The Thomas Chronicles

see Part I

If being chastised for not slavishly follow one particular ideology isn’t enough– liberalism, conservativism, feminism, environmentalism, whatever-ism– you can also find yourself ostracized from the group collective. At work, sometimes when someone falls out of favor with the collective, suddenly they find themselves isolated. Co-workers suddenly don’t feel like socializing with you. Your job might even be in jeopardy.

I’ve observed this time and again. So, when I ran across this article on Foxnews yesterday, I could only nod my head.

These days everyone is so enthusiastic about the evolution of the Web, with its free content, interesting blogs, citizen journalism and the rest of it.

Not me. The big problem, as I see it, is the decline in general perspective, which is due to the decline in the popularity of newspapers and magazines.

By perspective, I mean generalized or common knowledge.

When you pick up The New York Times and look at the front page, you get a general perspective on world events. As you page through the newspaper, you see all sorts of interesting articles that you might not have read if you were merely surfing the Net for news.

Over time, this sort of happenstance approach to information gives a reader perspective on things. You have a sense as to what the economy is doing. You know if some international disaster has occurred. You are more tuned in.

This is going away.

…

… Kids under 21 don’t read newspapers. Many adults have stopped subscribing. The newspapers themselves are cheapening their product.

The New York Times recently laid off a bunch of reporters, who were replaced by bloggers and kids who just got out of journalism school. Probably all functionally good writers, they bring no life experience perspective to the table, and they probably lack world view perspective, too. And they are the ones doling out information to the masses.

…

Meanwhile, the public continues to read about what they already know. And they hang out only with like-minded people. There are huge cadres of people who are practically duplicates of each other. They all think alike, dress alike, and go to the same group-approved places.

With the slow death of newspapers, this beehive-like behavior is only going to get worse. And schools are not helping; they tend to have a political agenda and seem to limit, not enhance, world perspective. This is worsened by a de-emphasis on actual learning and an over-emphasis on personal self-esteem.

The self-esteem movement in education has fostered underachievers who are now out in the world of business, taking on jobs as clerks and cashiers. They can’t add. They can’t spell. They have no idea where Chicago is located on a map. They can’t read a map, in fact. They are seemingly stupid and mostly incompetent.

But hey, they think they are winners just because they’ve been told they are winners. It was drummed into them.

These people eat up information from the Internet and they believe everything they read. They pass along gossip as fact. They fall for every hoax under the sun (especially the very old ones).

[Emphasis is mine.]

There is a no more partisan place, no more contentious and ideologically polarizing place on planet earth than in cyberspace. Cloned ideas for like-minded people, who often congratulate each other for the rightness of their opinions.

If you’re looking for a place where there is a basic uniformity of opinion, various internet sites and pit stops inside the blogosphere should provide you with what you’re looking for. There are a very few notable exceptions, but in most blogs and other opinion sites, absolute conformity of ideas is darn near absolute. And should one stray from the particular ideology of the blog in the “Comments” sections, other commenters would be quick to berate, belittle and even curse the errant individual into either submission or silence.

On both the liberal and conservative end, there is this peculiar litany of characteristics and position, which, according to each respective political group, one must believe in order to be liberal or conservative. To be a “liberal”, you must believe in such and such, and to be a “conservative”, you must believe in this laundry list of convictions. If you’re a liberal, you have to hate Bush, believe in environmentalism, hate the war, and hand American foreign policy over to international organizations (i.e. lose our sovereignty). If you’re a conservative, you have to hate or agree to dispossess gays, support the war, and let market forces determine everything.

This, I believe, is childish; and what is more, this kind of thinking polarizes people and increases antagonism toward those with whom you would disagree. When both conservative and liberal blogs forcefully try to correct each other into the “pure” conservatism and “pure” liberalism, you end up with extremes. And just because lots of people force each other through the pressure of conformity to believe the same thing does not make it true.

An incredible instance of this is when the Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006. Talkshow hosts and bloggers blamed it on the Republicans not being “true” enough to their “conservative values”.

This is an incredible assertion when the party of “competence” bungled Katrina; when they were caught in scandals on the Hill; when they’ve dismissed the American people’s worries over the border; when they’ve treated the American people as their servants rather than the other way around; and they’ve done all this while waving the flag in America’s face and chanting their bigotry that gays don’t have a right to exist. Purity of ideology, I’m afraid, had little to do with it.

This is antithetical to a position arrived at through objectively reasoning the facts.

Society, communities and people are not neat tidy things that could be solved with a few tossed off platitudes. People are often contradictory in their beliefs and behaviors. People can do amazingly virtuous deeds on the one hand, like face down lynch mobs and tend to the sick in cancer wards, and then they can come home and do despicable things on the other hand, like beat their children and run down their spouse through constantly undermining and belittling.

