Polls and Denial
Not just a river in Egypt, they say. Me, I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that America has its heart set on electing The One no matter what. The biggest issue is The Economy. It doesn’t matter that Obama has done nothing to help the economy, offers no credible proposals to help it in the future, that he voted present while his party actively endangered it three years ago, and that every serious economist who has examined his proposals (aside from his general hostility to free enterprise as a concept) agrees that his massive intervention he proposes in the future would almost certainly exacerbate it. It’s the economy, stupid, and Democrats own that issue, stupid, so stop thinking about it and just vote for hopeychange, stupid.
Nor does it matter that Obama promises to be the most rabidly anti-gun President in history, even to the point of siccing his lawyers on any TV or radio stations threatening to run an ad that would point this out. Hope and change, man. Hope and change. Hope I don’t take your gun away, but if I do, then what the hell, that’s a change.
Marxian redistribution of wealth? No problem, just put it in cool talk. As surely as 63% of Americans under 5 believe in Santa Claus, 63% of those under 30 believe in “spreading the wealth” around, too. They probably wouldn’t if you mentioned Marx, just as the Obamabots in Harlem would never have supported John McCain’s positions if told that they were McCain’s rather than Obama’s. No matter, it’s Obama’s position so that’s cool. Everything Obama does is cool, by definition.
Disastrous foreign policy? Biden predicting manufactured crises just to test Obama’s mettle? Oh well, we all knew that was coming anyway, so let’s just let out a collective yawn and sing praises to The One. Besides, a weak foreign policy and a likable character make us a lot more popular abroad than an effective leader would. If JFK had truly stood up to Khrushchev, maybe there’d have been no Berlin Wall, no airlift, no famous “ick bin ein Berliner” speech, and the Germans wouldn’t have liked him any more than they like Bush today. We wouldn’t want that, would we? Move over, Fahrvergnügen, say hello to Hopenchangen.
Complete and utter lack of experience? That’s Sarah Palin’s issue, silly. It’s one thing to have a guy who gives good political speeches but has no executive experience in the Oval Office. That’s cool, man. Hope and change! It’s quite another to have someone who gives equally good political speeches but has some executive experience, just not as much as the grownups might want, and have that person position so that they probably won’t be President for several years to come, but theoretically could if something were to go disastrously wrong. So Palin owns the “unqualified” vote, and McCain is further disqualified for even daring to nominate her, while Obama has no qualification issues whatsoever (he’s been running for President, what other qualifications do you need?), nor is it a poor exercise of his judgment to be running for an office even he should know he’s not qualified for, not yet anyway.
Horrendous associations? Guilt by association, man. Not cool. Sitting in a racist pew for 20 years doesn’t make you an anti-white/anti-American racist any more than listening to Hitler makes you a Nazi or attending Klan rallies for 20 years makes you a racist. Hell, we elected Robert Byrd, didn’t we? Maybe he just liked wearing sheets and hanging around with other people dressed as ghosts. And a 10 year relationship with a terrorist doesn’t mean Obama is a terrorist himself, so how could it possibly mean anything else? Besides, none of this matters because McCain once met John Hagee, and may have even shaken his hand. Hope and change!
McQ has similar recollections of 1976. I was 9 then, so I’ll plead almost as much ignorance of that election cycle as Obama does of Ayers, but it sounds about right. Apparently, some lessons were meant to be learned the hard way.
UPDATE: Here’s more evidence from today’s Whizz-Urinal that things will get worse before they get better: a letter to the editor in support of Kay Hagan (and, presumably, Obama) yearns for the good old days of Jimmy Carter and his infamous “moral equivalent of war” (MEOW). This in a state that hasn’t gone Democrat since … Jimmy Carter. I guess some lessons aren’t meant to be learned, period.
UPDATE x2: Denial we can believe in? Me losing it? What say you?
UPDATE: TGirsch calls this post “hyperbole we can believe in.” Au contrary. If anything, the references to Marxian redistribution and the Warren Court were “hypobole,” if that’s a word. Unfortunately, it’s hypobole no one can (or will) believe in until it’s too late.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:29 am
The problem is that America has become so successful that people have unlearned the lessons our Founding Fathers learned and applied.
The normal state of affairs for man is dictatorship (in its many forms), famine, disease and war. America and Western Europe have been on vacation from that happy state of affairs for about 60 years so many (most?) hvae forgotten that lesson.
At least it’s the funniest end of civilization ever.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 am
I still think you’re presuming too much on the idea that a mention of “Marx” would queer the deal. I’m betting a lot of very young Obamabots wouldn’t know how to respond to the question: “What was the major economic component of Marxism?” but would be cool with it when explained to them (“fairness” !) and a lot of older ones want him precisely because of his promises of economic redistribution.
October 22nd, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Everybody’s missing the point. The word “racist” now means “disagreeing with Obama”. The new dictionaries will be distributed next January. It will be an offense not to have one.
Veeshir seems to have dropped in from the Middle Ages. Maybe in his world, evil is the norm. Not here.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Anwyn, I think you’re underestimating the power of hero worship. Witness Howard Stern’s right wing version of Obama, who was just as popular in Harlem as the real one. Yes, some voters – about 25% would be my guess – actually admire Marxist principles, as such. The other 25-35% (depending on which poll you believe) worship personalities, not principles. Attach the name “Marx” (Karl, not Groucho) to an idea and they hate it. Attach the name “Obama” and it’s the best thing since sliced bread.
