It would take a heart of stone not to be moved last night as the election results came in — regardless of preferred candidate. Real world spontaneous horn honking, the simple jump for joy on sidewalks, the beaming smiles in the Imperial City gave concrete manifestation to the synthetic, 1080P HiDef imagery that beamed out of Grant Park around the world.
Kyle Poole, 48, a financier, said he brought a flag because he felt “honored and proud.”
“I was once a Republican,” he said. “Then George Bush came to the White House and now I’m thrilled to be here with the flag.”
Inquire and Tblisi offer a realistic view of world post-celebration hang over. We share their caution. Domestically, Obama inherits almost incomprehensible wreckage, the financial catastrophe being merely the first among many examples. A tour de horizon overseas is perhaps even more sobering.
Obama would be wise to take a page from other self-made pop culture media constructs such as Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, Madonna (or even Nixon’s 1968 ‘the New Nixon’). He himself should ‘auto destruct’/deflate his saintly aura. His image served electoral politics well. As he transitions to granular government, we recommend he actively create himself a new post election ‘Obama’ personna and product. He himself rather than the media should rollout his own new guise. For we do believe an Obama Administration will, like the Warlords’, be one of Permanent Campaign.
As comments here noted in the earlier post, his speech at Grant Park did not soar in historical terms. Yet he did introduce elements of a new post larval being. Lingering euphoria through January 2009 aside, covertly pro-Obama Republicans and non-fringe Left/progressives would accept domestically competent management as palatable come down.
Pat Buchanan this morning offered his belief that the ‘Movement’ is in historic eclipse. He went so far as to claim the Nation is moving Center/Left. We are less sanguine for a long list of reasons (Father Meacham aside). The Movement now is no longer just an electoral entity — it suffuses the Executive and Judiciary from GS7s all the way up.
There are faint glimmers of hope that Obama is considering knife fighters who are capable of conducting critically necessary reviews and purges of the thoroughly infected government apparat. We’ve all discussed this together over the last year Dear Reader. Our sense remains, however, that Obama will in the end decline to pursue matters to their logical and political conclusion. Accommodation and ‘change’ may blur together sooner than many expect or hope.
Comment says
If you wanted to establish a character in a movie or a play as a pseud or a poseur, you could do well to have them say, “As Arendt reminds us …” or “arendt tells us …”
Nothing against Hannah. We like a lot of what we have read of hers – But just saying.
Hunter says
You know, it sounds like Hedges just read Snow Crash (a decade too late) and then stuck in the Arendt ref to give himself the image of intellect, using the same skills of rhetoric, but directing them at the middle-brow instead of the low-brow that he decries.
Anyway, re: Arendt… Adorno said it earlier and better. I’m just sayin’.
Alex says
Great typo in the URL. Wither conservatism! Wither!
Anon says
Still clueless:
http://nrinstitute.org/events/witherconservatism111908.php
Anon says
Pretty Funny – Hoover and The Bureau Vs. Mailer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/10/AR2008111002999_2.html?hpid=sec-artsliving
Note the vindication of Bobby Kennedy at the end. That would seem to contradict the wishes of The Director
at times.
What a period piece this is. You can practically smell the acrid tobacco smoke in those memos. Ironic that Mailer was paranoid that time about the agency.
But funny also that it seems to be missing so much dirt on Mailer that they could have gotten.
Anon says
If you happen to watch the Slaughter-Walt exchange – maybe we’re wrong. But Walt sort of seems amused by Slaughter, as if she is a student in a class of his. Slaughter never really gives reasons – she just recites cw talking points about Afganistan.
Our favorite is when she casually says it “usually” takes ten years to win a counter-insurgency – She says this as if it’s a truism gleaned from years of study. But we think she is just regurgitating a talking point that Petraeus and others used that is based soley on one example – the Brits in Maylaysia, which was clean cut ethnic conflict (under ideological guise) and nothing like Afganistan.
Why bother with this – Slaughter is symbolic – her high credentials mixed with a cavalier regard to US troops mixed with her own lazy ignorance.
Suppose she is wrong in Afganistan. She will defend herself in panal discussions and life goes on.
But it is endlessly amusing to see her so hawkish when she got her whole start in politics opposing US efforts in Central America, but now she wants to remake Central Asia,
Anon says
Also – First not the look of desperation and ‘concern’ when Slaughter begins by just asserting that Obama has to run and meet the popular General. Run Barack Run! Petraeus is waiting! Run! What is that like ‘going to canossa’ and genuflecting to the wannabee Bundys of our day like Slaughter?
Ofcourse Obama doesn’t have to do any of this = Not that he’ll listen to us, but we would advise a lower land profile in Afganistan – a big effort to reduce casualties and a greater effort at intelligence operations.