We humans are NOT neat and tidy things– that’s just reality– and I am very skeptical of cure-all solutions or some idea that if we all get together and believe the same thing we can somehow transcend the seeds of corruption that is in us all.

No. We can’t.

What we need are working solutions that look to this reality, not utopias.

I think the liberal attitude of “Do as I say, when and how I want it done, because I know best” and the conservative attitude of “Take care of it yourself because I don’t want to spend the time and money on you” would both be calamities if they each get their way.

I suspect the solution is somewhere in between, and I also suspect it would be found in the least likely of places.

Read from the beginning in Part I

* Bookworm wrote a long-ish post on a related topic.

*Neo-neocon on the related subject of uniformity in academia.

*** Update***

I grew up watching superhero cartoons where within a 30-minute episode, the hero dashes the plans of evil villains and the villain, in one way or another, screams, “I’ll get you! I’ll get you next time!”

You can see the evil villain holding up his fist and quivering with anger and clenched teeth.

This reminds me of the Democratic reaction today to Bush’s speech to Israel.

Senator Biden called the speech, “Bullshit!”

Speaker Pelosi, that paragon defender of free speech and supporter of the Fairness Doctrine called Bush’s speech, “beneath the dignity of the office of the president and unworthy of our representation,” even though he was voted into office by a national election while Pelosi reached her high office through the votes of her Democratic peers.

Pelosi went on to say this:

“The tradition has always been that when a U.S. president is overseas, partisan politics stops at the water’s edge. President Bush has now taken that principle and turned it on its head: for this White House, partisan politics now begins at the water’s edge, no matter the seriousness and gravity of the occasion. Does the president have no shame?”

While this may be true that we usually don’t conduct partisan politics overseas (I doubt this is entirely true), this is rich coming from a women who flew across the world to meet with various dictators, like Syria’s Assad, and other enemies wearing a hijab as though she were the Secretary of State.

So, what did President Bush say to spark the usual Democratic foaming at the mouth this time?

Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Oh, so President spoke truthfully. It is the Democrats who made the deductive leap to accuse the President that he referred to presidential hopeful, Senator Barack Obama. The President may very well have implied the good senator from Illinois, but what he said was just the self-evident truth of the matter. It takes an incredible amount of rosy pink on the glasses to not see it.

For myself, I think it’s about time President Bush said something about the insanity of our current domestic and foreign situation.

I’ll have to agree with Michelle Malkin this morning. Obama and the Dems have got to calm themselves down.

Update 5/15/08::

This is the statement from the Obama camp:

“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack,” Obama said in the statement his aides distributed. “George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.”

“George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists”?

This is a man who said he would talk to, otherwise known as “engage”, leaders of rogue states, including Iran, North Korea, and Cuba, all of whom has sponsored terrorism. Moreover, his church, the United Trinity Church of Christ has allowed Hamas to publish their terrorist propaganda in their newsletters.

His policy proposal sounds like engagement to me.

“False political attack”? No, I’d call it stating the obvious, self-evident truth by Obama’s own statements. This is even one of the main points of contention in the Democratic Primary, which makes it well known to just about everyone.

I don’t know what to make of Obama’s flat, categorical contradiction of himself…

The video I posted in my previous post shows a clearly disturbed and meloncholy Barack Obama. Even though he still exuded his usual easy confident mannerisms, he was much more abrupt, even sharp in his statements.

I was wrong in my original post on this subject. I think Obama did for once unequivocally denounce the Rev. Wright’s statements and denounce his views on America. One might say that Obama’s vehemence was even an overreaction. As one person described the event, “Obama threw Wright under the train, let him roll around for a little bit, and then jumped atop him like mash potatoes.” Well, uh… that sounds about right.

I actually feel sorry for Obama and this whole controversy. He seemed genuinely hurt emotionally by Rev. Wright’s vitriolic rants at the NPC. Not because of what Wright actually said, but because Obama reacted as though he’s been personally betrayed.

Let us be clear here. Obama didn’t denounce Wright out of a sense of moral outrage. He denounced him because Wright’s actions didn’t allow him to do anything else.

Charles Krauthammer gives this opinion about the whole hoopla:

At a news conference in North Carolina, Obama explained why he finally decided to do the deed. Apparently, Wright’s latest comments — Obama cited three in particular — were so shockingly “divisive and destructive” that he had to renounce the man, not just the words.

What were Obama’s three citations? Wright’s claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming Sept. 11 on American “terrorism.”

But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago. Obama decided to cut off Wright not because Wright’s words or character or views had suddenly changed. The only thing that changed was the venue in which Wright chose to display them — live on national TV at the National Press Club. That unfortunate choice destroyed Obama’s Philadelphia pretense that this “endless loop” of sermon excerpts being shown on “television sets and YouTube” had been taken out of context.

