The Anchoress

I’m still trying to keep to my new pledge of only writing about politics when it intersects with religion, but it does seem only fair to note that, Old Europe, which has been struggling all along with its restrictions, has finally admitted that, President Bush was right to keep America out of the Kyoto treaty.

That’s all I’m going to say. Bush was right. Lots of numbers simply should not be trusted enough to build policy on them.

And he also was effective on the environment in ways you never heard about in the mainstream media.

Bush was also right about Gitmo, which the press and the President-Elect seem to be discovering.

Bush was also right - and courageous - about the surge in Iraq, where…ummm…we seem to have achieved a quiet and roundly ignored victory, as demonstrated here, and here, and here.

I still call for his impeachment.

Meanwhile, President-Elect Obama, who is accustomed to only the loftiest and most positive pearls dropped in his direction by the self-destroyed and excessively besotted press, is getting a small taste of what it’s like to be the hated American President. It will be interesting to watch him grow into the office.

Did I mention, btw, that Bush was right?

Gateway Pundit: White House Declares Strategic Victory
Jules Crittenden: War is Over Indicator #52

After reading this execrable bit of bigotry and preening martyrdom by Kathleen Parker - who apparently has discovered that the magic formula for “instant media love” is “going maverick on your own tribe,” - I am considering adding her to my list of Media Whores and Sad She-Clowns who - in excessive spurts of spirit brought on by sudden media praise - cross lines and go way too far.

Parker, who had her right-wing, “Christianist” Conservative moments until she found her Smart-Kid-Inclusion sword while participating in the Great Big Piling-On of Palin ‘08, is now running free on a ragged field, inviting attention by waving the blade a bit recklessly.

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I’m bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Oh, no! Poor Parker has to bathe in Holy Water, to ward off the evil thoughts being projected her way by the Christians. Later she talks about having her “last cigarette,” because obviously, the Religious Right - all of whom look and act exactly like Carrie White’s mother - will destroy her for speaking out against what she perceives as the unhealthy dominance of religious expression within the GOP.

Parker may actually be making a point worth considering when she argues that the Religious Right is a bit louder than it (or any distinct interest) should be in a political party - and that their exuberance may be off-putting to secularists and those who practice a quieter sort of worship - but she discredits herself, and her argument, in the way she makes it, which is by calling such people gorillas and lowbrows:

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows.

Aw, all the folks who consider themselves intellectuals (or who wish the victorious-left would) are so put off by the commoners filling the ranks of the right! Those “oogedy-boogedy” Evangelicals.

As a Catholic, I can’t say I am always comfortable with Evangelical expressions of faith, but I certainly think they’re entitled to them, if it’s what they like. Parker seems to disagree on that point, and she does it the ugliest of ways. I’ll put her and this column right up there with Tina Brown’s infamously prejudiced Reverence Gone Up In Smoke, written upon the election of Pope Benedict XVI, which Brown decried in a streaming bit of bile that brought up old, bitter chunks of leftover Election ‘04:

…Oh no! Cardinal Ratzinger! His very name was ominous, a cross between Ratso Rizzo and William Zanzinger. His election was like the sharp rap of a ruler across the knuckles by a punitive nun. It was as if you expected Barack Obama and got Bob Dole. The more that cardinals and Vatican watchers lined up on “Larry King Live” to say what a friendly, conciliatory guy he really is (the most appealing detail that emerged the next day was that he looked “a little forlorn” as he entered the Room of Tears to change into his papal vestments), the more he seemed to emerge as a 19th-century throwback, stridently opposed to liberalism, doubt, internal argument within the church. And the Bavarian background doesn’t help. As one of Larry’s callers who identified himself as an amateur historian of the Holocaust put it, “Couldn’t we have let this generation of Germans pass into history?”

Like Parker, Brown too - convinced of her own brilliance because, after all, she eats with the cool kids - bemoaned the lack of rigorous intellectualism in the church, neglecting Benedict’s own impressive intellectual pedigree or the scores of challenging and brilliant publications put for by the book-loving professor turned pontiff:

Secularists, humanists and quiet worshipers of an unpoliticized God have felt beleaguered, frustrated and unfairly disrespected. There’s no energy on the non-zealot side of the cultural debate. There’s no Voltaire, no Clarence Darrow, not even a Lenny Bruce to balance the stifling, censorious religiosity — not even a Bill Clinton or a Jimmy Carter to show that religion doesn’t have to resemble some Tom DeLay combination of contempt and pious hypocrisy.