Anon says
Ann-Marie Slaughter seems to be not so bright for a women with stellar creds. Here she casually repeats conventional wisdom that Obama “has no choice” but to stay in Afganistan. No choice! No doubt Slaughter knows many young Americans in harms way. Not! Anyway, she then goes on to say “the Taliban” kicked out the Soviers. The Taliban? Well, not really – unless you are some elitist who puts all Mujahedin types into a box.
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/15813?in=00:01:27&out=00:10:26
DrLeoStrauss says
Lots of reasons for mixed emotions re Minnesota for sure. One can only pray Franken does not return to broadcasting should he tilt at a windmill too far this time.
Comment says
The Coleman-Franken race is a schadenfreud festival – No matter what happens, there will be lots of bitterness. If Coleman wins, he’ll be dogged by these ethical charges and a sense that he won dirty. If Franken manages to win, then he will be target number one by Bill O and he’ll have to fight a whiff of illegitimacy that will surround his win esp since he ran so far behind Obama. But if Coleman sticks it out, Franken will feel bitter and robbed and anyone who has read his books knows he has a mean streak and will look for revenge.
Anon says
In the above essay Hedges uses portentious cliched formulations like “Hannah Arendt warned …” In other words, she must be taken on faith. She didn’t make an argument. She issued a warning. What a bore – since Hedges never winks at the reader when he says:
“Political leaders in our post-literate society no longer need to be competent, sincere or honest. They only need to appear to have these qualities. Most of all they need a story, a narrative.”
Yeah – that’s real new. PT Barnum would be shocked. But Hedges later defeats himself by hiding a key detail of the Princeton Review debate reading levels. Obama spoke at the 10th grade reading level in the debates (or one of them, at least). Had Hedges noted this, it would have made his devolution point meaningless – sine the one who spoke at 1960s JFK-Nixon levels won, and the grunting McCain lost. So maybe Hedges can describe the stupidty of Ike’s “I like Ike” slogan, but then he’d be stuck with the fact Ike was smart and a slogan is just a slogan. Hedges seems to be always scowling and unpleasant.
Anon says
Lind often says some true things, but he does deserved to get pushed back from time to time. Barone has been in existential exile for some time. Here’s another example of a bore/blowhard Chris Hedges. Hedges says something that is partially true, but not exactly a unique insight. Plus, everything he says about low-info voters being manipulated has been the case for most American history. But Hedges
is bitter and annoying and full of himself. We have heard
him bragg many times about having a divinity degree
as if that gives him some sort of insight.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081110_america_the_illiterate/?ln
Comment says
FWIW – Fr. Meachem has a book out about Andrew Jackson. We do doubt he’ll do any signings at Indian reservations.
Comment says
Now Barone wants us to become a nation of Keriks. It’s just so absurd. He probably thinks a secessionist like Todd Palin is just super cool.
Comment says
If you go back in time to when Barone wrote as a dove then you will be back in the day when his own ass was potentially on the line. Rudy made a similar transformation – Many in the mainstream media also happened to get hawkier as they (purely coincidentally) found themselves further removed from military age.
We were chatting with some who were heading to Iraq a few months back – They all have now real idea that many of these older people they watch or read on TV are complete phonies who would never ever do what they are advocating for others. They will learn.
Anon says
delong is masterfull:
“Barone’s recognition of Gingrich’s skills, and his own abrupt move to the political right, culminated in the most extravagant of all his introductions, bearing a title and crazy wrong brilliance worthy of Gingrich himself: “The Restoration of the Constitutional Order and the Return to Tocquevillian America.” In 23 dense pages, Barone argued that the 1994 election had “settled the argument” between New Deal historians like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. who believed that politics turned on economic questions, and those who believed it was a high-stakes “cultural war … in which propagators of liberal values have used government to impose them in every segment of American life.” Not only was the interpretive argument settled but so was the culture war itself: Americans had rejected once and for all the “educated elite” and their weak “culture of caregiving.”…”
Anon says
Barone wants Amurkah to be as tough as Krupp steel. But why?
Have you noticed that his vision of toughness seems
European. Mayve one day he can do jello shots with Jorge Haider in Valhalla.
Anon says
Barone has no idea how hard most ordinary non working class people work – He doesn’t so much like the punitive culture that Rudy advocates – Rather, he “likes” it. Barone is sort of like a right wing version of Michael Lind. Haughty Lind was recently defenestrated by young Yglesias:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/11/what_productivity_does.php
Lind was posing as someone ‘realistic’ enought to ‘know’ the new economy is all bulls***. Yglesias said ‘STFU Lind you don’t know s***’. Barone is more full of it than Lind. People are starting to notice. Barone is himself the Euro-weenie he “hates.” Barone is godless and he avoided military service – He probably doesn’t even know how to shoot.