Cf. partial privatization of Social Security, which fared extremely well in the polls when discussed in the abstract, but which tanked when described as The Bush Proposal.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Your “Whizz-Urinal” link is broken, FYI.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:19 pm
P.S. Rev. Wright’s rhetoric was on a par with Nazi or Klan rhetoric? That’s hyperbole we can believe in! :)
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Nazi, no. Klan, yes, but more importantly, here’s a concept you can believe in: analogies. Saying a:b::c:d does not mean that a is anything like c, or that b is anything like d. That’s because the whole point of an analogy is to compare the relationship between persons or things, not the persons or things themselves. For example, by noting who was the head of his respective state when, one could say that Roosevelt is to Hitler as Bush is to Merkel. That wouldn’t be equivalent to saying that Roosevelt is Hitler, any more than it would mean that Bush is a German woman (or that Merkel is an American man).
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:29 pm
I’m afraid that’s too clever by half. Unless you think your readers are stupid enough to believe that you picked Nazis and the Klan as purely random examples, and meant absolutely nothing by them — you could have just as easily said “any more than sitting in Shea Stadium every home game makes you a Mets fan,” but that wouldn’t have quite had the same punch, now would it have?
October 24th, 2008 at 7:28 am
Of course they’re not purely random examples. Trinity is a hate group, and not a baseball team, so analogies to other hate groups were more intuitive. But I’ll take the Mets analogy, sure. If anyone sat in Shea Stadium at every home game for 20 years, I’d say that makes him a much bigger fan of the Mets than I have ever been for any team myself. If that’s how you view Obama’s relationship to Jeremiah Wright, I’d say that’s pretty damned damning.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Trinity is a hate group
And there’s the hyperbole we can believe in.
October 24th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Yup, when Jeremiah Wright sais “God damn America, that’s in the Bible,” he wasn’t spreading hate, just quoting the Bible.
October 24th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
[Apologies if this double-posts.]
If one out-of-context controversial statement a hate group makes, you’ll be hard pressed to find churches that aren’t hate groups. Thomas Road Baptist must be the mother of all hate groups. And don’t even get started about the CBN…
October 24th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
“Out of context,” my ass. The comment is every bit as offensive in its original context as in any other. And no, it’s not the only hate comment Jeremiah Wright has made in the pulpit. How about the gem he dropped the very first Sunday after 9/11? Or the churches overtly racist mission statement?
Yes, other churches exist that can also be described as hate groups. Save the comparisons for when a member of one of those churches runs for office.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
We may not have had a member of those other churches running for office, but every GOP nominee in recent memory has pandered extensively to those churches, including the current one.
As for the in-context vs. out-of-context nature of the Wright quotes, you’re not going to get me to defend much of what he says — I’m an atheist, he’s a Christian, so I’m bound to disagree with most of what he says. But that said, calling the “God damn America” quote “hate speech” is a bridge too far. There’s a bit of hate speech in that sermon, all right, but that wasn’t it — it’s what he called Condi Rice that crossed that particular line.
But here’s the rub, though: You classified the church itself as a “hate group.” So even if one takes the two sermons you mentioned to be “hate speech” — a big stretch, in my estimation — you still have to say that those sermons were typical of what was said on the pulpit on any given Sunday, when in fact the very reason they got any press at all was because of how unusual they were.
But, of course, if a politician’s pastor gives a controversial sermon, that should disqualify that politician from higher office, even if that politician wasn’t present for that sermon. Unless, of course, that politician is a woman with an R after her name, and the pastor in question in melanin-impaired, in which case, move along, people, there’s nothing to see here, it doesn’t matter if she’s there and if she doesn’t get up and walk out. That’s totally different.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
These two quotes were and are anything but atypical of the crap they spew at Trinity on a regular basis. The reason it’s newsworthy is because it’s atypical of what one would expect to be taught in churches generally, not this church in particular.
Regarding my other “hyperbole,” it sounds like my Warren Court analogy was terribly unfair to the Warren Court.
October 28th, 2008 at 12:00 am
But the crap they spew at Palin’s church doesn’t bother you at all, because she’s pro-gun and Republican, so apparently being anti-Jew is something you’re willing to look past…
October 28th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Correction: the nonsense you recited here about the inconsequential crap one visiting pastor said once at a church Palin isn’t even a member of anymore doesn’t bother me at all, because it’s, well, nonsense, made even more nonsensical by the fact that you are raising it as though it were remotely analogous to remaining a member of a church for 20 years whose lead pastor spewed comparable hate every Sunday, and who didn’t quit until after the hater-in-chief had stopped just hating America and started hating on Obama personally. Even everyone’s favorite Klansman, Robert Byrd, had the good sense to quit the Klan before running for office.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
You know, if you keep insisting on comparing that church to the Klan, you have your answer as to why almost nobody takes your charges seriously. Shrill is as shrill does.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
(And I suspect the real reason Palin’s religious nuttery doesn’t bother you is because you like her politically, and could give a shit about the wacky church stuff…)
October 29th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Calling a comparison “shrill” does not make it so. For all your protestations over the Klan analogy (klanalogy?), you have yet to offer a shred of evidence that it is *inaccurate.* No, Trinity hasn’t lynched anyone, but it’s been a long time since the Klan has, either.
As to Palin, you are correct that I like her politics and couldn’t care less about her religion. That would change if she joined a church that officially endorsed the White Value System, stressed its commitment to the white community and the white family, urged its members to be soldiers for white freedom, and routinely inveighed against black America.
November 8th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
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