House of Eratosthenes

One of our blogger friends up in Seattle advanced a fascinating argument Friday and we just managed to trip across it yesterday afternoon. If you’re a blogger who embedded that fantastic take-down by the other wise man named Morgan in which he says people should stop talking about race; and you went on to take note of His Holy Eminence’s use of the word “bamboozled” — then, he says in so many words, you’re doing a lousy job of sticking to your own knitting. You’ll notice those last two hyperlinks point back to these fine pages, so we presume he’s including us. “God” just got done telling us to stop talking about race, and here we are talking about it.

What a great point that is. Or would be, if he didn’t mention it. D’Oh!

But there are some things not mentioned, like the premises upon which the argument rests. I specifically have in mind the pure motives of our nation’s first Holy President — the notion that He was Shirley-Sherroded, didn’t mean anything by it, taken out of context. The argument presumes this as a given, while simultaneously shaming us into avoiding any thought or discussion of it.

But once we inspect these motives and find the innocence is not there; or to put it more precisely, once we inspect the motives and find proof, or compelling evidence, that Mister Wonderful was, indeed, making an effort to stir up a racial the hornet’s nest for His own benefit; then, at that point, the entire argument is rent asunder. Replacement Jesus becomes the person flouting the sensible advice of Morgan Freeman, and the bloggers are “guilty” of just noticing it. Ironically, at that point it ceases to be about race. It’s just another story of just another politician making more promises to eradicate a problem, while His political fortunes are inflexibly fastened to the continuing existence of that problem. This is something that has never worked and never will.

So yes, of course Barack Obama is continuing to agitate racial tension. And bloggers, by noticing this and pointing it out, are doing what bloggers should be doing.

Some will call this an exercise in the disgraced “The Other Guy Started It!” defense. I’d like to address that. But first, let us take note of something else that happened yesterday. James Taranto, writing in Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web, had a few words to say about a tempest that has erupted in a teapot in the wake of Elena Kagan’s confirmation to the Supreme Court — the issue being the lack of a unanimous vote.

I do not mean to belittle the tempest. There is something that has come undone, when unanimous votes used to be the norm, and now it seems sensible to conclude we’ve seen our last for quite awhile. We have, then, lost something that we should have tried harder not to lose, have we not?

Those Republicans need to take a good long look at themselves! Well not so fast, says Taranto:

As a distressed Jonathan Bernstein observes on The New Republic’s website:

What would have happened if there were only 52 or 53 Democrats in the Senate, or for that matter 48 or 49. Elena Kagan appears, by all accounts, to be a mainstream Democratic nominee; she certainly wasn’t on the short list of liberal advocates, although she was broadly acceptable to most of them. Can any Obama nominee be confirmed to the Supreme Court next year? The problem here is that compromise is almost impossible to imagine over the Court…

If there’s a Supreme Court opening, and if the Democrats hold fewer than, say, 55 seats in the Senate, I think the odds of a real train wreck, a total stalemate, have to be well over 50/50.

It doesn’t seem to occur to Bernstein, however, that the Kagan vote is the mirror image of the Alito vote (D 4-41, R 54-1). Almost all Democratic senators, including future presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, voted to reject a mainstream Republican nominee whom they had no possibility of defeating.

After that, why would Republicans vote for any Democratic nominee?

This isn’t the only time Taranto’s column invokes other-guy-did-it-first. There is an eloquent argument wrapped up in the offering that the real turning point was in 1987, when the late Sen. Ted Kennedy indulged in a smear campaign against eminently qualified nominee Robert Bork. True, after that the flame of bipartisan unity flickered a few times, but then it ultimately died out. At least, for the time being.

If you were paying attention back in ’87 and saw what Sen. Kennedy was doing, then you know: The “he started it” argument has some real merits here that are not quite so easily dismissed.

And this is where it connects back to the other issue, of Replacement Jesus standing up at a podium and using the word “bamboozled” as a code word for whipping up a racial animosity. This hostility we have toward the “other guy started it” argument is something we get from dear ol’ Mom. Dishes, laundry, mopping, dusting…she didn’t have time to play detective and figure out who started what, nor did she have any interest in raising grown-up children who think any reprehensible conduct is just fine, so long as the other guy did something that could be said to have provoked it. This falls short of what is required for functioning in a civilized society.

And so she taught us to maintain control, and responsibility for our interactions with others. And this starts, necessarily, with forsaking for all time the he-threw-the-first-punch defense. We need to ignore the race-baiting of our President, lest we be guilty of the same. And we need to reject Taranto’s argument, pretend the Kennedy smear campaign and the Alito vote never happened.

And this gets down to my point:

Nobody ever said Washington, DC is emblematic of this civilized society in which we must learn to live by forgetting who started what. Quite a few knowledgeable people have said things to the contrary. And this republic is founded on a principle of everlasting vigilance against our so-called “leaders.” The citizens are supposed to be responsible. If we trust implicitly, then we betray the vision. This is a point that is overlooked often.

Did you notice how many times the word “forget” appears, as I describe Mom’s vision? You can’t do that without it.

What we have here, then, are two noble visions — one for our sensible adult conduct once we grow up, one for the country — that eventually come into contact and conflict with each other. The Founding Fathers cannot abide Mom’s advice to us because there is too much forgetting involved. An incompatibility has been created. This is why people detest politicians so much.

You forget that Ted Kennedy started our climate of intemperance with regard to the Senate’s advice and consent, and your forgetfulness fits in just fine with Mom’s advice. It feels like you’re doing your bit to foster a new era of congeniality. You’re doing what Mom said, aren’t you? Forgetting. But the effect this ultimately has, is just the opposite. The politician is taught, like a puppy shitting on the living room rug, that he can get away with this.

No, we have to remember things. We have to remain informed. It is what makes the country go. It is the only hope we have for keeping deranged sociopaths out of our nation’s highest offices.

This would not be complete, without some thought regarding what kind of detestable life form we’re trying to keep out of those mahogany offices. We’ve had a lot of people running the show, for a very long time now, who are supposed to be making it easier for us all to get along with each other. Straights and gays, blacks and whites, men and women, rich and poor. The time has come to acknowledge that if such harmony fit in with what they really wanted, and we have been doing a swell job of picking ’em, we’d be there by now…or, at least, we wouldn’t be having these flare-ups during every even-numbered year in the months leading up to November.

Anger and hatred are like erections. If you can keep ’em going across days, months and years, there is something terribly wrong with you. And there’s something terribly wrong with anybody who wants you to.

Vigilance. Not forgetfulness. That’s the only answer, the only way out. We’ve tried the other one already. Sorry, Mom.

“Replacement Jesus becomes the person flouting the sensible advice of Morgan Freeman, and the bloggers are “guilty” of just noticing it. Ironically, at that point it ceases to be about race. It’s just another story of just another politician making more promises to eradicate a problem, while His political fortunes are inflexibly fastened to the continuing existence of that problem. This is something that has never worked and never will.”

Sell stated, Morgan.
- tim | 08/10/2010 @ 10:16
Well stated…doh.
- tim | 08/10/2010 @ 10:16

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But the Other Guy Did it First!Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

But the Other Guy Did it First!
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010