Obama’s Philadelphia oration was an exercise in contextualization. In one particularly egregious play on white guilt, Obama had the audacity to suggest that whites should be ashamed that they were ever surprised by Wright’s remarks: “The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning.”

That was then. On Tuesday, Obama declared that he himself was surprised at Wright’s outrages. But hadn’t Obama told us that surprise about Wright is a result of white ignorance of black churches brought on by America’s history of segregated services? How then to explain Obama’s own presumed ignorance? Surely he too was not sitting in those segregated white churches on those fateful Sundays when he conveniently missed all of Wright’s racist rants.

Regarding Rev. Wright, I’ll give Obama the benefit of the doubt and conclude that he must really believe at least some of that rubbish Wright says. Wright’s comments, which have circulated the world via the internet, and his outlandish statements at the National Press Club, is nothing new. It’s been what Wright has preach for about thirty years and it is in perfect accord with Black Liberation Theology and the Black Value System, which is the professed ideology of the Trinity United Church of Christ.

The alternative to this is much worse.

Faced with the alternative I’d prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt and think he actually believes at least some of Rev. Wright’s radical views. The alternative to this is that Obama sat in that congregation for 20 years, gave tens of thousands of dollars to that church, and knowingly corrupted his children simply because he wanted to get ahead in politics.

One makes him a misguided man who believes in an inherently racist ideology. To other makes him an amoral opportunist who would do anything to be President. He’s already exposed his daughters to Wright’s vitriol, which could possibly poison their views for a long time to come; he has thrown his white grandmother under the train and belittled her as “typical white person” who’s really racist at heart; and now he’s thrown Wright under the train.

Far better if he actually believes in Wright’s ideology rather than being a an amoral user tearing through the lives of others.

Even with all my doubts of Obama, I don’t think Obama’s supporters should be derided either. There is a genuine hunger for bipartisanship. For the past seven years, the Democrats and the Republicans have conducted a very visible sumo wrestling match that made both of sides appear like whining children throwing tantrums.

Into this void of severe dissatisfaction with our government steps Barack Obama, who promises to brush aside all this bickering. He proposes that we work together instead of working against each other.

In a word, he is proposing a peace. Or at least a truce.

It is not surprising thing, then, that people are responsive to this basic message and platitudes, even though, unfortunately, Obama’s done more belittling of his opponents and has done more to silence opposition than any candidate thus far. It seems that his definition of bipartisanship is to do things his way and no other. (Note: He has not draft one single bipartisan piece of legislation. His invariable liberal voting record speaks for itself.)

With this said, however, his supporters shouldn’t be faulted for their support. They too want peace and an end to two party sumo wrestling match.

In fact, I do too. I just don’t think Obama’s the ticket for achieving that end.

If you haven’t seen Obama’s press conference where he vehemently denounced Rev. Wright, I can assure you it is worth the watch. So, I’ve taken the liberty of posting the press conference in full today.

I will discuss this further in my next post.

*** Update Below ***

I just finished watching Obama’s live press conference where he responded to the Reverend Wrights’ speech yesterday. I won’t comment very much on Obama’s statements until I find the raw transcripts of what he said. As far as I can see, the harshest things he said was that he was “Outraged” at what the Reverend Wright said at the National Press Club, and he said that Wright’s speech will cause their relationship to change. I don’t think I heard him itemize any of Wright’s obscenities though. (I was wrong there. He did itemize a few of the more “controversial” Wright statements and responded to them.)

Also, upon reflection, when he said he was “outraged”, I don’t know if he said he was actually outraged at the content Wright’s speech or if he was outrage because Wright clearly lacked “concern” “for me”.

Obama also said the Reverend Wright we were treated to yesterday morning was not the Wright that he knows and remembers. Again he denied ever hearing these comments before. If I understand it correctly, didn’t Obama quote these statements or these kinds of statements from Wright in his books?

Clearly Obama is conducting damage control to stop the inevitable downward spiral of his campaign from this Wright circus. The question is: Did he succeed?

***Update 4/29/08***

Michelle Malkin’s got a few rough and ready quotes:

“I’m outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle. The person that I saw yesterday was not the person I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate. I believe they do not accurately portray the perspective of the black church. They certainly don’t portray mine. If he considers this political posturing, then he doesn’t know me very well. And I don’t know him well either.”

If 20 years isn’t enough time to know someone well, then (shrug) how long does it take?

When responding to Wright comparing US Marines to terrorists, he said:

“They offend me. They rightly offend all Americans. They should be denounced. And that’s what I’m doing clearly and unequivocally here today.”

“It’s antithetical to our campaign. It’s antithetical to what I’m about. It’s not what America stands for. Rev. Wright does not speak for me. He doesn’t speak for our campaign. I can’t prevent him from making these outrageous remarks…When I say I find these statements appalling, I mean it…Makes me angry and saddens me.”

