Category Archives: Political Commentary

History, Political Commentary

Never Again

5 Comments

Eric Raymond sees the same disturbing things I do in Senator Obama:

I am absolutely not accusing Barack Obama of being a fascist or of having the goals of a fascist demagogue. I am saying that the psychological dynamic between him and his fans resembles the way fascist leaders and their people relate. The famous tingle that ran up Chris Matthew’s leg. the swooning chanting crowds, the speeches full of grand we-can-do-it rhetoric, the vagueness about policy in favor of reinforcing that intoxicating sense of emotional identification…how can anyone fail to notice where this points?

There are hints of grandiosity and arrogance in Obama’s behavior now. As the bond between him and his followers become more intense, though, it is quite possible they will not remain mere traces. I’m not panicked yet, because Obama is still a long way off from behaving like a megalomaniacal nut-job. But if the lives of people like Napoleon, Mussolini, or Hitler show us anything it’s that the road from Obama’s flavor of charismatic leader to tyrant is open, and dangerously seductive to the leader himself.

There is one more historical detail that worries me, in this connection. There is a pattern in the lives of the really dangerous charismatic tyrants that they tend to have originated on the geographical and cultural fringes of the societies they came to dominate, outsiders seeking ultimate insiderhood by remaking the “inside” in their own image. Hitler, the border Austrian who ruled Germany; Napoleon, the Corsican who seized France; and Stalin, the Georgian who tyrannized Sovet Russia. And, could it be…Obama, the half-black kid from Hawaii?

Again, I am not accusing Barack Obama of being a monster. But when I watch videos of his campaign, I see a potential monster in embryo. Most especially do I see that potential monster in the shining faces of his supporters, who may yet seduce Obama into believing that he is as special and godlike as they think he is.

I don’t know if the McCain campaign has the savvy or moxie to properly go after Obama, but I think that there will be a lot of 527s who will, once the campaign really starts in the fall.

Philosophy, Political Commentary

Obama’s “Freedom From Faith”

11 Comments

Jim Geraghty has some observations.

But I found this interesting (not that I hadn’t seen it before):

…many religious believers probably couldn’t imagine anything worse than not having their relationship with God. They don’t see their relationship with their Creator, by whatever name they call the divine, as something they could be “free” from, and in fact a fairly common definition of Hell is in fact “complete separation from God.”

This is one of those intellectual gulfs that separates me from believers. I not only can imagine not having a relationship with God, but I live the dream. Yeah, if I really believed in the fire and brimstone thing, and the imps <VOICE=”Professor Frink”>and the poking and the burning and the eternal tooooorment…glavin…</VOICE>, then I might decide that sinning wasn’t worth it. But if hell be “complete separation from God,” something that I’ve had all of my life, bring it on. All it gets from me is a shrug.

Political Commentary

Liberals and Conservatives

4 Comments

…and civil rights:

The Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, upholding the Second Amendment right of individuals to own firearms, should finally lay to rest the widespread myth that the defining difference between liberal and conservative justices is that the former support “individual rights” and “civil liberties,” while the latter routinely defer to government assertions of authority. The Heller dissent presents the remarkable spectacle of four liberal Supreme Court justices tying themselves into an intellectual knot to narrow the protections the Bill of Rights provides.

I think that this is also an excellent example of how confusing and misleading, and useless really, the two labels are.

Political Commentary

More Thoughts On Weasely Clark

5 Comments

From Powerline:

So Kerry’s military experience was better than McCain’s because after serving for four months in Vietnam, he returned to the U.S. and falsely accused his fellow servicemen of being war criminals. I think it’s time for Wesley Clark to be ushered quietly off the stage.

Well, he was certainly quietly ushered out of Europe.

But it would appear that the man has neither brains nor shame.

I should add that I don’t think that what he said on Face the Nation was reprehensible. I didn’t hear it as denigrating McCain’s service so much as simply pointing out that it didn’t necessarily give him the experience needed to be president, which is a reasonable position. It would be even more reasonable if it weren’t a straw man, since as far as I know no one, including McCain himself has ever claimed that it did.

But it was a stupid thing to say, considering the experience level of his own candidate.

[Afternoon update]

Heh.

Obama wants to get us out of Iraq, but he can’t even get us out of Vietnam.

I think that what’s happening is a result of the Democrats delusions about “swift boating.” They think that John Kerry lost because people denigrated his military record, so they’re hoping that they can neutralize McCain the same way.

And it might work if there were any parallels to the situation other than that both spent time in Vietnam during the war.

But unfortunately for the donkeys, McCain didn’t:

  1. Serve the shortest tour of duty on record by getting three minor injuries, none of which resulted in any hospitalization or time off duty
  2. Tell tall tales about being in Cambodia at Christmas time in 1968, with Nixon as president
  3. Have numerous fellow prisoners come forward and say that his stories were nonsense
  4. Have those same prisoners contribute to a book documenting that what McCain said was nonsense
  5. Come back and testify before Congress, on hearsay evidence from suspect sources, that his fellow servicemen were wanton, vicious war criminals
  6. Keep his service records hidden while pretending that he hadn’t
  7. Make his service the prime justification for his candidacy

But other than all that, all of this denigration of his service just might work.

