Peeking In The Tent

I spend a great deal of time prowling the internet.  I still like to get both viewpoints because I hold both liberal and conservative views on myriad of topics.  I dress more to the left, clearly, but depending on the correct fit of the outfit, I will dress right.  And so, I come to the National Review Online's group blog, The Corner.  Yesterday, Mark R. Levin wrote what must be the longest screed of obtuse misunderstanding by Right Thinkers to date.  I post the whole dreadful thing because I'd really like you to know what's out there.  I comment because it annoyed me and annoyance for me is a huge motivator.  

Let's start, shall we?

I've been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here.

I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places.

Odd.  The country under the leadership of a Republican administration, has surrendered the spirit, if not sections of the constitution in whole in an effort to subjugate the ephemeral concept of terror.  What is known beyond doubt is that e-mails can be read - the liberty of privacy usurped in this pursuit.  Phone calls can be tapped, without reason or what used to be due process.  People have been imprisoned for years without trial.  Lies have been told.  Torture has been performed.  That is what is known by those who keep just one eye and ear open.  What is not known?

No matter.  Complaining about potential loss of liberty at this point is stupid.  Liberty is lost.  

Levin is correct, though, about liberty's loss being voluntary.  Save for a brave few, of whom I was not one, no one has stood up to condemn loudly what Americans who love liberty should.  We have played along, cowed by the enormity of the task and because, for most of us, it didn't affect us.  We wrote no incendiary e-mails.  Our phone calls were stateside.  We weren't Afghani taxi drivers nor did we know any.

But what if we vented our displeasure with this loss of liberty on a blog or in an e-mail?  Who decides what constitutes incendiary?  Is it equitable all around?  Are the e-mails from AryanSupremacyBrotherhoodNationAndBeerPalace.com as rigorously scrutinized as MarxmanMuslimAnd71Virgins.com?

Recklessness and irrationality must be subjective though, because where I see the reckless ambition of Sen. McCain's campaign, he sees a steady hand; where I see irrational behavior, he sees a Vice President.

I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can't explain themselves in an intelligent way.

The contention here is that newspapers that haven't endorsed a democrat in their history and those whom they considered colleagues and like-thinkers, have been seduced by the pull of...what, exactly?  Obama's Siren Song of National Ruination?  A Siren's Song producing manic endorsements of a candidate who is completely out of the conservative ideological wheelhouse.  A Siren's Song only Levin, his fellow bloggers, and true believers are immune to?  Occam's Razor just leapt to my mind.

(For shits and giggles, let's look a list of all those seduced by Obama's Siren's Song.)

One cannot speak to what would persuade Levin because persuasion is like faith; you can't really say what it is but will know it when you feel it.  But illogical?  I will defend Levin's right to not agree with Colin Powell's reasons for endorsing Obama, but illogical?  No.  To call them so is to glaringly point out how illogical Levin's logic might be.  Even ascribing Powell's endorsement of one brother giving a terrorist fist jab to another sets forth a logic.

I'm trying desperately to not be mean-spirited, so I won't address what Levin might consider intelligent.

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world.  I dare say this is ominous stuff.

And yet he cannot point to one crazed Obama follower screaming "Death to the infidels."  "Messiah" is the Right's ascription.  Audience members faint because it's hot.  The flags are pretty.  The seal was stupid.  The graphic is, dare I say, hopeful.  The same singing children can say the Pledge of Allegiance.  The teenagers' behavior is rooted in African-American fraternities step shows, something about which he knows NOTHING, and what's wrong with professions they see as now open to them because of Obama's candidacy.  Don't criticize lack of world travel and not like it when it happens.  And where the fuck does Levin's citizenry hail from?  Mars?

Even the media are drawn to the allure that is Obama. Yes, the media are liberal. Even so, it is obvious that this election is different. The media are open and brazen in their attempts to influence the outcome of this election. I've never seen anything like it. Virtually all evidence of Obama's past influences and radicalism — from Jeremiah Wright to William Ayers — have been raised by non-traditional news sources. The media's role has been to ignore it as long as possible, then mention it if they must, and finally dismiss it and those who raise it in the first place. It's as if the media use the Obama campaign's talking points — its preposterous assertions that Obama didn't hear Wright from the pulpit railing about black liberation, whites, Jews, etc., that Obama had no idea Ayers was a domestic terrorist despite their close political, social, and working relationship, etc. — to protect Obama from legitimate and routine scrutiny.

