O.K., my brief detour into being nice to the Democrats (see Whose One America? below) has lasted long enough. Now we will return to your regularly scheduled Discriminations.
Something has been bothering me about what has been emanating from the Democratic Convention — I mean something other than the Dems’ enthusiasm for many people and policies with which I disagree — and I’ve had trouble putting my finger on it. Now I think I’ve got it, or at least part of it, based on a flash produced by this rather inoffensive remark in Sen. Kennedy’s address:
“We should have strengthened, not scorned, the alliances that won two world wars and the cold war,” Senator Edward M. Kennedy told the convention delegates on Tuesday.
Now one can quarrel with this as a criticism of President Bush’s Iraq policy, but that’s not my point here. What struck me about this remark, and the many iterations of it one hears coming from Democrats in this election season, is how old it sounds. It’s almost nostalgic, longing for the good old days of the Atlantic alliance, of struggles between good countries (the Allies) and bad countries (the Axis, the Russians). As I said, I don’t want to argue here the merits of the propostion that the post-9/11 world is a new world, a world that made the view expressed by Kennedy and others hopelessly dated and anachronistic. I believe that, but whether one believes it or not I think it is fair to say that putting repair of the Atlantic alliance at the top of one’s foreign policy goals is rooted in an assumption that nothing fundamental changed on 9/11.
I had a similar feeling listening to Teresa the Terrible’s speech. She, too, struck me as dated, as anachronistic, as an aging butterfly stuck in 1960s feminist amber, and anger. She hopes that one day women will find their “voice,” where outspoken women will not be regarded as “opinionated” but well-informed? Give me a break. What does she think Hillary Clinton was and is, a potted plant? (Don’t answer that.) Or Condi Rice or Sharon Hughes or Janet Reno?
In short, both Kennedy and HeinzKerry struck me as emblematic of a Democratic Party that is not so much out of its mind as out of its time, stuck in a time that no longer exists. That’s an odd place for a “progressive” party to be.
It is hard to be nice to people who gave Al Sharpton prolonged, sustained applause.
I admire you for the effort.
The democrats are elitists at heart, who want to “take care of” the little people. The little people would be stupid not to vote for the pure hearted elitists, who only have their best interests in mind. (you decide who the “their” in the previous sentence refers to)
Teresa thinks that opinionated women need to be looked upon as intelligent. Doesn’t that kind of depend on the opinion? Any idiot can have one.
Here are the steps in taking people seriously:
Step 1 – Don’t express an opinion. You couldn’t possibly know what you’re talking about.
Step 2 – Oh, she expressed an opinion! Good for her!
Step 3 – She expressed an opinion, and she’s full of crap; here’s why.
At step 3, we’ve arrived. Teresa’s still stuck back on step 2.
What I dislike about THK, and especially her speech, is her self-perception as a struggling feminist trying to achieve equality. She has money because of her first husband, and now she has a platform because of the second. Hardly a feminist poster-girl.
I think your observation, John, is very perceptive. Like you, something about the Democrats and their unspoken assumptions has been bothering me, too.
It’s sad and a bit frightening to consider that Dems apparently believe that ideas are good or bad depending on whose ideas they are. We ought to start calling them the Relativity Party.
I always thought that alliances reflected the intersection of national interests, and therefore were subject to change over time. I seem to recall a picture of FDR sitting with Stalin and Churchill back in ’45, a meeting which would have been unimaginable just a few years later. The idea that we must continue to maintain alliances whose reason for being no longer exists represents an ignorance of history and a denial of reality. I think it has less to do with being stuck and more to do with being lost in time, so they resurrect the rhetoric and the memories of times when they had a much stronger foundation as a party.
“Mama T” spoke in front of a gay and lesbian group yesterday or today and told them she wants to be their mother and some of her friends call her “Mama T.”
If she were poor, she’d be wacko, but since she’s rich, she’s eccentric.
No, Tracy, the pray to the alter of “stability.”
Stability is why we didn’t finish off Saddam in 91 – we listened to our “allies” and the UN. Can’t do that.
Can’t overhaul any 40++ y.o. programs because of “stability.”