Yeahhhh…until the Christians start acting like the secularists, who know everything, and the church stops teaching ideals and encouraging us to strive for them, they’re all hypocrites and ignoramuses.

Brown’s column invited what I now admit was an equally bilious response from me, which some liked and some thought a little too relentless. But I am not inclined just now to fisk Parker’s posing piece. As I read it I got an image of her at her desk, reading her prose with a crisp and fake midlantic accent recalling Katharine Hepburne, but with fluttering eyelashes, and that image sort of speaks for itself.

I’m not the only one who found Parker a bit bigoted, here. Jonah Goldberg handily hands Parker her set-down:

I don’t know what’s more grating, the quasi-bigotry that has you calling religious Christians low brows, gorillas and oogedy-boogedy types or the bravery-on-the-cheap as you salute — in that winsome way — your own courage for saying what (according to you) needs to be said. Please stop bragging about how courageous you are for weathering a storm of nasty email you invite on yourself by dancing to a liberal tune. You aren’t special for getting nasty email, from the right or the left. You aren’t a martyr smoking your last cigarette. You’re just another columnist, talented and charming to be sure, but just another columnist. You are not Joan of the Op-Ed Page. Perhaps the typical Washington Post reader (or editor) doesn’t understand that. But you should, and most conservatives familiar with these issues can see through what you’re doing.

Kathleen Parker aspires to be Dorothy Parker, soaring with ease amongst the tricky-to-catch trapezes of acerbic wit and genuine insight. She is a talented and smart writer, but all she can manage in this piece is a Brownian and ungraceful splat into the crowd, which seems both horrified or amused, but sadly not amazed.

UPDATE: I’ve had a few emails from people who thought I was a little harsh on Parker. If I am cruel, it is only to be kind. I would hate to see Parker deluded into thinking she has actually won the respect of the press because she has become “one of the good ones…”

You remember, Archie Bunker right? He was the bigot who hated blacks and if he was talking about his African American co-worker, whose name escapes me, he would say the man was, “you know, one of the good ones…”

When Kathleen Parker, famously joined the “Palin Pile-On” she went - in the estimation of the press and some others - from “Who’s Kathleen Parker,” to “the intelligent and brave Kathleen Parker…you know, one of the good ones…” who would dare to dissent with the always-wrong right. Her column today, gleefully moving from reasoned argument to unreasonable and ugly caricature, reads like Sally Field playing to a desired audience and saying, “you like me! You really like me!”

John McCain was “one of the good ones” too, for a while. The press liked him! They really liked him!…until he ran for president…at which time he was nothing but a bad old, stupid, mean-spirited, enfeebled, out-of-touch and possibly evil conservative, again. Parker should take note, that’s all I’m sayin’!

Meanwhile, The Doc is In wonders about the sharp divide between Christianity and Socialism. I’ve pondered that myself from time to time.

Patterico: Between Parker’s martyrdom and Barack Obama’s “Being the President (Elect) Is a Lonely Job” schtick, we’re surrounded by selfless, courageous people, aren’t we? It’s a very special time.

Ace calls Parker cutesy. Now that’s harsh!

Allahpundit has more

Retreat was excellent, but I need to process it a little before I write about it.

Meanwhile, a quick look around tells me I didn’t miss much, newswise.

Guns: Instapundit links to two pieces on increased gun sales - or the perception of it. I don’t know if I buy the cause and effect. I’ve been contemplating buying a gun for at least two years, and it has nothing to do with politics or social issues, or the election. It’s because after reading female-authored articles on training with handguns and going to shooting ranges, I have simply become much more comfortable with the idea.

Bailout: I am not quite sure why the government is now in the bailout business. I do not understand why the press and the Democrats, who spent the last 7 years (with unemployment below 5%, and the economy growing by 2-3% each quarter) telling us we were living through the “worst economy since Hoover,” should be deemed credible on any economic matter.

Remember back when the frenzy was taking place, I expressed unease with how “overnight” this thing “needed to be done, immediately,” before anyone had a chance to share a thought? I totally distrusted it, but I got - from readers both left and right - serious emails full of “stop talking this down, this has to happen, this has to happen now or we’re facing a meltdown of unprecedented proportions.” I wondered why anyone would care about my little blog questioning it all but figured, “hey, I’m no economist.” I figured lot so of folks knew better than I did. But I never felt easy about it. I run by my gut, and my gut kept reading all of these dire pronouncements, and hearing all of these people predicting doom and I would think, “sleight of hand; look at all of this sound and fury and pay no attention to what we’re wriggling down our sleeves…”

It’s the master illusionist thing again:

…on the world stage there stride some masters of the sleight-of-hand and the misdirection - you can recognise them because they are all of a mind, and of a piece, and they are all working different parts of the same trick. But if you can recognise a trick for what it is, you can prevail against it.

