House of Eratosthenes

Daniel J. Summers liked Rick’s cartoon, so he swiped it shamelessly, and gave us the credit for it. That’s the nature of blogging, of course; we did the same, offering credit to Rick but not to Cadillac Tight, or Exhibit A Press.

He throws in a great link, by one of our favorite columnists, Neal Boortz. It’s a letter to the undecided voter. If it wasn’t destined to fail in what it is trying to do, I’d call it the most important letter anyone’s written this year…maybe this decade. At this point, however, my optimism is somewhere between flickering and snuffed. Buy gold.

Then he lays the smackdown. Nothing outside of what I’d noticed, about a week ago — indeed, what he’s doing is giving me credit for talking about it, of which I don’t know I’m deserving because at the time I wasn’t the only one talking about it. It was being played up as some kind of phony-baloney Joe The Plumber scandal.

Joe the Plumber does not make 250,000 dollars a year. He doesn’t even make close to that.

He just wants to.

This does not detract from my admiration for the real Joe the Plumber. It doesn’t change my desire for people to pull the “I Am Spartacus” thing with Joe.

Quite to the contrary, I think that’s thirty tons of awesome.

After a week of cooling-down and thinking about other things, I’ve noticed a new wrinkle about this Joe The Plumber thing that was unnoticed before. Or, more likely, noticed but un-commented-upon. I find it worthy of comment.

Invited to address the Joe The Plumber thing during the third Presidential debate, Sen. Obama said…

Now, the conversation I had with Joe the plumber, what I essentially said to him was, “Five years ago, when you were in a position to buy your business, you needed a tax cut then.”

And what I want to do is to make sure that the plumber, the nurse, the firefighter, the teacher, the young entrepreneur who doesn’t yet have money, I want to give them a tax break now.

Poor Barack was trying to make a point back then, that I’m just starting to notice now…he was tripped up by the facts, since back on October 15 a lot of people failed to make this crucial distinction between pulling in a quarter million a year, and wanting to do that someday. Therefore, his comment seems quite silly, and it’s not my intention to make it that way.

But there’s a fascinating point to be made here with regard to time. It’s an important point. It has to do with how some of us see ourselves…it has to do with that graphic of the kitty looking at itself in the mirror and seeing a lion, that I used when I wrote about Joe The Plumber (link above).

A few years ago, when a certain family member was going through a tough time he’d brought down on himself by seeing little besides perfection in himself and little besides flaws in others, I remember being drawn into a semi-heated argument. I do have faults here and there…sometimes, when I say stupid things, I’m slow to recognize it — this was not one of those times. This time I said something exceptionally wise and failed to recognize it. I’m like Obama that way. I fail to see my own wisdom and brilliance here & there. I’m working on it…

…anyway, what I offered was some kind of counseling against comparing onesself to others. It’s inappropriate, first of all; it’s a fool’s ambition to live out one’s life with a goal of being better than some-other-guy. Last I checked, they don’t carve anything about that on tombstones. Find a tombstone that says “He did better than Frank over there” with an arrow under it…you let me know. But there’s another point to be made: We betray our narcissistic intentions, some of us, by comparing our gonna-dooz with others’ hav-dunz. Gonna-dooz, and have-dunz. Those are two different things.

Obama, here, committed a sin in the world of socialist propaganda. He discussed the subject of time.

I think Joe The Plumber is “thirty tons of awesome” because he understands the difference between gonna-dooz and have-dunz, and in forming his values, he forms them around the gonna-dooz. That takes courage. That takes balls.

Barack Obama understands the difference too. (On October 15, like many of us, he mistakenly thought making 250,000 was a have-dunz of Joe’s…when it’s not.) He wanted to discuss Joe’s have-dunz. And his point was that most of us — and what he meant, in spirit, was all of us — are lacking the gumpshun we would need, to make plans around our gonna-dooz. We aren’t that great. We aren’t that strong. We need a tax policy that’s formed around our limitations, because our limitations define our identities.

Two men. One of them is thought to be the very incarnation of “The Change We Deserve.” Isn’t there a profound irony there, that the more majestic, godlike figure who presents himself as ready to lead a nation of hundreds of millions, is the one facing backward? And the guy playing catch with his son in front of a house that costs less than Barack Obama’s necktie, is the one with the leadership and courage that is needed to look forward? Thus endeth the lesson — on this one point, I trust, I have defined exactly what’s cockeyed about the situation.

Barack Obama is Ozymandias. It’s just a fact. He may win the election…or not; it may take two weeks for him to wither away into clay feet on a pedestal, or it may take four years, or eight. But he’ll get there. There is absolutely no question about it. He is Ozymandias, because while he is very impressive in the moment, history will treat him unkindly because he does not have the courage to truly look into the future. He commits a twin crime, two, possibly intermingled and inseparable, crimes of thought: He confuses mediocrity with excellence, and he confuses gonna-dooz with have-dunz.

The Change We Deserve? We’ll find out soon.

Cross-posted at Cassy Fiano.

I noted a while back that wanting to “help Joe the Plumber five years ago” is the same kind of cop out he takes on what to do in Iraq. He wouldn’t have gone there five years ago.

But we did go there Barack, and you wanna steer the ship now. Can’t take the Wayback machine back 5 years and “fix” it all … if, indeed, that would have been the right choice.
- philmon | 10/24/2008 @ 23:53

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