It would great to see Barone take over host of the cable show “dirty jobs” so he could see what real working class (albeit well paid ones) do. Or maybe it would be
Alex says
I don’t know about that; but how about if I invaded Serbia?
Aldershot says
Promise you’ll never leave us!
Alex says
Barone has come to embrace a strict dualist view of the world… incoherent distinction between “crunchy” and “soggy” policies and politicians…. The world of Theodore Dreiser’s novels is admirably Hard, John Dewey’s theories of education are Soft. Social Security: Soft. Rudy Giuliani: Hard. Intellectuals: Soft. Most baby boomers: Soft. But George W. Bush: “a consistent advocate of Hardness.”
(From here.) He also has a go at a “culture of caregiving” there. Personally I always thought the “America cooks and the EU washes up” meme was profoundly stupid and revealed a lot of ugly unconscious/not so unconscious femiphobia gunk, and I think this is of a piece.
Very Marinetti. Hard shiny steel panels, war, and of course contempt for woman. Must stay hard! (Perhaps I should go for a kur in the Salzkammergut to work off some of these Viennese cream cakes? Perish the thought.)
Of course, we wouldn’t be so pissed off about the washing up if America didn’t come home from the ideology tap pissed, try to cook chips, set fire to the kitchen, break a few plates, and pass out in dirty trousers on the floor, leaving us to clear up the mess. And if you don’t do the washing up, eventually you get typhoid.
Anon says
Michael Barone:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/12/barone-palin-abortion/
We have long thought that Barone’s conservative/neocon politics stems almost entirely from his own personal discomfort at his own sense of irreligion and nihilism and that he projects this onto his non self hating colleagues.
It’s not a big leap to say this – all you have to do is go back in time and look at every criticism Barone has leveled against any Dem candidate- Invariably the criticism applies more to Barone than to the person he is attacking.
Anon says
Ok – you’re right – We just meant that he got some insults off. He’s sort of a chump with a chip on his shoulder.
Dr.LeoStrauss says
Back with a word later tonight all. . .
Hunter says
re: P. Hitch
What good digs? He starts by accusing Obama of lacking nuance (“His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech…”), moves on to deliberately misinterpreting Obama’s attempts at nuance (“…the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot…”) and finishes with this absolute howler: “They [America’s supposed strengths] had also been weakened by the failure of America’s conservative party – the Republicans – to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.”
If this piece is any indication, then the guy’s an idiot. Worse, as you point out, he lacks C. Hitch’s ability to cover his idiocy with grandiloquence, much less rhetorical eloquence. He doesn’t even seem worth laughing at, though perhaps the Daily Mail deserves to be pilloried for giving him a platform.
Anon says
We have to laugh at this – P. Hitchens gets some good digs in, but being a Hitchens he ends up sinking in his own decrepitude.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084111/PETER-HITCHENS-The-night-waved-goodbye-America–best-hope-Earth.html
Comment says
re – That collossal wuss Tucker – Recall a short while ago when that guy tried to get a video store clerk fired for no good reason?
It was one of those character revealing moments that Tolstoy would pick up on.
He lost his TV show, but he still has not had his inevitable comeuppance.
He will eventually choke (so to speak) on his false bravado and transparently insipid wannabee machismo.
Anon says
Newt is a clown. Politicians can be mocked for anything and for any reason. Recall Newt’s stupid temper tantrum going to Rabin’s funeral? That’s the kind of mentality that has to be kept away from power. Personally – back woods incest jokes are ones we don’t really like — esp when they come from faux-cosmopolitans writers who mistake their pop culture awareness for worldiness.
But we did see that Palin skit – The joke was aimed at the NY Times writer who assumed Palin’s must be involved in incest – The joke – (poorly conceived and written) was that the NY Times writers just assumed the worst about the Palin’s – It was not about the Palins. It was a dumb skit but it could only be misunderstood by someone like Newt if he was intentionally misunderstaning it – We recall a cartoon in WaPo that made fun of Rumsfeld and Newt and many other wingers went on FOX and intentionally misunderstood the cartoon to be mocking the injured soldier rather than the callous Rumsfeld why was also in the cartoon.
Newt is big into this kind of fake hissy fit outrage, but we think this kind of thing is losing its political efficacy.
Anon says
A total wuss tries to act tough. Pretty funny.:
http://www.slate.com/id/2203800/entry/2204125/
Aldershot says
My best guess is Newt is talking about the skit that inferred back-woods incestuous relations in the family. I never saw the skit, though.
Comment says
Leo – do you have any idea what Newt was talking about when he said Palin should sue SNL for libel and slander? Was this some sort of outburst of his – like a sense mocking of Palin was some kind of displaced mocking of him?