So was an illusion played? It’s a good question. James Pethokoukis seems to still support the essentials of the bailout while making note of “11 Blunders”. He writes:

I think Paulson’s credibility with the financial markets has been exhausted. Now I am not sure what the magic solution was…But I will give this to Paulson: He does strike me as a guy who is working himself near death to deal with an amazingly tough problem.

I don’t quite know what the magic solution was, either, but it seems just plain common sense that you don’t throw money at a situation without accountability, and maybe that old chestnut that you don’t throw “good money after bad,” is worth remembering, too.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin is saying roll back the bailouts. Sen. James Inhofe is saying it too, and he’s saying it in the Senate:

I know many of you have serious concerns about how Secretary Paulson has executed the financial rescue program and I share them with you. Congress abdicated its Constitutional responsibility by signing a truly blank check over to the Treasury Secretary. However, the lame duck session of Congress offers us a tremendous opportunity to change course. We should take it.

I know little about Inhofe, but he also says, this, and this - which I do understand:

“I have learned a long time ago. When they come up and say this has to be done and has to be done immediately, there is no other way of doing it, you have to sit back and take a deep breath and nine times out of 10 they are not telling the truth,” he said. “And this is one of those nine times.”

Frankly, when I saw Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Harry Reid and the rest laughing giddily at their “we did it, we have a bailout” press conference, my blood ran cold. And the fact that they “worked with” the president - whom they despise - “for the good of the country” just made me distrust it even more. I hadn’t seen them “work with” the president for the good of anything in all these years, after all.

The only bright spot seems to be that the global economic tumult that has resulted - and the collapse of oil prices - seems to have bankrupted Iran. But that might be a double-edged sword, too. We’ll have to wait and see.

I’m uncomfortable with a lot of this. I don’t understand why Nancy Pelosi is talking about a 25 Billion Dollar handout to an auto industry that has mismanaged itself; might it not be better to allow them to re-organize and unshackle themselves from the unions? What am I saying? Of course I understand Pelosi’s move - fealty to the unions! I don’t understand why taxpayers should do her bidding, though.

This all feels a little too much like, “do what you can to keep the good times rolling,” when perhaps a little belt-buckling, downsizing (in all of our lives, not just in business) and a little material sacrifice might teach all of us some sound financial principles that got lost in the heydey: Live within your means; pay your bills on time. Don’t give huge freaking bonuses out to the people who mismanaged your corporation; don’t give them bonuses with bailout money. Don’t give bonuses at all. Trim the severance packages and then unload the dead wood.

Yes, it’s harsh medicine. But sometimes medicine is harsh.

Gitmo: I rarely disagree with my blogfather Ed Morrissey, but I do take issue with him, here. He writes on what he perceives as Obama’s coming flip-flop on closing Gitmo:

A month ago, the NYT’s editorial board scoffed at the Bush administration’s efforts to keep Gitmo detainees from being released…Suddenly, the New York Times discovers that the American system does allow for indefinite detention to protect society from dangerous individuals without full-blown criminal trials — as with the criminally insane.

So what happens when the incoming Obama administration decides to continue indefinite detention and back away from Feinstein’s bill on interrogation techniques? Not only will the MoveOn/Code Pink crowd utterly revolt, but it will force a re-evaluation of the Bush administration’s efforts to keep this nation safe from attack — and the success he had in doing so.

I’m sorry, Ed, but sometimes cynicism is warranted. Move On and Code Pink will not revolt. They’ll fall in line and find ways to justify the flop by blaming Bush. They’ll “sympathize” that Obama will not be able to close Gitmo because of “Bush failures,” which have kept the world a “needlessly dangerous” place and they’ll insist that Obama “needs flexibility” in order to save every sector of the planet.

I’m betting there will be no re-evaluation, forced or otherwise, on Bush by this generation. Bush will be the handing scapegoat for every failing and every flip, for as long as they can get away with it. After all, it’s already okay for Obama to admit lobbyists into his circle. It’s just what Jim Geraghty would call expiration dates being met.

