Buchanan To The Defense…of Hitler

Some people seem to dissolve into their worst attributes over time. There is a seige mentality that develops, it seems, and from within the bastions and barricades the fever dreams of the misunderstood and disillusioned take root and grow into horrible, twisted things. I don't care much for people who are constantly running around trying to scare the rest of us with apocalyptic prognostications. The sky is falling, yes it is, and there's nothing we can do about it. Who can hold up the sky or keep the stars from falling? Not me and it would appear a waste of what life might be left to spend my time fretting over it and ruining other people's day telling them to not enjoy themselves because the impending catastrophe is of such significance that to ignore it in any way is to cheapen all human history. Having a good time in the face of Doom is being, somehow, rude to the awesome relevance of said Doom. Everyone needs a hobby. Conspiracy theorists have found the X-Box of their desires within the serpentine confines of a world delimited by the constant back-stabbing one-up-manship of imagined black ops, coups, assassinations, and creeping ideological subversion. I wish them good times playing with their toys. But occasionally they decide to rewrite history to justify their paranoia and depending on what it is they're trying to sell by doing so, I get a bit less tolerant.

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John Adams and Modern Perceptions

We just watched the last episode of John Adams. I got the DVD from the library and we went through it in one week, all seven installments. I have to admit, the last episode brought tears. The partnership between John and Abigail was well-portrayed and deeply moving. The older I get, the more I find the strongest story resonance with depictions of deep, deep friendships, especially those that exist between lovers, spouses, life partners. I cannot imagine losing Donna, who has become exactly that for me, in spite of the fact that I have friends of longer acquaintance, good friends, too. The casting was incredible, the make-up superb, the writing first class. What struck me most about this as well was the marvelously-nuanced dramatization of the fundamental differences in political philosophy between Adams and Jefferson. I can't help but think that when Adams declared that "the true history of our revolution is lost" he must have been thinking of the initial partnership and later dissolution of like-mindedness between himself and Thomas Jefferson, whom Joseph Ellis depicts an an American Sphinx. Adams is here portrayed as an idealist who cannot separate his philosophy from his pragmatism. In the first dozen years of the new republic, there was enormous public sentiment for France and when that country descended into the frenzy of its own revolution gone mad, that sentiment demanded that we support the revolutionaries. The irony that France supported us when it was still a monarchy and now those very people that had backed us (granted, as a move in their own war with England) were the victims of the mob ascendant was lost on most people, and apparently even Jefferson, who wanted us to embroil ourselves immediately and deeply in support of the revolutionaries. Washington---how lucky they were to have him---refused. He was a militaryman by training and he understood how to assess the chances of success and how to go about surviving a conflict in which you are outmatched. He had seen more than his share of defeat in a long career and knew well that ideology needed a strong hand to keep it in check, lest it carry you over the precipice. He refused to side with France, believing that neutrality was the only way for the United States to survive. Adams shared that belief.

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Government-Hating: An American Value

G.O.P. Chairman Michael Steele made a few remarkably in-your-face comments recently about the health care debate. Here, in his own words, is pretty much where he thinks the nation is going, why it shouldn't go there, and what the Republican Party stands for. This morning on NPR he tangled with Steve Inskeep, in particular over this. One quote in particular caught my eye: " Simply put, we believe that health-care reform must be centered on patients, not government." When you listen to the NPR interview it's clear that we're hearing another in the now decades-long tirades against the government which has become the hallmark of Right Wing politics in this country. In this country, in theory, the government is supposed to be us, the people. We elect our representatives, we tell them how we want them to vote, we change our minds, we are supposed to be in charge. In theory. Obviously, the reality is far from that. For one, we are not a full-fledged democracy, we are a republic, and while we elect those who operate the machinery of the republic on our behalf, we do not have a direct say in the running. Nor could we, really. it is simply too complex. We send our representatives to the various points of departure---state capitols, Washington D.C., county seats, city halls---to do that for us because it is a big, complex, often indecipherable melange of conflicting goals, viewpoints, and problems. We do not have the time to pay the necessary attention to do that work ourselves, so we pay people to do it for us. So why do we distrust it so much? Well, because we distrust each other.

