Beguiling the Gullible:
So, John Edwards cheats on his stricken wife. That he should do so and that the media should revel in it is hardly surprising. After all, what do voyeurs want, and what are media so happy to provide? If it bleeds, it leads; if it cries, it flies; if it tittles, it tattles.
But, really, after sensationalism du jour is purveyed to the point of diminishing returns, what act should next be offered, in our adolescent theater of sensationalism? Well, we find hardly anything more sensational (“newsworthy”) than sacrificing and tearing down old exemplars and traditions!
Who should doubt the commitment of libertines, nihilists, and flapping media for picking off the lowest lying fruit of opportunities by signaling, commissioning, and conditioning their elite sophisticates and academia to “educate” the rest of us to the urgency of “change” so we can “move on” beyond old hang-up’s? And who should doubt that our all consuming system has skilled our purveyers for conditioning acolytes to drink deeply of utter folly?
Before long, John Edwards and Bill Clinton will be seen as Pioneers, if not Prophets. Politicians, in practicing adultery, will be seen as working: to broaden horizons, to share empathy with taxpaying adulterers (who, after all, are entitled to EQUALITY of representation), to demonstrate virile energy, and to grow in multi-cultural understanding. Accomodating such a philosophy for kids will become a moral imperative, with seminars in polygamy, pedophilia, and bestiality to be offered for more advanced students. (I know --- Jon Stewart says Nambla is only a joke! Get it?)
After all, what exemplar of liberalism is prepared to advocate or defend any lines to the contrary? WHO THEY GOT? Anyone? Anyone?
Well, who are we to judge or draw make-believe limits? After all, have there not been numerous cultures, societies and clubs that encourage all manner of sexual experimentation? No doubt, Stephen Colbert could commission studies to show (first as farce, then as tragedy), statistically, that decency is always hypocritical and fascist. So, are we become a civilization with no assimilating ideal and no star to guide us?
Are we even approaching any kind of assimilated appreciation for definitions of basic terms of communication? As we argue about whether or how to teach "evolution" or "religion," do we have the foggiest notion or appreciation for what they are? Surely, teaching some beliefs must pass beyond the pale of religion and into the realm of conspiracy to foment sedition, riot, or crime. Or, have we become so socially stupid and suicidal as to tolerate that which grows ever stronger for consuming us by feeding upon our ignorant distractedness?
Such is what we have become and what will lead to our demise --- unless and until some Red Ass Moderates start butting some donkey asses!
8 comments:
EDWARDS:
From http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/edwards_admits_affair/2008/08/08/120334.html?s=al&promo_code=6794-1 :
WASHINGTON -- Former presidential candidate John Edwards, who won nationwide praise and sympathy as he campaigned side by side with his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, admitted in shame Friday he had had an affair with a woman who produced videos as he prepared to launch his campaign.
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He said in his statement Friday he had "used the fact that the story contained many falsities to deny it," and he called that "being 99 percent honest."
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In 1999, when Edwards was a senator, he said of President Clinton and his affair with Monica Lewinsky:
"I think this president has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen."
From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10dowd.html?th&emc=th :
Even in confessing to preening, Edwards was preening. His diagnosis of narcissism was weirdly narcissistic, or was it self-narcissistic? Given his diagnosis, I’m sure his H.M.O. would pay.
The creepiest part of his creepy confession was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct.
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Back in 2002, Edwards sent me a Ken doll dressed in bathing trunks, Rio de Janeiro Ken, with a teasing note, because he didn’t like my reference to him as a Ken doll in a column.
In retrospect, the comparison was not fair — to Ken.
OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN FINANCING:
See http://news.newsmax.com/?Z6IRXZSF1gCF77.dCqDED3PZkQrztfRAZ :
Behind Obama's larger donations are more than 500 "bundlers," fundraisers who have each collected contributions adding up to $50,000 or more. Nearly three dozens bundlers have brought in more than $500,000, and more than a half-dozen have raised over $1 million.
"Many of the bundlers come from industries with critical interests in Washington," the Times notes.
About two-thirds of the bundlers come from four major industries: law, securities and investments, real estate, and entertainment. Lawyers make up the largest group.
Obama has pledged not to accept donations from lobbyists or political action committees registered with the federal government. But many of the bundlers from the lawyers group work for firms that also have lobbying arms.
Obama's efforts are "being packaged as an extraordinary new kind of fundraising, and the Internet is a new and powerful part of it," Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, told the Times. "But it's also clear that many of the old donors are still there and important."
Quote snippets from http://sweetness-light.com/archive/nyt-mccain-lie-good-edwards-truth-bad:
Indeed, The Times can only dream of achieving the ethical standards of the National Enquirer.
The reporters and editors of the New York Times are nothing but well poisoners who are hell-bent on the destruction of our country and system of government.
In a more just world, or even the US of the WWII era, they would be behind bars or even executed for their near endless instances of treason.
Superhuman Passive Aggressiveness:
From http://townhall.com/Columnists/JonahGoldberg/2008/08/15/nightmare_on_dem_street :
Bill Clinton is no supernatural serial killer - faint praise to most, too generous to a few. But he does have this juggernaut-like way of getting where he wants to be. One of his special powers is superhuman passive-aggressiveness. When recently asked if Obama was qualified to be president, Clinton responded, "You can argue that nobody is ready to be president." Pressed again about Obama's qualifications to be president, Clinton explained, "I never said he wasn't qualified.