Soap: If you happened to include in your Online Christmas Shopping some orders for soap and lotion from the Dominican Nuns of Summit, NJ, note that they’re on retreat until Friday and write: “…there will be no shipping of orders from the online gift shop on [retreat] days although you still may place orders. We thank you for your understanding!”

While I was on retreat this weekend - more on that later - the sisters served up some homemade granola that had me thinking I’d died and gone to heaven! I’m going to try to get them to sell it in batches; if I convince them, you’ll love the stuff!

Speaking of Christmas: Thank you for ordering your Mystic Monk Coffee, your Nuddle Blankets and your Personalized Labels from this site. If you are going to be shopping via Amazon.com for toys, electronics, books and such, please consider entering Amazon through this site. I’m personally rather excited about the frustration-free packaging idea they’ve come up with, and the kickbacks generated help keep the site going and me writing!

As I leave for retreat, I note it’s getting pretty hot in California and elsewhere regarding Proposition 8. Almost sad to be incommunicado as the debate rages. Does seem to me, though - from a strictly legislative point of view, anyhow - that the “will of the people,” is supposed to mean something. Had gay marriage been approved, that would certainly (and justly) be the case, wouldn’t it?

As my Li’l Bro Thom said to a co-worker at his job (about a different but similar issue)

“…this is a Republic. It’s not up to the courts to make that decision. Remember how you hated it when you thought the SCOTUS overturned ‘the will of the people’ after the 2000 election?”

Here’s what I’ve written about Gay Marriage recently, if anyone is interested.

Gay Marriage and the Churches

Gay Marriage, Hate Speech, Good Lord!

Salmonella, Impeachment, Gay Marriage and More

Comments will be closed while I’m gone.

I’ve written almost nothing about politics since the election because there was so much noise out there in the days following it that I thought it best to step back, reflect, process and pray. One thing I’ve come to realize is that the instant busyness of the right - the call to “win in 2010, win in 2012″ - before election day was even over, was off-putting to me. I think if you’re too busy scurrying and too busy moving from fury-to-fury, you’re going to make many missteps. Be a little angry, sure, particularly when the people who have been calling in “unteachably ignorant” and “nazi’s” for 8 years suddenly start saying “lets be fwends, we wuvs you.” But beware the easy descent into the ignoble hellhole of hate where the left has stewed for the past 8 years. There’s nothing worse than looking up and realizing that one has become the very thing one has hated.

Anyhow, I’m still processing and silent beyond noting that there is something obscene in anyone spending over half a billion dollars (some of it dubiously obtained and apparently free-from scrutiny; thanks, press!) to win a presidency (and oh, the press would be howling if McCain had spent it while Obama chugged along on public money), and that it will be interesting to watch the press (who begrudged every dime the RNC spent on Bush’s inaugural in 2004, and crabbed about celebrating “in a time of war”) and see how they’ll justify and promote the DNC’s inaugural excesses “in a time of war” (still) and while “economies are crumbling” and “people are losing jobs.”

But the rest of my thoughts on the Obama presidency are tied up in spiritual perspectives and I’m not ready to say much about them, yet.

I know this much: God is not done with any of us, yet, and that includes Barack Obama. Do I trust Obama? Not especially, and with reason. I have doubts about Obama, mostly because I suspect that Obama has doubts about America.

But that’s where faith comes in. I’m hopeful that some of Obama’s own doubts about America will disappear during the transition, that as he watches his gracious predecessor assist hugely in the peaceful transition of power and stands on the inaugural platform to address the nation and the world, he might - might - suddenly understand how truly great (and stabilizing) are the underpinnings of the nation, and work to preserve, rather than re-tool them.

His unfortunate leaking of the traditionally private discussions between incoming and outgoing presidents the other day, has dulled some of my hope, though, and has once more raised my suspicion that Obama is not here to serve America, first and foremost, but to serve himself, and then something else.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to discuss this president as we have every other president, without fear of retribution. We’ll have to see. Meanwhile, do read Camille Paglia, who says pretty much everything I want to say - on Obama, on the press, on America and on Sarah Palin - and who wonders, as I do, whether America might, someday, be allowed to see the birth certificate of the man it just elected to the most powerful office in the world.