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Just A Question Or Three

Just a couple of what seem to me like obvious questions. (I know, I've been writing a bit on the health care debate, and I'll try to do some other things after this, don't want to bore anyone, especially myself.) I see a lot of protesters waving signs that contain something like this: HEALTHCARE REFORM YES, GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER NO. TORT REFORM NOW! Something about that doesn't quite add up. If health care is to be reformed, who is going to do it? The industry isn't, not without a threat. Which means there will have to be something outside the industry doing the threatening. What might that be? Hmm. The government? And the nature of the reform, if it isn't to be entirely self-serving on the part of the industry, will have to be devised by a somewhat disinterested party. Who might that be? The government? And tort law...well, that's, as it says, Law. Which is legislation. Which is---wait for it!--- the government! So what is being asked for here? That the government enact reforms that do not involve the government, do not make use of government authority, do not engage government offices, and will not grant the government any power to enforce. So how will that work exactly? Or is there some third party out there we haven't been told about capable of doing all this reforming? Oh, the market! Which basically is consumers, which is, well, all of us. The people. But wait...isn't the government supposed to be the duly elected voice of the people? So if the people are demanding reform, how are the people supposed to both express such a desire and then implement said reforms? I guess, through their duly elected voice---the government. But if the government is not to be trusted, I guess that means the people aren't to be trusted. The people don't know what they want, what is good for them, or how to go about managing the reforms they've demanded and, somehow, achieved. So there will have to be an appointed body of presumed experts who do know how to manage all this to act on the people's behalf... Who might that be? The industry? Hmm. Well, since it's the industry that needs reforming and the people who have demanded reform, handing management of the reform over to the very thing that needs the reform would seem, well, not to put to fine a point on it, stupid. So I guess we'd have to elect a representative body to manage the reforms. Oh, wait, don't we already have such a body? Yeah, it's the government. So by demanding reform of an industry, it would seem reasonable that we not trust the industry (that already doesn't do what we want it to do) to reform itself. It would be silly to create a whole other body to oversee all this when one already exists that has over two centuries of expertise in doing exactly this sort of thing. So how is anything is going to change otherwise? Just wondering, you know, because some of the demands sort of don't make any sense.

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Hitler and the Dining Room Table

I like Barney Frank. He says what he feels, usually in a way that makes his argument better. But it's almost a no-brainer to do a comeback on the idiocy with which he was faced in Dartmouth, Massachussetts this past week. I mean, what do you say to someone who thinks it's a valid statement to compare Obama to Hitler? A woman carrying a poster with Obama's image modified with a Hitlerian mustache stepped up to the microphone to ask why Frank supports a Nazi policy. There are so many things wrong with this it boggles the mind where to begin. Frank's response was probably the most effective. "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" he asked. Then: "Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table." He then commented that her freedom to carry that poster and make such lamebrained statements was a tribute to the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech. I salute his restraint. To compare any president of the United States to Hitler is a stretch, even with the likes of Obama's predecessor. (I might consider it for Cheney, but even he does not match the level of malignancy achieved by Adolph, nor does our system allow for such people to act with unrestrained impunity, hard as that might be for some to accept.) But to compare Barack Obama to the man man of the 20th Century is such a profoundly ignorant mischaracterization that it is tempting to write off this whole experiment in potential civilization as a failure. Where does this shit come from? The Republican Party, what is left of it, is grasping at straws, sinking in the quicksand of its own inanity. We must take care to not be pulled into the quagmire in some misguided attempt to rescue it through well-intentioned but doomed bipartisan sentiments. The Republican Party has devolved into a nasty cadre of ideologues, a shrinking room of hydrophobic screechers who claw and scratch at anyone who tries to do this country a service by bringing it back to some semblance of decency. They have fed on their own conspiracy-fevered viscera for so long that they cannot even hear the words much less the sentences of opposing viewpoints. We should perhaps let them sink and drown. It would be a kindness. The fear-mongering is reminiscent of everything we've seen since 2000. Rachel Maddow, who is one of the most able of contemporary analysts on television, shows the process and the connections here. Shouting, screaming, inane blather---noise filling the spaces in which rational discourse might take place if only the decibel level could be reduced. Platitudes, sloganeering, slander, and lies are flooding these so-called town hall meetings and shoving aside reason and discovery and thought. These are not people who are interested in understanding anything, they are people bent on stopping something they've been told---been told---they should not allow.

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