House of Eratosthenes

Is it time, already, for the historians to look back on the strange, surreal campaign summer of 2008 and shake their heads sadly at the debilitating weakness inherent in consensus thought?

Victor Davis Hanson thinks so.

Historians will look back at the 2008 campaign in the light of the 2010 midterm elections. Almost everything the president has done in the last two years is simply a continuance of that now strangely distant summer.

The only disconnects are (1) that the media are now embarrassed by Obama’s rapid decline in the polls and so suddenly, in catch-up fashion, have chosen to highlight his inexperience and hypocrisy in a way they did not in 2008. And (2) that governance requires concrete action in a way campaign rhetoric does not, and thus the American public can evaluate the consequences of deeds rather than the implications of mellifluent hope-and-change rhetoric.

Remember the 2008 claims of bipartisanship and an end to the old style of politics? Yet there was nothing in Obama’s prior career to substantiate those idealistic claims. In his first race, for the Illinois state senate in 1996, he sued to remove opponents from the ballot, and in his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004, the divorce records of both his primary- and general-election opponents were mysteriously leaked. Subsequently, Obama compiled the most partisan record in the entire Senate, proving that he was the least willing senator to veer from a doctrinaire ideology. So if we are surprised that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Fox News, John Roberts, the tea parties, John Boehner, the Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove, and Ed Gillespie have later become bogeymen of the week, we must remember that this is merely the logical continuance of Obama’s earlier hardball modus operandi.
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Remember the condescending Pennsylvania clingers speech, and the psychoanalysis of his own grandmother’s purported “typical white person” sort of racism? Such professorial tsk-tsking has simply now been channeled into deprecations of a new cast of yokels, whose denseness and emotionalism ensured that they also could not appreciate all that Obama had done for them.

Indeed, the supposedly limbic-brained voters of Pennsylvania would easily recognize some of Obama’s later analyses: “So I’ve been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you.” And, “At a time when the country is anxious generally and going through a tough time, then, you know, fears can surface — suspicions, divisions can surface in a society. And so I think that plays a role in it.”

What a blessing it is to be alive in a time in which prevailing viewpoint sees its own frailties through a lens of time — as is usually the case — but here, the eon of humility and enlightenment is a scant twenty-four months.

Couldn’t happen with a better object lesson. Obama is the picture of how left-wing politics have damaged us across the decades. It offers resentful masses the image that they’re thinking unconventional, iconoclastic thoughts, while they act on hierarchically disseminated instructions about what to think.

They’ve been calling themselves the “Realty Based Community” — heard that one? — and their solution to an oil spill is a drilling moratorium. When our national economy hits the skids, they think “green jobs” will save it.

Ask them what two times six times four times seven is, and you’ll get back the number 48, attached to an elegant treatise filled with buzzwords about what a terrible number that seven is and why it shouldn’t count. That summarizes how they see the world. When their stated conclusion doesn’t fit with reality, and you point out how, there must be something wrong with you — you’re stupid, or you’re evil. If there is nothing like that on record about you, they’ll come up with something.

But it isn’t about you. It’s straight out of The Godfather; nothing personal. The comment about bitter-clinging was classic projection, and that’s them. They’re clinging bitterly.

When the clinging calls for seeing something as the exact opposite of what it really is, they accomplish this quite deftly. Like a snake unhinging its jaws. Quite an amazing thing to watch, really. Amazing and sad.

You cannot build things thinking the way people had to think, when they punched the chad for Obama. You can only destroy things thinking that way.

Update: Via Instapundit: Majority now say No Second Term.

My question now is the same one Dad had for me when I was little: Did you learn anything? It’s one thing to realize “We’re headed in the wrong direction, let’s turn around.” Keeping the lesson in mind next time around, when some smooth, lilty, sonorous, suave, laughey talkey Guy Smiley chit-chat type is bullshitting you and “everybody knows” that guy is just so wonderful and smart, that’s a whole different thing entirely. So we’re awake, or waking up. How long are we gonna stay that way?

My dad always used to ask, usually after the first day of the school year…

“So did you learn everything or do you have to go back tomorrow?”
- philmon | 10/21/2010 @ 08:36
And I’m living this nightmare all over again in the NY gubernatorial race just in a slightly different manner.

Maybe you’ve heard but we’ve got a Republican named Paladino, a loose cannon type, doesn’t always say the right things (major understatement) who is now 37 points down in the polls against the guy, Cuomo, is was the head of HUD under Clinton. Let me repeat that, the head of HUD under Clinton! He’s responsible for the housing collapse and the subsequent recession we‘re all enjoying now. Period, full stop, NO further explanation is necessary.

Baring a major election day shocker, he’s is going to be in charge of our state that is so broke and in debt that’s it’s staggering.

I could care less that Paladino isn’t a polished politician that says all the right things that people want to hear. We need someone who can clean up the dysfunction that is our state government. But who our we most likely to get? A smooth talking career political hack who’s resume includes the collapse of the US housing market. Now there’s some Hope & Change, yessiree!

Oh yea, did I mention the county (Buck knows first hand too) I live in has the highest property taxes (percentage wise) in the NATION! (Yes, nation, that’s not a typo) Yea, I’m sure it will get better with Cuomo in charge. Oh yeeeeaaaaah.

I’m a proud born and raised NY Yankee, but I’m seriously started to ponder when I should leave this effing cesspool. Where to go, where to go…? I don’t speak Spanish so mark off Costa Rica…
- tim | 10/21/2010 @ 08:58
tim:

8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City is a Horrible Place to Live

Ok, I know. You never said you lived in The City. But the article is still freakin’ hilarious.
- philmon | 10/21/2010 @ 10:08
That was awesome, Phil.