Some excerpts:

In the closing weeks of the election, however, I became increasingly disturbed by the mainstream media’s avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama — even as every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai. For example, I had thought for many months that the flap over Obama’s birth certificate was a tempest in a teapot. But simple questions about the certificate were never resolved to my satisfaction. Thanks to their own blathering, fanatical overkill, of course, the right-wing challenges to the birth certificate never gained traction.

But Obama could have ended the entire matter months ago by publicly requesting Hawaii to issue a fresh, long-form, stamped certificate and inviting a few high-profile reporters in to examine the document and photograph it. (The campaign did make the “short-form” certificate available to Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.) And why has Obama not made his university records or thesis work widely available?

[...]
Pursuing the truth about Ayers, I recently rented the 2002 documentary “The Weather Underground,” from Netflix. It was riveting. Although the film seems to waver between ominous exposé and blatant whitewash, the full extent of the group’s bombing campaign is dramatically demonstrated…he news footage of the Greenwich Village townhouse destroyed in 1970 by bomb-making gone wrong in the basement still has enormous impact. Standing in the chaotic street, actor Dustin Hoffman, who lived next door, seems like Everyman at the apocalypse.

Ayers comes off in the film as a vapid, slightly dopey, chronic juvenile with stunted powers of ethical reasoning. The real revelation is his wife, Bernardine Dohrn (who evidently worked at the same large Chicago law firm as Michelle Obama in the mid-1990s)…

The mystery of Bernardine Dohrn: How could such a personable, attractive, well-educated young woman end up saying such things at a 1969 political rally as this (omitted in the film) about the Manson murders: “Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach. Wild!”
[...]
Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

Just read it all and be grateful that Paglia - a true classical liberal - is saying this stuff from the left.

UPDATE: And this lady speaks a lot of truth, also

Reposted from October 2007.

BUSH, CUBA & THE LIVES OF OTHERS

Jay Nordlinger’s column is one of the few places I’ve seen extensive coverage of President Bush’s little-mentioned, must read speech in which he dares to talk plainly about the much distorted realities of Cuba and communism.

Says Bush:

Cuba’s rulers promised individual liberty. Instead they denied their citizens basic rights that the free world takes for granted. In Cuba it is illegal to change jobs, to change houses, to travel abroad, and to read books or magazines without the express approval of the state. It is against the law for more than three Cubans to meet without permission. Neighborhood Watch programs do not look out for criminals. Instead, they monitor their fellow citizens — keeping track of neighbors’ comings and goings, who visits them, and what radio stations they listen to. The sense of community and the simple trust between human beings is gone.

In a funny synchronicity, my husband came home the other night with a borrowed copy of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar Winning film “The Lives of Others”. After moaning for a second that he hated subtitles, he settled in and we watched one of the best, most absorbing and chilling films we’ve seen in years.

Set in East Berlin a few years before Glasnost, before Reagan said, “tear down this wall.” The Stasi (State Security Agency) has 100,000 employees and 200,000 informants. We follow the lives of one couple who - through no fault of their own - come to the attention of the Stasi, who are intent on finding evidence of crime (which can be defined as anything as threatening to the party as the expression of a doubt, or the telling of a joke) where none exist. In a particularly creepy scene, a Stasi captain, observing that a neighbor has seen his crew bug the protagonist’s apartment, explains to her that a word of warning to the neighbor will end her daughter’s academic career at University. Throughout the film we see minor characters intimidated, terrified and distrustful. East Germany’s suicide rate is second only to Hungary’s and watching these lonely, desperate lives, observing the ease with which careers are destroyed on the merest whim of an ambitious party member, or the merest unguarded whimsy of a joke, is hair-raising. We see clearly that a government that “gives” all to “the people” is an illusion, and that when government is handed power over some of your life - ostensibly for your own good - that power can be turned against you..

Says President Bush:

Cuba’s rulers promised freedom of the press. Instead they closed down private newspapers and radio and television stations. They’ve jailed and beaten journalists, raided their homes, and seized their paper, ink and fax machines. One Cuban journalist asked foreigners who visited him for one thing: a pen.

In The Lives of Others, our first protagonist is a successful playwright who has managed rather easily and charmingly to bridge the divide between the freedom of his art and the restrictions of his government. His life is rather better than the lives of others, and one gets the sense that he is not fully appreciative of how tenuous are his privileges. The suicide of a dear friend - a blacklisted director - seems to bring that message home to him. He writes an article on the hopelessness reflected in East Germany’s suicide rate, and tries to get it smuggled out, to the West.

