Once again, Ed Brayton is right. He described Mike Huckabee giving a speech at the Republican National Convention. Huckabee, incidentally, seems like a guy I’d like if I didn’t disagree with just about everything he stands for. Anyway, Huckabee was badmouthing Obama for his trip to Europe, saying he’s concerned that Obama might’ve brought back “European ideas.” Brayton says that statements like that, appealing to the dumbest among us, is why he can’t identify with the right in this country.
European ideas? Our entire system of government is based on European ideas. Every single one of the primary intellectual influences that influenced the founding of this country – John Locke, Montesquieu, Algernon Sydney, etc – were Europeans. This kind of rhetoric is stupid, xenophobic bullshit, plain and simple. I can’t stomach it. It makes me want to stand up and scream.
Brayton goes on at some length in convincing style, concluding with:
There are issues on which I agree with Republicans. On eminent domain, I am all for limiting the government’s ability to seize property. I’m all for reducing taxes, especially the income tax (but only if we cut spending first because the worst possible situation is to pass on debt to ourselves and our children, then we have to pay it back plus interest). And there are many conservative scholars that I respect and admire.
But the pedestrian right, the partisan political right, specializes in appealing to the most shallow and base emotions of the masses. So much of their rhetoric is carefully calculated to appeal only to the stupid and the credulous and that is something I cannot tolerate. I simply can’t stomach their penchant for emotional demagoguery and their tendency to grope for the most shallow possible response to every conceivable issue.
But, once again, I go back to Adelai Stevenson’s quip after a supporter told him he was sure to get the support of every thinking man in America. To which Stevenson responded, “thank you, but I need a majority.”
Interestingly, Penn Gillette recently commented on how we’re going to have a smarter President, but worries that it may not mean anything better. Funny, besides.
“The Bush presidency is stupid speeches, stupid high gas prices, stupid bad economy, stupid war on terrorism, stupid war on drugs, stupid hurricane fixing, stupid global warming, stupid war — stupid, stupid, stupid.”
snip
“The idea, especially from the Democrats that I know, is, we just get a smarter guy in the White House, and all the problems will go away. We’ll have smart speeches, smart high gas prices, smart bad economy, smart war on terrorism, smart war on drugs, smart hurricanes, smart global warming, smart war in Georgia — smart, smart, smart.”
http://www.cnn.com:80/2008/POLITICS/09/02/jillette.presidency/
There is a lot about the pedestrian left that is just as bad as the pedestrian right. This bloated military is still a bloated military, no matter if our focus is Iraq, or Georgia, or Darfur, so long as we are basically interventionist and have troops stationed in more than 100 countries around the world. Add in unsustainable ‘free’ health care and two dozen fixes that are worse than the problem, and you have it for the left side.
We’re just too pedestrian a nation as a whole. Neither left nor right has cornered the market on smart, and certainly neither has found anything that does anything but get in the way of the economy and civil liberties.
I’m not going to pretend that Democrats have all the answers, but at least they recognize there are problems. Don’t want universal health care? Fine. But at least recognize that health care is getting more expensive, fewer people can afford it, and more people are going bankrupt because of it.
Don’t think government is the solution to global warming? Fine. But don’t pretend it doesn’t exist.
Think families aren’t as loving and stable as they once were? Fine. But don’t pretend it’s because the gays are allowed to publicly acknowledge who they love.
(Note – I’m not accusing you, Mike, of these pretensions.)
Judging from the campaigns, the Democrats seem, at least, to be observing and acknowledging reality, even if their policy solutions may not work. I haven’t seen an acknowledgment of our problems and their probable causes by McCain & Co.
Seems to me the dreaded “earmark” plague is a fart in the wind compared to the financial impact of the war in Iraq. But McCain wants to keep spending money on that pit until we “win,” whatever that means.
Larry the Cable Guy’s ideas are Made in the USA.
Seriously, though, it appears that we have a new kind of anti-intellectualism this time around. Before, we had Dubya, who wasn’t on board with global warming, nurturing global alliances, science, etc. But it was accepted that he was the anti-intellectual, uncurious everyman who we could have a beer with. No pretensions.
Now we have Sarah Palin, who is a runner-up beauty queen who attended six different schools to get a four-year degree. She is runnning on a platform that touts opposition to earmarks even though as governor she was ranked 1 out of 50 for begging for them, among other positions that are 180 degrees off from her governing history. She reads other peoples’ words off a teleprompter at the convention, but more shocking she also uses the teleprompter for those little fire-up-the-base stump appearances. She’s not so much into science, is a global warming denier, a creationist, and supporter of abstinence-only education despite a glaring, close-to-home illustration of its shortcomings.
So what’s the major difference between Palin and Bush? While Bush was acknowledged to not have a well-honed intelligence as his strong suit, I keep hearing how smart Palin is. I don’t get it. Same positions. Maybe somewhat better teleprompter skills than Bush. But she’s a smart one, that Sarah Palin.
I won’t call her dumb because I don’t have any evidence for it. I also don’t have a whole lot of evidence to call her the opposite, either. But I wouldn’t be shocked if dumb becomes the new smart, at least for the next sixty days. Huckabee’s comments just celebrate such a mindset. Why endeavor to have any kind of substance when you can just mock?
OMG I was thinking the same thing watching the Daily Show the other night. I really like this guy (Huckabee), except we disagree on almost EVERYTHING. Nice guy to drink a beer and play golf with. I guess we’d just have to stick to talking about golf. And beer. And the weather.
That was a sad feature of the Bush years. People were so dumb, uninformed, or lacked a sense of irony enough to elect a guy they would like to have a beer with– yet the guy they chose can’t drink a beer without drinking a dozen more, crashing his car, and starting fistfights with his dad. The question they were really answering was, “Who would you rather have a beer with if you like chaos and have unlimited bail money?”