The pseudo-lefty webzine Salon is still going strong on the Hillary Hatin' with multiple screeds out every week. If you thought that their series of Camille Paglia were as low as they could go, no, they've found levels below that subbasement level of thought. The ones the past few days featuring dopey guys who came to prominence through that exercise in futile play-leftism Occupy. They and the con artists of the Green Party are promoting the idea that, somehow, there is going to be a Green alliance between Sanders and Jill Stein, which seems unlikely in the extreme. I can't imagine there being enough room in one party for two egos that big, though you can apparently stuff an unlimited amount of stupidity and self deception into such an outfit, look at how much of it they can stuff into Salon. I don't link to Salon anymore. It deserves to be boycotted.
My last illusions about the lefty media have shattered in their writing about this election. Reviewing the dishonesty, the denial of reality and the refusal to see the extent of the crisis that a Republican win would bring has made me see that they've been peddling destructive slogans that have enabled the worst in our country. Political campaigns going back to 1968 - more than a century if you include their promotion of various third parties have featured attacks against the most liberal of possibly elected presidential candidates and many of those for other offices. The excuse is that they weren't ideologically correct or pure enough. It is one of the benefits of being online that you can look at old copies of old magazines of the left, to say they are a merely mixed bag would minimize the crack pottery that they were full of. Given how stupid they were, you have to conclude that whatever progress was made was made despite their sometimes support for something like progress - often it was a parody of progress toward equality or justice which was thinly veiled to mostly benefit Marxists. And it would inevitably be mixed in with such idiocy as to discredit the equality and justice language. I have come to the conclusion that the net influence of such media in progress was likely far less than they like to claim.
I was sent an example of a blogger who seems to believe he originated the idea of increasing Social Security benefits and other reforms extending the program within the last decade. Apparently he and his fan base are unaware of such proposals frequently being raised, going back to at least the Truman administration. Well, we all like to imagine we're more important than we are. He seems to be luke warm on Hillary Clinton, even now that she's going to be the nominee, the only person who will be standing between the world and President Trump. I suspect he doesn't want to alienate his Bernie or Buster faction, it might drive down his ad income.
"Corrupt" and "warmonger" are used like talismans to ward off evil, as if adjectives have magic powers and the world is neatly divided between bad guys and good guys in white hair.
ReplyDeleteIt's stupidly childish and reductionist. Bernie has no answers to anything, just ideas he will "effect" because he will be President and use the Green Lantern powers of the POTUS that nobody else can, because he has a "movement" behind him. If he fails, it is because the powers of evil are against him, and he must prevail or we will all go down into darkness.
You can't reason with people that myopic and immature. Will Hillary be more anxious to make war than Bernie? Maybe, but even Obama was dragged into more military ventures and less condemnation of torture than he wanted to be. As James Taylor sang it, the man up there who claims to have his hands upon the reins just has chains upon his hands, and he's just riding on the train.
Presidents are not Hercules; they can't redirect the course of rivers to cleanse the stables, and believing they can, and should, is the most dangerous simplistic reasoning of all. Yes, the system is corrupt; but consider that corruption is part of the system, that to remove it is akin to removing the wife's birthmark in Hawthorne's story: the cure is worse than the affliction.
Especially because the cure is impossible.
More and more I see a deep wisdom in orthodox Christianity: it went astray with insisting on the absolute corruption of humanity (be quiet, Jean Cauvin, you've done enough damage). But the humility of recognizing all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that we are fallen and imperfect and even our best intentions (as Niebuhr pointed out) produce bad consequences (the CIA calls it "blowback." Or, as the military says, "Failure is not an option. It comes as standard equipment."). We learned from the Greeks (wrongly) that perfectibility is possible. We should have learned from the Hebrews that these are the conditions that prevail, and how do we make the best of it?
That's the heart of the prophets, and of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth: not that we are fallen, corrupt, and doomed to misery; but that we aren't the center of the universe, and it isn't all here for us to toy with as if we were children unaware of consequences. But first we have to stop insisting we are, or can be, in control.
Hillary recognizes that better than Bernie, thought I don't give Hillary a pass on everything. But Bernie is a damned fool who thinks that if the people are behind him, then the miracle occurs. At age 74, you'd think he'd know better.