I go to IOZ for my considerable anti-political-romanticism needs:
David Brooks like totally like hates Bobby Jindal. Meanwhile Barack Obama remains Superjesus Black Reagan. He’s got good delivery. Let’s not say otherwise.
The . . . what would the Teevee call it? . . . optics were embarrassing. Congress? Men fit to be slaves, as Tiberius would’ve had it. All that leaping up to applaud. Watching adults seek to ingratiate themselves in so obsequious a manner makes me a bit queasy. What must this Roman spectacle look like to the rest of the world? The Elder Gods of the Senate may just have better quads than me, and I make yoga every goddamn day, what with all that rising and reposing. Lord above, it reminded me of High Holy Day services in my youth, except that we stood to acknowledge God and His Torah. Purim, appropriately, is right around the corner.
We will be civilized when national politics is what local politics is in my parts: relatively comptetent public administration with occasional catfights.
I was watching Unforgiven last night, one of my favorite movies. President James Garfield has just been shot and killed by that disappointed Oneidan Charles Guiteau. Gun-for-hire English Bob — the “Duke of Death,” who specializes in murdering wayward Chinese for the railroads — takes the occasion of Garfield’s demise to bait Americans at every opportunity by suggesting that they might prevent further presidenticide by rejecting their quaint notions of republican equality and just get a King–even a Queen! Hey, let’s go to the text!
ENGLISH BOB: … there’s a dignity in royalty… a majesty… that precludes the likelihood of assassination. Why, if you were to point a pistol at a King or a Queen, sir, I can assure you your hand would shake as though palsied…
BARBER: I wouldn’t point no pistol at nobody, sir.
ENGLISH BOB: A wise policy. But if you did, I can assure you, the sight of royalty would cause you to dismiss all thoughts of bloodshed and stand… in awe. Whereas, a president… I mean, why not shoot a president?
Because it would be murder, of course. But that’s no reason for a murderer. But, these days, we’ve got the majesty of quasi-royalty. Turns out Americans long ago accepted the spirit if not the letter of English Bob’s advice–for all the good it did Kennedy and Reagan. I’m afraid that this doesn’t prove that Americans are not impressed by majesty, just that we’re prone to ideological derangement, trigger-happy, and impressed by Jody Foster even more. (God, how did I get on this riff? Please please please no one shoot the president!)
For your further jaundiced-eye needs, here’s our nation’s preeminent imperial president skeptic, Gene Healy:
Today’s president is a constitutional monstrosity: a national talk-show host with nuclear weapons.
And so it has been for about a century now. [ADDED: I mean, not the teevee and the nukes in particular, but you get me.] I believe the executive of the de facto constitution is a creature of technological contingency–the invention of mass media–and so may be rather inconsistent with earlier American ideals and the methods of political limitation built into the de jure constitution. The hard question is whether life under the de facto constitution has changed our ideals so much that we cannot now conceive of officially moderating the role of the “our regular programming has been preempted” executive.
I think your “I go to the IOZ” link actually goes to Gene Healy. (feel free to delete!)
Though, I did appreciate that there were commenters to Healy's piece that called him a neo-con. That made me laught.
Haha, your link links to this Wonkette story:
“Aaugh, David Brooks, cruel temptor! He writes these laughable columns that say 'maybe the President should take a cautious, incrementalist approach to address the SWEEPING TSUNAMI OF FINANCIAL RUIN that threatens to cripple America for a generation,' but then he talks such hilarious smack about Bobby Jindal.”
A subtle self-immolation, Will?
Will:
This is something I'm currently working on, and so I really dig the sentiments. This is probably my favorite post of yours.
What's particularly disconcerting is watching my Political Science colleagues–the people who are supposed to study, and therefore at least somewhat transcend, American politics–grovel with the most childish of them. I heard an almost-tenured American scholar exclaim last night that she wanted to “hug her tv.”
There should be data on the age at which libertarian-types leave the home, compared to non-libs. Someone should compile that data.
So subtle I don't understand!
“I heard an almost-tenured American scholar exclaim last night that she wanted to “hug her tv.”"