From http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2008/08/13/ny-times-tries-to-torpedo-anti-obama-book-succeeds-in-spreading-its-message/ :
Most people who read the Times would probably have been only dimly aware of The Obama Nation had the Times not brought it to their attention. Now they have had it rubbed in their faces. The paper did its best to dismiss the book, but questions and doubts will linger–not so much about Jerome Corsi but about Barack Hussein Obama. Who is he? Who are his friends? What does he believe? Is he the sort of person the American public wants leading the country? Is he a “stealth radical liberal”?
See also http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596985666/ref=nosim/townhallcom.
Why are liberals so gullible?
By James Lewis
Snippets from http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/why_are_liberals_so_gullible.html:
August 25, 2008
The Scamming Class are called socialists over there, which is more honest than the word "liberal" -- which used to mean somebody who believed in liberty. Today it means the flummery of the Mommy State. Socialism is very appealing to Mommies, Would-be Mommies, and Those Who Still Need their Mommies. But of course it's government of the scammers, by the scammers, and for the scammers. That describes Europe's new Ruling Class, which in the EU machinery has now completely protected itself from the vulgar business of elections.
That's what our Obamanoids have in mind for the United States. Marxism is the revolt of the apparatchiks -- the Ruling Class -- against the people. It depends on convincing the most gullible that they are really in control. Obamanism is Marxism Light. It's the Swedish Model of Perfected Humanity.
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When you see Obama's next Nuremberg Rally with his nose in the air, take it as a sign of things to come. He really does despise us, you know. But he feels sorry for us, too, because he knows better. Contempt and pity go hand in hand. Maybe the liberal masses just love being pitied. Maybe they just accept being weak, helpless, and not too bright. Good grief.
Liberalism doesn't change. What might change, over time, is for more sensible folk to recover their voices, after being completely shut out of the public square by the Sixties Left. The answer to liberal gullibility is debate, debate, debate. Open up those minds, tell them it's ok to think your own thoughts, it's ok to be different. Intellectual courage matters.
The media should never be run by a professional guild. Monopolies kill competing voices. Real thinking only thrives with vigorous intellectual competition. That's why our universities have become brain-dead company towns. That's why the Old Media need to go out of business, and the sooner the better.
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Commenter Ruth: If conservatives could bottle this and sell it to all of the barakadoodledoo worshipers, they might wake up and return this country to the great nation it once was and could be again.
Political Incredulity:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080930/us_time/thebailoutdefeatapoliticalcredibilitycrisis:
Nearly every major political leader in the U.S. supported the $700 billion financial-bailout bill. The President. The Vice President. The Treasury Secretary. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Democratic and Republican nominees for President. The Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and Senate. All of them said the same thing: vote yes.
But a majority of those politicians anointed by the Constitution to reflect the will of the people voted no. This is a remarkable event, the culmination of a historic sense of betrayal that Americans have long felt for their representatives in Washington. The nation's credit crisis on Monday exposed a much deeper and more fundamental problem: a crisis of political credibility that now threatens to harm our nation further, should the markets freeze up and more companies begin to fail, as many experts predict.
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Years ago, the trust between the people and their politicians was broken. Credibility was lost. The reserve of goodwill went bankrupt. And when they needed it most, our nation's leaders found that they had squandered their ability to exert influence over the people who chose them to lead.
DEMOCRAT VERSION OF “FAIRNESS DOCTRINE”:
See http://sweetness-light.com/archive/nbc-removes-barney-frank-from-snl-skit.
Comment at http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/12/worshipping_the_weather.html:
RE: Munchausen by proxy
Is that not an addiction for making out as if someone (often a child) is sick or something is bad, so you can be recognized for your suffering and hailed for when you make them or it better? Something like that.
Perhaps the economy and the environment are "the child" made sick by Bush, for which Obama will inherit both the sympathy while they are bad and the kudos when they turn around. It doesn't hurt that folks like Soros may have worked a little magic medicine (poisoning and bursting bubbles?) behind the economic scenes. And Al Gore can later bring in "new science" to show how Obama's policies have been miraculously beneficial to the environment. Media will swoon.
Variations on this theme can be skillfully used by practitioners in numerous fields --- nursing, religion, business, and politics.
If you don't have anything to stand for higher than yourself, then why not employ strategies like Munchausen by proxy? Especially when you own media. To me, this is a big part of why Ayn Rand's (and Libertarians') philosophy, although worth considering, is also quite unfilling.
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To Non-Believing Atheists:
So long as Something fortifies you, so that you can appreciate lasting moral value in civilization and in persons other than your immediate kin, you are, in my book, "religious."
Sorry, but in my book, it is mind-slaves, sociopaths, psychopaths, and the purely selfish who are so non-empathetic of God's creations as to be most nearly without religion. Such folks may be slightly religious, but only in respect of a very constricted, psychologically perverse, dark notion of "God." (That is not to say that they cannot be hugely twisted in respect of what little personal insight they retain. Unless the Bill of Rights is a suicide pact, practicing terrorism must go beyond the pale for "practicing religion.")
In my book, even a faithful dog, never having been instructed in any formal religion, may yet, by his acts of empathy, ritual trustworthiness, and faith in his companions, be "religious" --- at least, as much so as a terrorist.
The problem to grapple with is this:
We need to appreciate what the founding fathers meant when they wrote the "free exercise" clause. Obviously, they did not mean that every close knit clan of indoctrinated conspirators aiming to overthrow or undermine the government under some sort of religious or bubble-bursting jihad (regardless of how new or how institutionalized) would be protected as engaging in the "free exercise" of religion. (Otherwise, would citizens who engage in "So-Called Secret Religious Rites," such as for contriving international conspiracies to distort markets and burst economic bubbles, be Constitutionally protected?)
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Marie Claude,
I store musings, to try to keep track of where my thinking is. I try to be open to constructive insight, but have a thick enough skin to take most any criticism.
(Does your dog still bite?)
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