House of Eratosthenes

In the first months after the Benghazi attack, the most urgent question, and one only rarely asked, was “What were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton doing during the seven and a half hours between the initial emergency communications from Benghazi and the final American deaths?” A negative answer was provided in February by Leon Panetta: they were not engaging with their subordinates; they were not contacting anyone to discuss options; they were giving no orders for action; they remained entirely uninvolved.

We are left to speculate about the positive answer to that question. Were they sleeping? Curled up by the fire with a good manifesto? Playing poker with Huma and the gang? Practicing jokes for a fundraising speech? Your guess is as good as mine.

And none of these guesses really matter in the end, compared to the looming horror that attends any of thepossibilities, namely this: the president and secretary of state of the most powerful nation on Earth are impervious to shame.
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Walking home one evening, you hear men across the street shouting for help, as they are in the process of being overwhelmed by a gang of thugs. You walk away, unconcerned with their cries or the sounds of bats smacking down on their flesh. You do not call the police or volunteer any assistance. You go to bed and sleep well. The next day, and each subsequent day, you carry on with your life of fun, friends, and self-indulgence, never giving a second thought to the men who died because you did not care to help. If a neighborhood reporter asks you about the crime, you put on your gravest voice and say, “Gosh, that’s so sad; I hope they find the creeps who did it.”

That is what Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did on September 11 and 12, 2012, and what they have continued to do in the months since. God save a nation in the hands of men and women with souls of this nature. For a man without shame or the capacity for the most primal forms of fellow-feeling is a man who has no internal, self-imposed limits on what he might do to achieve his ends. If the suffering of others is absolutely nothing to him; if literal cries for help do not stir in him painful feelings that can only be alleviated by prompt action or, failing that, by interminable days of shame and self-loathing, then there is nothing — apart from pragmatic calculations — to prevent him from doing anything that seems to serve his ends. For it is the awareness of the rightful existence and potential suffering of other men that serves as our internal limit.
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Creatures of such failed moral development are currently, unthinkably, the most powerful men and women on the planet. We are sometimes given to wondering, in the face of one or another of the progressives’ assaults on individual freedom, natural rights, and human dignity, how they cannot see what inhuman conditions they are imposing on their fellow men. The problem is worse than that. As Benghazi teaches, these monsters, unlike their hypnotized followers, do see what they are doing, but they are simply incapable of giving a damn.

Pretty polarizing stuff. But…let’s not kill the messenger. The situation is polarizing by its very nature. The author of the article didn’t create the situation, he’s just writing about it. The creating of the situation was done by President Obama and Secretary Clinton. Oh yeah, and the people who attacked…well, let’s not go into that again.

The point is, this is where the Obama defenders are going to say something like “Yeah, but Bush…” This is what I want to inspect up close. This is where the real polarization happen. Everything in the article is true, and reasonable, and makes perfect sense. Obama voters know this, and when they say “But Bush” it sounds like a comparison. The polarization increases and the gap widens, because of course the comparison doesn’t hold — George W. Bush made a move with the military that some people didn’t, and don’t, like. That’s something he’s supposed to have been able to do; presidents do all sorts of things that are disliked by some of the citizens over whom they preside. Sleeping like a baby while others within that citizenry are being violently killed, that’s a completely different thing.

Actually, when you really think about it, they’re opposites. George W. Bush acted, Obama and Clinton did not. Maybe this is yet another one of those deals where we’re not really arguing over the true epicenter of disagreement. I’ve often thought so.

Maybe this is the epiphany that can help heal the divide, though: “But Bush did this other thing” is not a comparison. I don’t think so, anyhow. I think — it’s a loophole. The person mentioning Bush voted for Obama, and you’ve committed this sin of saying something that makes perfect sense and so, therefore, you are accusing them of having elected a psychopath. What they are doing with the “But Bush” thing is merely providing their excuse. They’re not comparing, they’re saying “I’m not a psychopath, even though, as you accurately point out, it looks like I voted for one.” Number 43 did all these awful terrible things, and they just had to replace him with someone.

Perhaps we can all start working toward a peace, and a sort of new getting-along, by acknowledging that people who fit what’s being written about here, can be & often are elected by people who don’t fit. That can certainly work, I think. But there needs to be some conversation about whether the snookering could work a second time. Liberalism is a sales pitch from the apathetic to the ignorant, as I’ve said many times before. So if the divide is to be healed, perhaps that is what has to be discussed: Are they still ignorant? Has the lesson been learned, or not?

“Are they still ignorant? Has the lesson been learned, or not?”

You presume they give a damn.
- tim | 05/15/2013 @ 11:31
If they really don’t, then that erases much of this “don’t know versus don’t care” distinction between them, and the empty souls they elected.

That might have something to do with why the subject always seems to change, just as they’re being painted into a corner.
- mkfreeberg | 05/15/2013 @ 11:35
They don’t give a damn, pretty much by definition. Liberals are cringingly insecure little dweebs who use groupthink to convince themselves they’re smart and worthwhile. They do this by assuming that liberalism is both the consequence and the cause of massive brainpower.

So, by definition, whenever a liberal is caught doing something incredibly stupid, it must actually be incredibly smart, because liberals only do smart things.*

And round and round and round it goes. Almost all worthwhile learning comes from mistakes. No mistakes, no learning. But liberals, by definition, don’t make mistakes…..

*this is why they can never figure out if Rush Limbaugh, George Bush, Sarah Palin, etc. are chimpanzees or evil geniuses. They must be dumb, but they sure do end up winning a lot….
- Severian | 05/15/2013 @ 12:12
[…] because so many people are still allowed to get away with it. For instance, co-blogger Morgan opines on folks who excuse Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s obvious shame deficiency […]
- Basic Life Lessons, #s 1 and 2: Fact and Value; Cause and Effect | Rotten Chestnuts | 05/15/2013 @ 13:09
Makes one suppose that they’d give the proverbial answer to the proverbial question:

Q: What do you think is the greater problem, ignorance or apathy?

A: I don’t know and I don’t care!
- pilgrim1949 | 05/16/2013 @ 07:42
The comforting level of competence we’re seeing on display from our Beneficent Overlords Of All We Do, Have, And Are also brings to mind an old Russian poem which, translated, goes like this:

What’s he doing?

I don’t know.

What are you doing?

I’m helping him!
- pilgrim1949 | 05/16/2013 @ 11:12

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“Impervious to Shame”Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

“Impervious to Shame”
Wednesday, May 15th, 2013