But she didn't because she realized at the last second that the President is not actually in there? Yes. This is what we are dealing with.
I live in Los Angeles – so I get the worst of this. Someone I knew is a full-blown Obama idolater. You bet your bottom dollar she had the original Shepherd Fairey pasted to the rear gate of her Range Rover (one wonders how Barack would feel about such automotive profligacy). I took it with a grain of salt as campaign support. But then she said, come January,
“I just ordered the new Shepherd Fairey Inaugural edition.”
I don't know if this was a sticker or a poster, but the bum rush AFTER the man took power frightened, yet didn't surprise me. I honestly think Obama has such a level of trust and blind faith from his electorate, as well as the quasi-intellectual pundits of the left, he could get away with anything.
Truthfully, there are baby-boomer, liberal Yale graduates I know who protested Vietnam, and were repulsed by the draft, who, when I asked them if Obama reinstated the draft under the guise of his Service ethos (an unrealistic hypothetical, granted), they acquiesced, “Well, I would trust that it would be for the best,” or for God's sake “You should be expected to give something back.”
These are the people who burned their service cards and moved to Canada, who turned the Chicago convention into a riot. The fact that Obama has inspired in the left establishment this level of cognitive dissonance is ludicrous. And when I say that politics is the least important part of my life, they foam at the maw like rabid, baying hounds.
I bet going back in time we'd find plenty of people on the right that were exhibiting similar traits in 2000, in terms of ideological hypocrisy just look at spending, corruption, separation of powers etc in that admin. I personally think that a lot on the left were so fed up with the Bush administration that these “events” around Obama are cathartic and the luster will fade over time.
There is also a meaningful difference between a sort of “civil” draft ala current day Germany and being conscripted to fight in a war you don't believe in.
I'm personally unswayed by the rhetoric on TV that's he the next hitler/anti-christ and there will be a military coup against him for violating the constitution blah blah. Just give it time and hopefully perceptions of him will get a bit more grounded (on both sides)
Geez, someone just got emotional at one of those “yes the Bush administration is really gone” moments.
I'm sure most people at some point in there lives have anthropomorphized some object.
An interesting aside:
I was talking with someone in Canada about how the whole “Queen” thing is silly in this day and age, and their response was quite interesting. Basically because all of the trappings of the office are in the Queen, people are quite free to lambast their PM. In the US our president is the “face of the nation” etc etc – and this leads to a (potentially) dangerous amount of free reign in varoius ways, not just in Obamania but post 9/11 when critiquing Bush policy was seen as being unpatriotic. The whole rally around the flag mentality would be less prone to excess if our executive leader was a bit more distant from said flag.
Not saying I think royalty would work in the US, and not to degrade the historical importance of our constitutional government, but food for thought perhaps. It seems obvious in hindsight but I'd either forgotten or not hopped aboard that train of thought before.
I completely agree that conservatives engaged in some ideological hypocrisy, but what strikes me as different (though, certainly no more noble) is that the right has had a certain hypocrisy as regards political power for quite some time. In fact, it would seem that the right has been a fair weather fan of constitutional limits since as long as the Nixon administration. It is only because the left claims an ideological hegemony on civil liberties in the name of various interest groups, for better or worse, that it seems more striking for them to shift simply having been enthralled by their leader. And it is precisely because, through thick and thin, the left has more or less adhered to a certain principled defense of select civil liberties, that a sudden compromise for the sake of power is more craven than seeing the GOP behave as they always have. At least Republicans will admit that they think there are limits to the First Amendment, while the left unconditionally preaches it, and then establishes the Fairness Doctrine.
And I obviously do not believe that Obama will become Hitler or the Antichrist. Now do I believe that there will be a draft. I was using the language in Rahm Emmanualle's Civil Service manifesto to propose a hypothetical to serve as an object lesson, and as I said before, it proved correct … the left will most likely support anything the president does, regardless of personal principle.
In a way it is similar to Bush. He was a Republican after 8 long years of tawdry, semen-soaked liberalism. That was too good to pass up in the name of hair splitting.