It's been said before by those more eloquent than I, but Rev. Wright's sound bite was taken out of context by those eager to paint a stripe on Obama that is not there.  Rev. Wright is an ex-marine who at one time was responsible in part for the health of a president, who served his country and his congregation well.  Levin knows NOTHING of black liberation theology as evidenced by his discounting of its existence as unpatriotic.  When a faction of society in recognizing its needs chooses to extol all in itself that makes it valuable, pulls itself up by the proverbial bootstraps, cognizant of and dedicated to avoiding the tricks and traps in its path, yet does not lay silent about their existence...some people get uncomfortable.  They aren't used to people standing up and calling what they see what they see.

Plus, Levin clearly hasn't been to a black church, or a spirited white church for that matter, where it gets good to the pastor and he says things you don't agree with, but it's your fellowship community.  You take what you can use and leave the rest.  It may be presumptuous for me to assume that Levin is Jewish, but I've been to Temple where the cantor sings so sweetly I could cry and then the rabbi says something about the role of women that flints off my backbone.  You take what you can use and leave the rest.  Does he agree with every single solitary thing his rabbi says?

Obama has subjected himself to scrutiny, explained his relationships, and disavowed a friend when he acted a fool.  News sources, outside of those Levin deems non-traditional, know this.  In a 24-hour news cycle, the story of Obama's relationships had its heyday.  Is it possible that a news culture, desperate for any drama for the sake of its ratings, would ignore a legitimate story if it was there?  It's certainly Levin's right to keep screeching, but honestly...Occam's Razor!

And because journalists have also become commentators, it is hard to miss their almost uniform admiration for Obama and excitement about an Obama presidency. So in the tank are the media for Obama that for months we've read news stories and opinion pieces insisting that if Obama is not elected president it will be due to white racism. And, of course, while experience is crucial in assessing Sarah Palin's qualifications for vice president, no such standard is applied to Obama's qualifications for president. (No longer is it acceptable to minimize the work of a community organizer.) Charles Gibson and Katie Couric sought to humiliate Palin. They would never and have never tried such an approach with Obama. But beyond the elites and the media, my greatest concern is whether this election will show a majority of the voters susceptible to the appeal of a charismatic demagogue. This may seem a harsh term to some, and no doubt will to Obama supporters, but it is a perfectly appropriate characterization.

Where to begin.  Obama, bless his heart, does not and has not and probably will not address racism in the context of causing him to lose an election.  He has always maintained that yes, there are people who will not vote for him because he's black, but to concern oneself with that is self-defeating.  The media calls racism when it encounters it.  To deny that racism may be part of an Obama defeat is stupid.  Of course it is, though it may not be the main reason.  But it is still there.  None of the articles Levin may refer to point to racism as the sole reason for an Obama loss.

Experience may be lacking in both Obama and Palin, but one thinks and the other winks.  (Sorry.  It sometimes writes itself.)

As to Palin's humiliation, did Levin watch the interviews?  Gibson and Couric had to do nothing but ask questions.  Palin humiliated herself all on her own.  They have been parsed to death, but if after listening to Palin's answers, you do not walk away thinking that her thought processes are seriously challenged, then I'm going to go all elitist on you and say that your thought processes are seriously challenged.  Or you're denying reality to suit your party's purpose.

A demagogue is defined as:  an orator or political leader, who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people.  I will give Levin the point that Obama has aroused emotions and passions in people.  To look at the volunteer force of Obama is to see what has been awakened in the populace.  A need to be involved.  Levin continually points to positive attributes as negative.  I will not concede that he inflames the prejudices of the people.  That province is held by the McCain/Palin campaign alone.  They seem to only make a point about themselves by criticizing Obama.

Obama's entire campaign is built on class warfare and human envy. The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government.

Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich." The value of his physical and intellectual labor must be confiscated in greater amounts for the good of the proletariat (the middle class). And so it is that the middle class, the birth-child of capitalism, is both celebrated and enslaved — for its own good and the greater good.

The "hope" Obama represents, therefore, is not hope at all. It is the misery of his utopianism imposed on the individual. Unlike past Democrat presidential candidates, Obama is a hardened ideologue. He's not interested in playing around the edges. He seeks "fundamental change," i.e., to remake society. And if the Democrats control Congress with super-majorities led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, he will get much of what he demands. The question is whether enough Americans understand what's at stake in this election and, if they do, whether they care. Is the allure of a charismatic demagogue so strong that the usually sober American people are willing to risk an Obama presidency? After all, it ensnared Adelman, Kmiec, Powell, Fried, and numerous others.

And while America will certainly survive, it will do so, in many respects, as a different place.

It's interesting that the author of this toe-the-lining screed calls Obama an ideologue, but whatever.  I've grown weary.  I would make the same points over and over again, as Mr. Levin does.  When I go to vote on November 4th, I will do my best to not anticipate what further ludicrous illogic will be forthcoming from Mr. Levin and the "thinkers" at The Corner.