Bush said:

Joining us here are family members of political prisoners in Cuba. I’ve asked them to come because I want our fellow citizens to see the faces of those who suffer as a result of the human rights abuses on the island some 90 miles from our shore. One of them is Olga Alonso. Her brother, Ricardo Gonzalez Alonso [sic], has been harassed by Cuban authorities since he was 11 years old, because he wrote things that the Cuban authorities did not like. In 2003, Ricardo was arrested for his writings and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The authorities seized illegal contraband they found in his home. These included such things as a laptop computer, notebooks and a printer.

In The Lives of Others, our protagonist is outfitted (by dissident friends) with a new typewriter because the East German government would be able to identify his work by his own instrument’s typeface. The government knew, you see, what every artist used to create his art, the easier to track any dissent.

The Lives of Others has moments of beauty interspersed with scenes of harrowing loneliness, shame, purposeless and hopelessness, but the moments of beauty are sublime - a man at the piano, his music deeply affecting the Stasi agent assigned to listen in - a conversation between that agent and a child of about six. The little boy, holding a ball, enters an elevator with the agent and asks, “is it true you are with the Stasi?” The agent responds, “do you even know what the Stasi is?” The boy: “My father says they are the bad men…”

The agent, on automatic pilot, begins to ask the boy what is the name of his father - another comrade to check up on, you see - except he seems to realize he is about to exploit an innocent, and he stops himself. The Stasi agent, in his relentless, thorough and dedicated spying, has observed real, committed and selfless love. He has been moved by art (which so many disdain as useless). He has encountered a true innocent in a land where no one is considered that. And just moving against the periphery of this powerful but underappreciated trinity - love, art, innocence - rocks the Stasi’s world.

This is a great movie, which I can’t recommend enough. Watched with Bush’s speech about Cuba in mind, it’s a one-two punch to the American psyche, both a wake-up call to renewed appreciation for (and dedication to) the liberties we enjoy and too easily take for granted, and an pointed reminder that there are people suffering from totalitarianism a mere 90 miles from our shore.

Go read the rest of President Bush’s remarks on Cuba, and The Freedom Fund for Cuba, which is being implemented under his administration, and then rent The Lives of Others. Submit to the one-two punch, without investing your own ideological spins and partisan furies into them. I believe you will be moved, for the better.

Also read: this Wired Magazine article on East Germany. Fascinating.

Related: Is Totalitarianism Incompatible with Religion?
The Remnant: To Worship Underground

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.

I would love nothing better than to be able to stop writing about “left” and “right.” I wish we had a better vocabulary to describe our distinctions, because these words are limiting and off-putting. I am determined, with the merciful conclusion of this abusively long election season, to work diligently at spending less time entertaining these distinctions. But for today, I think it is only fair to note a very important and glaring difference between “left and right” - and in so doing - consider how we may, finally, stop needing to indulge in what is tedious.

Victor Davis Hanson says Let’s not imitate the left in our opposition. I agree.

It has been wonderful - really beyond wonderful - to consider how differently most of the right has reacted to their defeat than the left did in 2000 and 2004. In the two previous elections, the left responded by calling the other half of the country “stupid,” “morons,” and “Nazis” - Jane Smiley called them “unteachably ignorant” - they indulged in high drama, sniffling “apologies” to the globe, and denunciations of their fellow countrymen as “lying between repugnant and reptile in the dictionary.”

And oh, yeah (eyeroll) George W. Bush was not “their” president.

While you’ll see a few disgruntled extremists on the right say foolish, even ignorant things - and many throwing daggers at the sickening double-standards of the press - they’re not indulging in that sort of dehumanizing (and very adolescent) hate of their fellow countrymen or the president-elect. The reports they’re filing read very differently than those following the Bush wins. They read as grown-up, tolerant, open-minded discourses, not tantrums. There is a willingness to be hopeful, even in defeat.

And there is a determined respectfulness being offered to the winners - people who could not manage maturity and respectfulness in their defeat and who, sadly, are not always managing it in their victory, either.

I’m hopeful that the left - if it takes the time to actually condescend to notice how well it is being treated by the vanquished - might consider that self-indulgent defamation is the lesser way; that such a consideration may inspire introspection, and perhaps the smallest bit of regret for some of their appalling excesses toward the right and toward the American President who did not return hate in-kind.

