Liberal Media Elite

I am getting more worried about this man by the day. And not just because he apparently calls his wife names and has that slightly disturbing anger problem.

Fareed Zakaria on the speech McCain gave on Foreign Policy last week:

On March 26, McCain gave a speech on foreign policy in Los Angeles that was billed as his most comprehensive statement on the subject. It contained within it the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed.

In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power.

Holy buckets.

I just hope he doesn’t kick the wrong country out accidentally:

Posted another one of my longer essays (too long to post here, I think), this one about the left-wing religious movement. Those interested can check it out over at Libertarian Rage.

Becuase they’re saying what the Clintonistas want them to say…

The Huffington Post has an article about how some—well, two—Iwo Jima vets are all upset that the raising-the-flag picture has been used by Time for a cover on global warming:

“It’s an absolute disgrace,” Mates said. “Whoever did it is going to hell. That’s a mortal sin. God forbid he runs into a Marine that was an Iwo Jima survivor.”

…

“The second world war we knew was there,” Mates said. “There’s a big discussion. Some say there is global warming, some say there isn’t. And to stick a tree in place of a flag on the Iwo Jima picture is just sacrilegious.”

I find it terribly curious—disturbing, really—that this man describes something he  perceives as a slight against him as “a mortal sin,” “sacrilegious” and that the person who did it is “going to hell.”

I think it’s clear: We should be not just appreciative of these men and women—the Greatest Generation, the military, whatever—but we should worship them as the living gods they are.

It should no longer be shocking that the Greatest Generation—Those Great Souls Who Through the Largeness of Themselves Saved Us and Made Europe Safe for Speaking English—spawned the self-important, barely tolerable Baby Boomers. The Clintonian and Bushian apples don’t fall very far from the Nixonian tree.

Okay, so Natascha and I were having sushi instead of watching the—apparently, very, very stupid and insulting—ABCNews debate.

I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to live my life as if Hillary Clinton could win the Democratic nomination. That is, I am going to relax for a while, until my deep-seated fear of the American elite’s provincialism becomes unavoidable during the DNC and I have to confront it, here, again. And, yes, it should be painfully obvious in the last week that the coastal cosmopolitans are the most fucking provincial sons of bitches in this entire country… Which doesn’t really surprise me, of course, because I’ve spent enough time with people who have advanced degrees and, really, all it does is make them really good at saying “A=A” except that “A” is defined as some sort of postmodernist identity cocoon from which no pupae can survive. (That’s a joke about racial constructs, just in case you were wondering. ¡Arriba!)

That is, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes people can actually think coherently regardless of the restraints placed on them by genitalia, melanin, region, income and gun ownership status. I know this is probably shocking to many academics and journalists. But, alas, it is true, and just because you read James Brooks’s books ironically doesn’t mean they’re not damaging your behavior.

ANNNNYWAY, apart from giving Barack Obama $20 whenever I can, I’ve decided I’m going to completely check out of the entire political process and have Japanese food with my friends from time to time.

Because, let’s face it, when you’re being insulted by George Stephanopolous on a regular basis—as, I feel, the vast majority of the non-punditocratic American population has been recently, not least of all this evening—sometimes you just have to just change the channel.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force is better than the Sunday talk shows, anyway. And certainly a lot less surreal.

So a while ago I read the novel “Empire” by Orson Scott Card. I’m a fan of his fiction, less so of his political writing — frankly, I think he’s off his rocker most of the time, and obnoxiously dismissive of anyone who disagrees with him, although he will occasionally startle me with a well-reasoned and fairly-argued point about a controversial issue. So I was looking forward to this one, not least because its premise — a civil war breaking out in the contemporary United States — is an interesting one to me.

It’s appallingly bad.

Leaving its politics aside, its literary qualities are pure camp, played with an absolutely unironic intensity. Its heroes are all unflinching, steely-eyed, square-jawed military men; its villains cringing, conniving academics plotting the overthrow of the free world. The prose is riddled with intrusive editorials from his blog. It’s almost impossible to believe that this emerged from the same mind that created the tales of Alvin Maker — stories about a group of men and women trying to stop a civil war that are thoughtful, layered, and inventive. Seriously. This reads like one of Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen novels, only it’s not a parody.

I suspect that all of these issues are symptomatic of an underlying conceptual problem. The basic argument of the book is as follows: that all of the moderates need to get together and stop arguing, or the extremist wackos will break us apart. On its face, this seems like a reasonable position, and echoes one that I’ve been hearing in political discourse for a while. The problem is that it’s bullshit. Read his work closely, and his definitions become a bit less opaque. Do you support homosexual marriage? Then you’re a wacko! Do you oppose the occupation of Iraq? Then you’re a wacko! And pretty soon, it becomes clear that the real argument of the book reads thus: that all of the moderates (people who think what I do) need to get together and stop arguing, or the extremist wackos (everyone who disagrees with me) will break us apart.

It’s a rhetorical trick — six of one, half a dozen of the other. For that matter, I have a hard time seeing the virtue of moderation as a guiding moral principle, period. Sure, you can look around you and draw up an average of the opinions of everyone within your political boundaries — and I guess that would make you a moderate, if such a thing is to be desired — but in nearly every other place and time in human history, you’ll be a raving extremist. You believe in representative government? Guess what? In the context of most other civilizations throughout time, you’re a wacko. I know that it’s an extreme example. but if you were a moderate in Nazi Germany, I wouldn’t want to know you. What’s to be gained by seeking a middle position between two morally untenable ones? The founding fathers weren’t seeking a reasonable middle position, and they were quite openly contemptuous of those who did. This guy sure as hell wasn’t a moderate about anything.

After I spoke at my Republican caucus, I was followed by a man who stood up and asserted that “an election is not the time to assume a moral position.” Buh? Then when is the appropriate time? When there’s nothing at stake? When there’s nothing to be either gained or lost by espousing a principle?

I’m annoyed with myself, because I’ve been so hesitant to support Ron Paul. For a number of reasons. He seems too good to be true, for one thing, and I’ve been burned by politicians before — the last time I was this enthusiastic about a politician was Bill Clinton in 1996. (Which, I suppose, demonstrates how far my politics have swung in the past decade.) For another, I’m embarrassed to be playing to type, to be so utterly predictable. A fellow playwright asked me who I was supporting a couple of weeks back, then cut me off before I could respond: “Oh, you’re a libertarian. You’re just going to be supporting Ron Paul.”

So yeah, I’m annoyed with myself. Not because I haven’t been shoving my opinions down people’s throats (like, I’m afraid, so many other Ron Paul supporters have been doing), but because I’ve been squatting over my enthusiasm for him, stammering and changing the subject even when people ask me point blank who I like in the race — when I’m faced with the most exciting political candidate I’ve seen in my lifetime. In a way, that’s why I’m pleased to see the success of Obama’s candidacy, despite my profound dislike for his policies — that someone has the opportunity to support a candidate that they can believe in. Lord knows the Republicans don’t. When presented with the options, they chose the path of political expediency.

And if that’s the voice of moderation, then I’ll none of it. If there’s a basic argument to what I’m trying to say, it reads thus: that all of the extremists need to keep arguing…

…before the self-styled moderates find a way to pull us together.

Hey, y’all.

Forty years ago today Martin Luther King was gunned down.

Trying to write something about it…to explain the hit our nation took that day…somehow lessens that statement. So, I’ll just say it again…

Forty years ago today Martin Luther King was gunned down.