Anyway – if Palin should sue anyone – it should be McCain’s boyos who are leaking oobviously false things about her.
Aldershot says
…too quiet…
Aldershot says
It was quiet…
Christine says
It would take a heart of stone not to be moved last night as the election results came in — regardless of preferred candidate.
Then I suppose I have a heart of stone.
wow gold says
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Anon says
Leo – Front page of the NY Times today suggests that the CW about Georgia being attacked by Russia out of the blue might not be accurate.
Great feud:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-07/palins-mole-at-the-times/
Aldershot says
“STSOZ 2.0 should challenge some Republican in a 2010 primary.”
Seconded!
Alex says
STSOZ 2.0 should challenge some Republican in a 2010 primary.
I know you’re essentially conservative; it’s a valid position. If you believe in that, though, it’s time to take action; one day the party will be back. You want it to be the Palin Partei or the Christian Democrats?
A Random Quote says
“The American Presidential election and the war in the East are the topics of the hour. London is talking of nothing else. We find it difficult to understand how it is that the counting of the votes in the South takes so much longer than has been found necessary in the North. But we are profoundly ignorant of the subject, and can only come to the conclusion that there is foul play somewhere.”
~NYTimes, 11-18-1876
English Notes
A Random Quote says
“… anybody who says I was fired is either lying or delusional or a whack job.”
~Randy Scheunemann
NY Times
Comment says
That Dan Pipes quote re Judge Aiken/Patriot act just came up on your quote machine. That one is priceless
DrLeoStrauss says
Just so much fun !
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/us/politics/06mccain.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
Anon says
We predict Rupe will shake things up at the WSJ edit page – Smugsters like Bret Stephens and some of the others seem dated in a post Bush era. They really don’t have much to say because they are disconnected alienated poseuers and their ‘opinions’ are factually contradicted by the news a la Fred Hiatt.
Anon says
LOL:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584386627599251.html
Anon says
Great clip of O’Reilly and Krugman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Ve6g3otmM
A study in body language.
We would have loved it if Krugman had the stones to point his finger back at Bill – Bullies and road ragers can’t take mirror imaging. It makes them fly off the handle. We must assume that Krugman was probably too put off and unnerved to do something so risky. We guess it would have led to Bill swating his hand away or worse.
McCain has that problem – when he gets in people’s faces in the past. If someone starts acting back at him in a similar fashion – meltdown ensues.
Thank God McCain lost – He would end up going to war over Sevastopal
Anon says
Shep is shocked! shocked!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibsP6XN2dIo
Aldershot says
For the record:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgM_7ARgzIQ
A proud day for America.
Anon says
Hilarious:
http://gawker.com/5077624/williamsburg-hipsters-had-it-coming-in-clash-with-cops
Last Hurrah for the precinct captain?
Dennis says
Everyone is rejoicing at least in the nation’s rejection of Bush et al. Yet Jan 20 is a long way off in certain terms.
Time to turn our attention to that forgotten man, lurking the hallways and carrying on imaginary conversations with portraits, a la Nixon. One can only imagine what nearly psychotic resentment toward an electorate and political class he’s capable of at this point. Raised so high and brought so low, roundly despised; meanwhile his stenographers in the press assure us he doesn’t care how he is percieved. A man of such evident and tragic pride? Why am I not reassured? One hopes Obama has enough skill and guile to lead the Movement along in transition, enough to reassure them.
Is Bush (to chilling even to contemplate what EOVP is capable of at this point) contemplating faits accomplis? Didn’t someone way back float the idea that an Obama victory would necessitate an attack on Iran before transition? Aside from reform, we’re not out of the more immediate woods just yet.
Someone else pointed out there’s nothing so dangerous as a lame duck president preparing to turn over government to the opposition party.
Comment says
Leave it to actress Jessica Alba to sum things up in The Daily Beast about Obama’s task:
“Helping Americans understand that you are part of the world and can’t isolate yourself so much.”
Very true – Ofcourse Bush & Co were worldly in their own way – In China and India and arguably in the Gulf.
But they kept pushing this stressfull provincialism among the “base” – So you had this incredible stress and tension btw the objective goals of the Bush/investor class and the subjective fears of the base.
Think about the raw hatred unleashed by Bush and McCain’s attempt to ratify the elite opinion re immigration.
Pat Buchanan is an example himself of someone who is personally cosmopolitian and comfortable with the Davos class on a personal basis, but he revels in stoking fear and ignorance among the rabblement/pitchfork set.
But this kind of two-track approach has become S.O.P. amongthe GOP and that’s why a sick portion of McCain’s voters believe there is something to be fearfull about Obama being randomly asssigned a Pakistani roommate in college or that he is friends with Khaladi etc.