I’m hopeful. I’m an optimist. I KNOW that the folks on the right - for all of their faults, and both sides certainly have faults - want America to be successful and strong and exceptional and free. I’m hopeful that hugely empowered left will discover that - beyond the feel-goodism of “free social programs” which are never free -they actually, really do want all of those things, too. That they’ll look back on the last 8 years and realize, finally, that their enemy was never George W. Bush. Bush, the guy who never dehumanized them, was only trying serve those corny ideals.

And then, miraculously, we may actually have unity.

Some similar thinking from my girl crush, Donna Brazile:

“The one mistake that we continue to make is that we label people. We say you’re conservatives, liberal, progressive, right wing, left wing. I think people just want to spend one day being Americans. They want to come together around a common purpose, common values.”

I wondered the other day if the catharsis of this election might open up “a vein of generosity” (or at least decency) from the left as concerns President Bush. I have not seen it yet, but I’m going to be optimistic and keep looking.

But maybe it’s enough just to see a little appreciation from the right, to start. Like this, for instance:

I link, therefore, I Err has a little mini-round-up of appreciation for George W. Bush. You’ll want to read it all.

From Alppuccino at Protein Wisdom:

At 10:40, President Bush will keep his streak alive by telling everyone how much he loves America. Just as he always has. And he’ll show everyone how much he loves America by preparing Obama as best he can for the next 4 years.

Read it all; it’s doubtful that Obama’s team will come into the White House finding O’s missing from their keyboards, any rude messages greeting them. And that is how it should be in America, a respectful transition.

Michael Gerson:

Many liberals refuse to concede Bush’s humanity, much less his achievements.

But that humanity is precisely what I will remember. I have seen President Bush show more loyalty than he has been given, more generosity than he has received. I have seen his buoyancy under the weight of malice and his forgiveness of faithless friends. Again and again, I have seen the natural tug of his pride swiftly overcome by a deeper decency — a decency that is privately engaging and publicly consequential.

[In 2005]…the White House senior staff overwhelmingly opposed a new initiative to fight malaria in Africa for reasons of cost and ideology…In the crucial policy meeting, one person supported it: the president of the United States, shutting off debate with a moral certitude that others have criticized. I saw how this moral framework led him to an immediate identification with the dying African child, the Chinese dissident, the Sudanese former slave, the Burmese women’s advocate. It is one reason I will never be cynical about government — or about President Bush.

Jeffery Scott Shapiro:

[The treatment of President Bush] from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have…Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty — a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Until we fix, within ourselves, our enthrallment with hate for others, simply because they hold differing views, we’ll never pull it together. In 2006 we watched a right-wing blogger be called less than human by a left-wing reader. We’ve seen President Bush being referred to as “the chimp” and “the monkey” by the wits who insisted that ideology trumped having a decent respect for another’s humanity. I wrote about that a little here:

Thus, George W. Bush is “Chimpy McHitler.” Hillary Clinton is “a pig in a pantsuit.” Barack Obama is “O-Bambi.” Cindy McCain, who has exhibited some courage and laudable compassion in her life, is reduced to a “pill-popping beer-frau,” and so forth. From there it is smooth sailing down an ever-descending river of hatred, until we are incapable of seeing anything good in the “other,” both because we have willfully hardened our hearts, and because our hate — especially when it is supported by a group of like minds — feels safe and inviolable.

With that in mind, you’ll want to read this excellent piece over at Conversion Diary, wherein Jenifer ponders pictures from a Nazi-era photo album and wonders, how such common-variety people managed to support and enable such profound evil.

One thing that stands out in all these examples is that the victims of the widespread evil were categorized as something less than human…not only that innocent people were killed or enslaved, but that their humanity was taken away by the societies around them…So here is the advice I would offer to my children, and to my children’s children:

Every decade or so, take a look around the society in which you live, and ask yourself if there is any group of human beings who are seen as something less than human. A big tipoff is if dehumanizing words — terms other than “man,” “woman,” “child,” “baby,” or “person” — are used to describe any category of people.

And if you ever see that going on, you might be in the midst of something gravely evil.

Dehumanizing people begins with baby-steps like name-calling, or the sort of intellectual dishonesty that delights in deliberately twisting the meaning of others in negative and misrepresentative ways. Those are the little gateways to the great evils that come once you’ve managed to thoroughly de-humanize others.

We’ve had 8 years - I’d say 12, really - of people demonizing and dehumanizing others, from both sides, and it is not getting us anyplace good. I believe that the response of most of the right to Obama’s victory is a step toward changing that. But the left has to do their part, too.