I must tell you though, since I’ve been to SF but not NY, I was replacing the name of the city as I read through. For the most part it worked beautifully. I think it would be a perfect fit for just about any city that has been run by liberals long enough for human fecal matter to appear in the public walkways.

I was particularly pleased by the two or three passages where they rightfully skewer the people who self-righteously intone these bromides about how these little idiosyncrasies make the city more rustic, or quaint, or lovable, or give it character…yes, you have to make fun of denial sometimes, otherwise it would make you cry.
- mkfreeberg | 10/21/2010 @ 10:43
One of the Indian nationalists who bankrolled Gandhi once said (almost verbatim) that you’d be amazed at how much money it takes to keep Gandhi in poverty. Same thing with NYC and SF liberals — they can afford to make all these wonderful noises about how their cities are “rustic,” “quaint,” “diverse,” “lovable,” etc. since they don’t actually have to ride public transportation.

I despise David Brooks, but parts of his Bobos in Paradise were spot-on. The NPR set thinks it’s gauche to fill their house with Waterford crystal — it’s sooooo elitist — so instead they spend the equivalent $$ on handmade locally-sourced Navajo-Hopi-Zulu-Wiccan organic shade-grown free-trade pottery. They “boycott” Wal-Mart because, quite simply, they can afford to, and if an organic shade-grown etc. isn’t in your budget, well, you can damn well do without.

We call them “credit-card Ches” and “trust-fund Trotskys” for a reason. Put these people in charge, and you get San Fran or NYC or, these days, the USA — it’s great if you’ve got a shit-ton of disposable income and an addiction to moralistic exhibitionism, but it sucks if you actually have to work for a living.
- Severian | 10/21/2010 @ 12:23
(Buck knows first hand too)

Indeed I do; highest property taxes I EVER paid. I voted with my feet, tim. C’mon down to New Mexico! Or Tejas.
- bpenni | 10/21/2010 @ 12:24
Sev…. you’re on a roll. Do you have a blog? ‘Cause some of your comments are begging for a showcase of their own 😉
- philmon | 10/21/2010 @ 12:28
Phil,

I wish I did have a blog, but it’d be just my luck that a tech-savvy colleague would stumble upon my blatherings, get offended (that’s a given), and track me down, thus dooming me to a lifetime of work as an online tutor and part-time janitor. I didn’t go ridiculously into debt for the grad degree to not use it (ideally at a university where I can, once tenured, serve as the anti-PC resource for the entire campus community. No, kids, you’re not crazy to note that the propositions “I will lavishly fund programs X, Y, and Z” and “95% of Americans will be receiving a tax cut” are logically contradictory… as are the propositions “I will govern as a post-racial centrist” and “anyone who disagrees with me is a Klan-sympathizing Nazi.” Come tell your Uncle Severian about it… this is a safe place).
- Severian | 10/21/2010 @ 12:41
Well, I do work at a University myself. This is why my blog is semi-anonymous. Oh, someone who REALLY wanted to could figure it out, but I go out of my way not to name names or use my full name or my wife’s or immediate family’s names and I never mention excactly where it is I work (though again, somebody who was very diligent and a little perceptive could figure it out) … it’s worked out so far for me. 7 years and ~1800 posts later (knocks on his formica desk) …. so far, so good.

It’s not impossible.
- philmon | 10/21/2010 @ 13:14
Incidentally, Severian (since I don’t have your email I’m “emailing” you here) — I have a good friend here at the Universtiy — a History professor. He was uber-left-wing staunch Democrat until the 2000 election — something about Gore’s campaign got his attention and he started to notice all of the things about the Left that we have noticed — and he left the left.

He is now tenured … actually, he could retire any time now, but he loves teaching … and he has become just the kind of professor you fantasized there about being … the Anti-PC resource, and he even manages to relate modern American political examples in courses on … Ok, I won’t out him on the specific subject matter, but it’s not American History he teaches. An older, extinct culture across the pond.

He gets a kick out of it, it lets the kids know that there are other points of view than the ones they hear in all of their other classes … and trust me, when he does, it’s relevant.

If you’d ever like to email me, you can initiate contact through my blog contact address (cluebattingcage at gmail.com) and then I can reply from my actual, real email.
- philmon | 10/21/2010 @ 13:31
I love it. It’s like an underground movement from Demolition Man, or 1984. Secret handshakes and everything.
- mkfreeberg | 10/21/2010 @ 13:44
“Arnie, go down ten steps and cut left behind the black Chevy. Filbert, you run down to my house and wait in the living room. Cosby, go down to third street. Catch the ‘J’ bus. Have the driver open the doors at 19th Street. I’ll fake it to ya.” – Street Football, by Bill Cosby
- philmon | 10/21/2010 @ 13:49
I love it. It’s like an underground movement from Demolition Man, or 1984. Secret handshakes and everything.

I know. Kinda silly and self-dramatizing on my part, to be sure. But the fact — yes, fact— that I would be blackballed from academia for the rest of my life if a mere 10% of my real opinions were to surface tells us everything we need to know about the state of higher education in America today.

I might be wrong about a lot of stuff. I probably am, actually, which I fully acknowledge. But to my colleagues, I’m not just wrong, I’m evil. They don’t need to “refute” my “arguments,” since they’re by definition illegitimate. And this is what you’re paying $15-55K/yr for when you send your kids off to college.
- Severian | 10/22/2010 @ 12:58

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