I think most of the left would not be cool with yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
It's odd how the big government party has more ownership of civil liberties issues than the limited government / individualist one. But yes, I think there is a definite “trust that he has the plan/answers” which I think is part of a particularly poignant honeymoon on the left and perhaps fear of our current economic situation. I for one don't really grasp the economic details, and judging by the wide spectrum of analysis out there a lot of the “experts” don't seem to have either… so the average voters don't have much else except trust in a sense. Krugman, the ACLU, a few “progressive” blogs/sites (read the obama bashing at http://www.agonist.org/), are critical of him. I can recall the outcry over FISA and recent concern over the UK torture case, waffling on executive order privileges re: Rove/Miers (a decision for the justice department? WHY let the executive branch decide it's privelege?).
You have closed minded partisans and down the line voters on both sides. I'm just leery of this “THE LEFT” that I get lumped into sometimes haha. We've got our secret e-mails and we're coming to overturn the nation! rawr! Seriously, I just say give it a little time… if people actually get his message it's that the US parties as professional sports franchises isn't healthy and the poeple need to give our representative a little kick in the ass sometimes.
I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth re Hitler/Antichrist, just pointing out the opposite of the “hero worship” out there now.
I'm in no way going to defend Clinton's personal failings, or his perjury, but at least he left the country in fairly good shape. His foreign policy was kind of whacked, but to be fair the role of the US post coldwar was up in the air and it didn't have the consequences of this New American Century. But yes, on the socially conservative front I'm sure there was a similar euphoria to him being out of office.
Thanks for the response, this seems a pleasant place to hash out issues.
“I bet going back in time we'd find plenty of people on the right that were exhibiting similar traits in 2000″
Er… you were alive in 2000, yes? You seriously can't recall whether or not there were people fawning over Bush the way they're fawning over Obama?
Just to recap for you: There weren't. Bush had plenty of flaws (duh), but he didn't have Obama's biggest flaw — legions of worshipful acolytes.
Obama's followers, and that is the right word, are the biggest threat in this whole mess. It's the ultimate triumph of democracy over liberty, and it is everything the founders warned us about.
I'm not too sure about what the core of the blog is. What's with all the Latin stuff? How do you expect me, the “common man” to understand all this foreign b…….t ?( de jure, de facto). As a mere Brit. I need someone to tell me “like it is”. Why is everything made so complicated these days. It's almost as if those who have a message(politicians, corporate spokesmen, et al (oops I have fallen on my own sword!) feel the need to complicate, confuse, so that the intended recipients of the message end up”switching off”. Do you think this is intentional?. One about old WG,monosyallabic he might have been, but one couldn't get confused about the message because there wasn't one. Now this Obama, well, hasn't he got a way with words?
Man, I like this “Col Cal”, doen't he really captures the essence of the Clinton era.? Just visualise it … “semen-soaked liberalism”, Wow! Prizes for the most apposite epitaph of President Bush's era- shock & awe?-. What about President Obama? Would the “return of the Keynesian kid”, do it?
It's hard to top anything as maudlin as “compassionate conservatism” – perfect, I would say, as a huckster's pitch for Johnsonian liberalism masquerading as a GOP version of the Third Way.
I'm not too sure about what the core of the blog is. What's with all the Latin stuff? How do you expect me, the “common man” to understand all this foreign b…….t ?( de jure, de facto). As a mere Brit. I need someone to tell me “like it is”. Why is everything made so complicated these days. It's almost as if those who have a message(politicians, corporate spokesmen, et al (oops I have fallen on my own sword!) feel the need to complicate, confuse, so that the intended recipients of the message end up”switching off”. Do you think this is intentional?. One about old WG,monosyallabic he might have been, but one couldn't get confused about the message because there wasn't one. Now this Obama, well, hasn't he got a way with words?
Man, I like this “Col Cal”, doen't he really captures the essence of the Clinton era.? Just visualise it … “semen-soaked liberalism”, Wow! Prizes for the most apposite epitaph of President Bush's era- shock & awe?-. What about President Obama? Would the “return of the Keynesian kid”, do it?
It's hard to top anything as maudlin as “compassionate conservatism” – perfect, I would say, as a huckster's pitch for Johnsonian liberalism masquerading as a GOP version of the Third Way.