Isn’t it funny how he has never overtly said, “I denounce such and such.”? So far, it’s invariably, “I have already denounced…” or, like today’s, “They should be denounced.” I haven’t heard him say a simple subject-verb-object sentence construction along these lines yet.

As a side note, the crux of my frustrations at Obama is that I don’t know if I can believe what he’s saying. He’s lied on so many different things, or as he would say, he has “mischaracterized” himself on innumerable things.

Perhaps that just my cynicism talking, even if his “misstatements” and “mischaracterizations” are well-documented. Maybe I should give him more benefit of the doubt.

More on this later…

Quite a lot of people are pressuring Senator Clinton to drop out from the race if she doesn’t win by double digits. Anything less than that and, according to the Democratic leadership and talking disembodied heads on the boobtube, means that Senator Clinton would have less justification to stay in the Primary. I’ve written before at length how in the sheer math of this election, unless something drastically changes in the rules, neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton can clench the nomination on superdelegates alone. The rest of the Democratic Primaries will decide that.

The constant irrational demand for her to drop out and preclude the voters from electing their own Democratic nominee strikes me as being singularly undemocratic and elitists. Last I checked, we have a Republic not an oligarchy of overlords. The way Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi insist on cutting short the primaries smacks of a master/ peasant relationship between them and the American people. The “do as you’re told” mentality among the Democratic leadership does not historically sit well with the American people no matter the political party. This is the same party that demanded Dennis Kucinich sign a “Loyalty Oath” in order to appear on the Texas ballot. This is obviously ludicrous and it flies in the face of 500 years of decency and culture on this American continent (this includes the colonial period); in fact, this leaves a particularly acrid smell of totalitarianism in my view. This high-handedness belongs somewhere else, not in America.

This hasn’t sat well with Americans throughout our history and it shouldn’t sit well with the Democrats today. If the Left entirely succeeds in taking over the Democratic Party and succeeds in elbowing out moderates like Zell Miller and Joe Liberman, I don’t see how the rest of America can countenance such extremism.

If the Democratic Party truly represents the interests of the people and not a party dedicated to fractionism and tribalism, then let the people they claim to represent vote.

I thought I’d write a post today to confess something obvious to anyone browsing this blog since January. I have a profound mistrust of Senator Obama, and I don’t much like him.

Early in the Primary season, I was actually taken with Obama. I looked at the political stage and found a man actively proposing to move beyond partisanship and race. What he was proposing was a national transcendence from mindless bickering and proposed that we return to the old patriotism of our fathers.

I was heartened to hear his message. And then, as the campaign wore on, it became increasingly obvious that there is a severe disconnect between Obama’s flowery words and his actions, between his high adjectives and appeal to idealism and the more disturbing implications of his words. It was not that he lacked substance. Quite the contrary. But it is his “substance”, the meat of what he says that makes him disturbing.

I won’t delineate all the shadowy parts of his character in this post. I’m sure, if you follow politics at all, you’re aware of a few of them. These are not simply “gaffes” as everyone is fond of calling them. “Gaffes” are the kinds of things that happen in high-end restaurants, like asking for the jelly rather than the Grey Poupon; these are mistakes that could garner embarrassment. For the definitionally challenged, I think the word “Gaffe” lends Obama’s statements a tongue-and-cheek quality that certaintly doesn’t describe it.

There is no question of Obama’s elitism. Ever since I saw him on the national stage running for President, he has used the language of academians, and he has wowed the media and our intelligensia with his vocabulary and his turn of phrase. He speaks the language of a Harvard Law School graduate and also a man who attended the same private school as the Hawaiian Royal Family in Hawaii.

Whatever he is, he is not a run-of-the-mill Joe off the street nor is he a commonplace politician.

I have so many concerns and fears regarding this man who would be President, not least of which is his govern-on-high mentality, that I have to be very careful about harshly judging him. Such a man should invoke my pity not my condemnation.

When he speaks, you can just hear how much he loves himself, and his notion of grandiosity is simply astonishing. He keeps saying that by the very act of voting for him, you are voting for “Change”; in fact, you will be changed and you will have transcendence by voting for him.

What can you say to such megalomania, that refuses to answer questions, that brooks no opposition?

I am writing this to remind myself that Obama is not only the slick, finely crafted public persona on TV. He is also an immortal being made in the Image of God no matter what he has decided to do with it. And he, like all of us, will stand or fall before Jesus Christ on His return.

Obama gives many people good causes for concern, and none of what I’ve written mitigates that. I just don’t want to lose my humanity by denying Obama his.

All I have is my vote, and I intend to discharge my duty as a citizen of our Republic this November.