There’s a lot more over at Instapundit.

General Science, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space

Sesquicentennial

44 Comments

It’s been a hundred and fifty years since Darwin first presented his thesis. Charles Johnson has some thoughts. I may have some as well, later. Or not.

[A minute or so later]

Well, actually, I do now, in light of Lileks’ comments this morning, in which he pointed out the simplistic, stilted views of many across the political spectrum. I’ll repeat:

Really, if one wants to cling, bitterly, to the notion that a believe [sic] in lower taxes and strong foreign policy and greater individual freedom re: speech and property automatically translates to a crimpled, reductive, censorious view of pop culture, go right ahead.

Similarly, if one wants to cling, bitterly, to the notion that a concern about Islamism, and an inability to realize what an evil stupid fascist criminal George Bush is translates to a belief that the world was created by Jehovah six thousand some years ago, complete with dinosaur bones, go right ahead.

Before 911, Charles Johnson was a Democrat, and a jazz musician. Almost seven years ago, he got mugged by reality. That, combined with some scary things that were happening at a mosque near his home in Culver City resulted in a change in emphasis at his web site. Now many of the left wingnuts who read LGF stupidly assume that he’s a “right” wingnut. Yet here he is, defending science from places like the Discovery Institute, on a semi-daily basis.

I get the same idiotic treatment, much of the time. I’ve often had discussions on Usenet whereupon, when I argue that maybe it wasn’t necessarily a bad idea to remove Saddam Hussein’s boot from the neck of the Iraqi people, and that I don’t believe that George Bush personally planted the charges in the Twin Towers, I am told to go back to whatever holler I came from and play with my snakes, and am informed that my belief in a Christian God, and my lack of belief in evolution is just more evidence of my irredeemable stupidity, despite the fact neither religion or science had been on the discussion table.

I then take pleasure in informing them that I am an agnostic and for practical purposes an atheist, and that I am a firm believer in evolutionary theory, it being the best one available to explain the existing body of evidence. Whereupon, I am sometimes called a liar. Really. It’s projection, I think.

Same thing often happens here, in fact. I tell people that I’m not a Republican, and have never been, nor am I a conservative, and I’m accused of lying about my true beliefs and political affiliation.

C’est la vie. There’s no reasoning with some folks.

In any event, happy birthday to a controversial but powerful (as Dennett says, absolutely corrosive, cutting through centuries of ignorance) scientific theory. Expect me to continue to defend it here, and Charles to defend it there.

[Late evening update]

Well, Iowahawk has the comment du jour:

I’m a dope-smoking atheist writer for a San Francisco lowbrow culture mag; I also enjoy seeing 7th century genocidal terrorist shitbags getting waterboarded. I really don’t see the contradiction.

Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

More WALL-E Thoughts

9 Comments

Lileks discusses the grief that he’s gotten over the fact that he enjoyed the movie:

Shannen Coffin at the Corner notes that you never know how much hate mail you’ll get until you take on a Pixar film. I’d add that the opposite is oddly true as well: I got a lot of very negative email about the review, some of which had to do with “shilling” (as one writer put it) for Disney, but most of which had to do with buying an eco-scary / anti-capitalist agenda because the characters were cute. Apparently I can write for years and demonstrate skepticism towards catastrophic doom-mongering, and it counts for nil. Ah well. Look, I think “JFK” is a pretty good piece of filmmaking. Its ideas are rubbish and its effect pernicious, but I still think it’s a compelling work. Doesn’t mean I believe a single frame.

Sometimes you separate the ideas from the movie, sometimes you can’t, sometimes you shouldn’t, and sometimes you don’t want to because you approve of the ideas. Asking me to reject Wall-E because its unrealistic premise has contemporary overtones is like asking me to swear off Star Trek because Roddenberry wanted a post-religious collectivist one-world government that eschewed money and property.

He also chides Andrew Sullivan for stereotyping:

Apparently Andrew Sullivan took note of the review, and while I appreciate the patronage, this rankles a bit:

“Well Lileks loved it. Not all conservatives are stupid ideologues.”

And not all liberals are stupid anti-consumerists who spaz out when someone praises the Works of Walt! Who’d have thunk it. Really, if one wants to cling, bitterly, to the notion that a believe in lower taxes and strong foreign policy and greater individual freedom re: speech and property automatically translates to a crimpled, reductive, censorious view of pop culture, go right ahead.

Last night, I watched the end of Ratatouille, and afterward was a history of Pixar. Interesting stuff. It was a great example of the powerful synergy you can get when you successfully meld C. P. Snow’s two cultures and combine traditional animators with computer geeks.

As good as they’re getting at this stuff, though, I don’t think that it’s the death of 2-D animation. I suspect that as the 3-D stuff continues to asymptotically approach verisimilitude, there will be rebellious young turks who want to draw cartoons, and so the cycle will begin anew.

In any event, the foofaraw makes me want to see the movie in the theater, something I haven’t done with a Pixar movie since Toy Story (though I wanted to with Ratatouille).