Pope Benedict XVI said, “those who hope live differently.” The election of Barack Obama was borne on this word, “Hope.”

If the people who voted for “hope” were sincere, then let them begin, today, to embrace it - and to live differently - without the kneejerk move to hate “the other side.” The right, responding levelly to their defeat, has offered the opening. Will the left take it?

UPDATE: Seems some will. Here is mostly accurate, and apprecited praise from a surprising quarter:

Would America have elected Barack Obama if white Americans had not gotten accustomed to seeing (in succession) two African-American Secretaries of State? I don’t think so. Before Bush, African-Americans were appointed to some good posts but not to our #1 foreign policy job. Two African Americans (one with a pretty odd first name) served as America’s face to the world. That eased Obama’s way. It is not Tiger Woods in whose footsteps Obama is walking — it’s Rice and Powell….Fact is, “W” never gave any evidence of holding racist attitudes…even just the slur the occasionally slips out of the mouth of even our most liberal leaders.

Same with Arabs and Muslims…Bush, after 9/11, never resorted to anti-Arab or Muslim stereotypes. He drew distinctions between terrorists and Arabs…Had he not done these things, Arabs and Muslims might have experienced not just hate crimes but pogroms.

Meanwhile, from Grand Rants:

Here is a man who is regularly compared to Hitler in casual conversation in Leftist circles high and low. His honor has been regularly impugned, his intelligence (or, as the press loves to put it, his “intellectual curiousity”) constantly demeaned, his verbal stumblings consistently mocked, and his accomplishments in office discounted or ignored. He is a man who kept his head down and did his job, despite the slings and arrows hurled at him by fortune made all the more outrageous by nearly the entire Democratic party.

I for one, would like to say thank you to Pres. Bush. For keeping us safe. For watching out for us. For persevering in spite of all the spite. I believe history will ultimately judge you as one of America’s best presidents, and I believe you deserve that judgement.

H/T to Opinionated Catholic, who writes:

The throwing under the bus of the President by even his friends and indeed the base has been shocking to me. Many groups will find out soon enough how they took Bush’s support and advocacy for them for granted, Catholics, especially.

Meanwhile, Jules Crittenden is beginning to enjoy Omerica, Quin Hillyer is saying America is over, kaput, finished, Evan Thomas suddenly finds Obama “slightly creepy” and when you refuse to release medical records, and the press doesn’t care…conjecture begins about your mental health.

Good Luck, President-Elect Obama. You’ll be in charge of our Armed Forces - Commander-in-Chief to 2,200,000 brave men and women who serve and are willing to die for their country.

You’ll understand when I say I hope you’re up to the task (your resume is pretty thin) and that you’ll think about what is best for those troops and the honorable victory they are achieving in Iraq, before you embark on the creation of your domestic army. To start, maybe, as president, you could do something to make it easier for them to get their votes counted?

Our President at this moment is still George W. Bush, and he deserves a good deal more respect than he’s been given. When you’re sworn in, you’ll have my respect, too. It won’t be uncritical - not that you’ll care what this little blogger thinks, for as long as bloggers continue to run free - but I will manage to be respectful and fair, which is more than most lefty bloggers managed for President Bush, so you’re already ahead of the game.

I may have to use this transitional time, though, to burn off a little of my anger at the press, and to give a little tweak at the glaring double-standards I see in their treatment of you, compared to their treatment of Bush.

I know you’ll understand that, President-Elect Obama, because you’re going to be the President of the United States - part of a very exclusive group, whose members should share some sympathies for each other. And I know you won’t mind my noticing those double-standards because you know that the President cannot be too touchy; the President must have a sense of humor about himself, and a generosity of spirit, and a respect for free speech among the citizenry. Correct?

Yes, I knew you would have a sense of humor and generosity, and that you would respect free speech.

And with that in mind, if you would please put gas in my car and pay my mortgage for me, I’m sure we can be great friends!

I’m so damn glad this election is over! Two years was too freaking long.

More:

Rachel Lucas: A great picture of poor, put-upon Sunny and advice to prevent hangovers.

Betsy Newmark: Our conflicts are based on deep ideological differences that we won’t ignore, but we can disagree without being ugly. Maybe Republicans can show the Democrats how to be a loyal opposition party without the total demonization that so many liberals have shown to prominent Republicans.

Well, considering how low the left has set that bar, I think we can manage it, as illustrated below:

Rick at Brutally Honest has more.

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