a practical act of self-congratulation, where the pacifist receives glory when measured against a reified abstraction: his moral code. To hell with the flesh-and-blood empiricism of life, the heart-beating apparatus of human existence. What matters is idealism, the realm of the disembodied spirit rapturously contemplating glorious principles. To the idealist, Smith must never compromise his values in protecting Jones, for if he does, he will lose his "moral standing" in the world.

Sadly, Jones beheaded by a terrorist using a jack-knife before a TV camera is a "thought" too mundane, too tactile, for the idealists among us. "Harsh" interrogation methods are an affront to America's disembodied self-congratulation. Americans must feel good about themselves; they must preserve their self-righteousness by never defending themselves in ways unbecoming.

Ultimately, it's not the actual people that make America great, that embody American exceptionalism. America's greatness is found in its cold, lifeless abstractions.

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Some folks have suggested that U.S. Supreme Justice David Souter has been a disappointment. Perhaps he has been. But it's interesting how his legacy (so far) has been perceived. The common reprise by conservatives is that Mr. Souter was either a conservative who shifted radically to the left or he never was a conservative in the first place. Of course this sort of assessment is to be set against the apparent values of the president who nominated him. In this case, or so it goes, Mr. Souter did not meet the expectations of George H. W. Bush. Souter shifted his position or, even worse, he concealed his position from the light of day.

But something is missing from this assessment, and it is that George H. W. Bush himself shifted his position during the Reagan years on key political issues. In 1979-80, as G. H. W. Bush began his first campaign for president, Mr. Bush was deemed by many conservatives too liberal for the position. Interestingly, Mr. Bush shifted right, ever so slowly, on things like abortion. Cynics felt he did this solely for political expedience, and they may be correct. But if they are correct, then it follows that Mr. Souter is not at all a disappointment, since he, like his sponsor, actually believed something other than represented. Perhaps Mr. Souter behaved exactly the way a George H. W. Bush appointment should have behaved. Perhaps his jurisprudential legacy is not an embarrassment at all.

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Remember, waterboarding is so torturous, so utterly evil, those who oppose its use water-board themselves in protest. It is also so horrific, so damaging, that journalists get paid to endure it so they can report about its dreadfulness. Clearly you can see how such a thing compromises America's loftiest ideals.

Peace.

BG

©2009. All Rights Reserved.

Barack Obama And The "False Choice"

In Mr. Obama's inaugural address we find this statement:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

It's a stunning bit of vapidity: safety is one of our ideals.

And in Mr. Obama's speech regarding the use (and destruction) of human embryos for scientific inquiry, we find this statement:

But in recent years, when it comes to stem cell research, rather than furthering discovery, our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values. In this case, I believe the two are not inconsistent.

The stunning vapidity apparently never ends: No one in the Bush administration ever created the false choice described by Mr. Obama. For President Bush, science informed his ethics, and vice versa: It is science that shows us that life begins at conception, and it is our ethics that draws a clear moral line between the willful destruction of human life for unknown medical gains and research that is not so inhuman. Mr. Obama even acknowledged the "unknown" in his speech the day he repealed Bush's ban:

At this moment, the full promise of stem cell research remains UNKNOWN, and it should not be OVERSTATED. But scientists believe these tiny cells† MAY have the POTENTIAL to help us... [emphasis added]

Of course, lost in Mr. Obama's emptiness is the unavoidable fact that the Bush administration PERMITTED embryonic stem cell research to continue; President Bush only limited the number of embryonic lines that could be generated (and the administration funded stem cell research as well).

In other words, only Mr. Obama has created the false choice: the choice between his false-choice straw man and the actual facts. There was no false choice save the one in his own imagination.

A REAL FALSE CHOICE

Lastly, the capstone: Here is what Michelle Obama said of her husband on the campaign trail; this was meant to sell him to us as something special. Check out this skewed logic:

The first major decision he had to make in his life, after college - "Do I go to Wall Street and make money, or do I work for the people?" - Barack worked as a community organizer in some of the toughest neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago.

Here, finally, we have evidence of a legitimate False Choice. Mr. Obama's alleged quandary is utterly manufactured. He is alleged to be unbelievably bright, and yet apparently not quite bright enough to see his false either/or. For there is no evidence that a man going to "Wall Street" to "make money" does not "work for the people." In fact, a good case could be made that a Wall Street job is far better for "the people" than community organizing in Chicago. Regardless, the point is clear: Michelle and Barack Obama presented themselves as better people than those who they falsely believe don't "work for the people"; and if Ms. Obama's testimony regarding her husband is to be trusted, then she and her husband have either fallen prey to their own false choice, or they've pandered to the envious masses by giving themselves props concealed in a false choice: We are for the people, and our refusal to work on Wall Street -- though we could have! -- proves this.

And yet, somehow, as workers for the people who rejected the allure of Wall Street, they've still managed to become millionaires.

It is now quite clear, I should think, that a colossal false choice was made some time around November 4, 2008.

Perhaps this also makes clear why Mr. Obama looks with such disdain on those who've been more successful than he. Envy nearly always poses as social justice -- for the good "of the people." In fact, it seems perfectly obvious that the whole of Mr. Obama's economic policies rests upon his most fundamental false choice.

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†In the third Obama quote above, I placed a †. I wanted to draw your attention to the Orwellian diminution Mr. Obama provides: he uses a reductionistic euphemism to distract you from the fact that these are HUMAN EMBRYOS that are being destroyed; that these cells are the very rudiments and foundations of each and every human life that has ever existed or ever will exist. Each of us IS one of these "tiny cells", and each of us WAS one of these "tiny cells." This "great man" believes the weakest among us are strictly here to serve those who happen to have the privilege of walking around, you know, the advantaged; the strong. The embryos in power.

And why DID he repeal the executive order? You know why. The answer is almost genomic: $.

Mr. Obama is so disturbing precisely because he has been presented as anything but.

Peace through dissent.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.