| [T]he sources of malicious nonsense [about race and racists] ought to be assessed for who and what they are, in historical context – and dismissed as relics of a past that America at long last left behind on Election Day 2008." |
One of the peanut’gallery peanuts at Salon complains of the Rev. Dr. Virtue, a.k.a "Joe Conason," that it is
| kind of easy pandering to your own base; how about more heavy lifting, dude?" |
Dr. Peanut may or may not offer the correct diagnosis of Conason's Disease: it depends on exactly how one understands what he says. The most alarming way of misunderstanding would be to take it as if some peanut in June 1944 had accused Gen. Eisenhower of "pandering to his base" when he spent all that time and effort invading Occupied Europe. Why couldn't poor dumb Ike see that History had already contextualized the then government of Germany and dismiss it as a relic rather than get bogged down in an unnecessary crusade?
By that point or a bit later, the Berlin régime itself did not find that sort of thing too insulting to be discussable. It seems they did make a few efforts at persuading Wunnerful US (and Airstrip One also) that it was time for everybody to move on and let by’gones be by’gone: let Western Sieve™ unite to put down the alien and evil Bolsheviks, the True Existential Threat™ to all goodness and decency and wunnerful-us-ness!
I don't think many holy’Homelanders actually took that line in 1944, but I have a vague notion, one I suspect the Rev. Dr. Virtue may share, that GOP Neocomrade P. Buchanan’s parents and uncles and aunts were the sort of folks who might have bought that product. Anyway, purchasers of the product would have been under a certain cloud of suspicion as to whose side they were on, exactly. Especially if critics were to accuse nonpurchasers of "pandering to YOUR base," as if their own base was located somewhere else -- not necessarily in Rome or Salò or Tokyo or Berlin, of course, but clearly not at Washington City or Westminster either.
If Dr. Peanut ("wjamesau") actually lives at Rio Limbaugh, there is not much to do but laugh at him. It would be swell for the wingnutettes and wingnuts if they could actually get lots of dupes and marks to believe that all attacks on reaction and neo’reaction and the glorious accomplishments of Rancho Crawford are just so much internal wranglin’ inside "the Democrat Party" ... that would be swell, but it is so impossible that what's to do but laugh at any bozos so wombschooled as to seriously expect to make that plan work?
And even if it could be made to work, nothing would be easier than to throw the same grenade right back at bozodom and wombscholarship: "Of course when they bark and bellow against their President and announce they "want him to fail," all they are really doin’ is pander to their own Party base ’n’ vile. Everybody knows that!"
Though of course the Konservative Kiddies are always in fact doin’ that inter alia, usually it is the alia that are uppermost in the neobarbarian mind and probably ought to come first in the minds of us civilised political grown’ups as well. If we dispute about the alia, there is always at least a slight chance of impressing some swing voter out there in Televisionland and thus snatching another soul out of the paws of Hell. Whereas even a correct diagnosis that the Side of the Devils operates largely by panderin’ to one another does not point to any concrete practical steps anybody can take to improve the situation from outside the asylum. And there is symmetry around that point as well, for as soon as the barkers and bellowers make quite clear that Hooverville and Wingmut City think everythin’ they hear liberals and democrats and Democrats say is a symptom of brain disease that only pretends to be argumentation, we might as well break off negotiations at once and concentrate on clobbering ’em at the polls. [1]
Setting aside Dr. Peanut, then, as being of dubious affiliation, we can talk about the real error of the Rev. Dr. Virtue, which can sensibly be labeled ‘pandering’ only if that term is inflated to fill half the political universe. The chief objection to the Rev. Virtue’s sermonette is that it invites us to complacency when vigilance is required. On Planet Conason, racism and racists have been defeated and all that is rneeded is a bit of mopping up of "relics of a past at long last left behind." Down here on Terra, though, the situation is not quite altogether like that. To procede on the assumption that neobarbarism and bozodom and wombscholarship will never win an important election again is so unrealistic as to border on dottiness.
I suppose the Sotomayor appointment offers a little bit of explanation for the Rev.'s mistake: it is hard to imagine that the GOP geniuses will be able to defeat the nomination, and then, after they try to and fail, hard to imagine that they will not have made the Party of Goldwater and Atwater an even worse stench in the nostrils of Latinos and Hispanics (and rootless cosmopolitan friends of rectitude) than it already is. Though still a bird in the bush rather than in the hand, that prospect is firm enough that we may award ourselves a few points provisionally. Unfortunately, the Rev. Dr. Virtue thinks we should award ourselves fifty points instead of five, which is (in the judgment of the present keyboard) poppycock and Pollyanna. Such advice can do us no good if we are fools enough to take it.
Worse, a good many of those forty-five points that the Rev. would award us and I would prefer to withhold are, so to say, virtue points rather than politics points. "O nos admirabiles! Wunnerful US who have seen that racism is wrong! Miserable THEM who still have not!" The negative side of that is probably mostly, though not entirely, OK. The positive side, though, this and all other cheapjack self-flattery and self-esteemism, is not OK at all, it is political Abomination of Desolation, a sky-high pile of excrement. [2] If we do not leave that [exp. del.] to the neobarbarians and bozos and wombscholars of the militant extremist GOP, we are as bad as they, who lap it up with gusto.
We are arguably worse than the selfocentric vomit-lappers [3] of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh, for we know that we ought to know better, whereas we can only suspect from outside the monkey-house that monkeys ought to know better. They may have been told to by the same authorities who told us, yet they may have applied their nifty magic potion of Destructive Creationism (Pat. Pend.) to the old-fashioned moralists’ denunciation of superbia and self-exceptionalizin’ and self-indispensabilitatin’ in such a way as to make these things acceptable to up-to-date monkeys and wingnuttetes and wingnuts.
Mere liberals and democrats and Democrats like us possess no such trendy justifications or excuses, so we had better do as we were authoritatively told until such time as superior authority authorizes something different and better. If the Rev. Dr. Virtue seriously wants to turn fas est et ab hoste doceri into "Monkey see, monkey do," let him do it alone. And let the remnant congregation of postmonkeys ask him on his way out, Tu quis es, qui iudices alienum servum? [4]
Happy days.
___
[1] "The only language they understand is votes" crosses my mind, but it will not do: to judge from the last six months, neobarbarians can have a good deal of trouble understandin’ votes. Even the original soundbite could be improved by rewording it as "The only language they SPEAK is force," removing the implication that they understand the force (or votes) of us civilised. But God knows best about neobarbarians.
[2] Abominatio desolationis is shiqqûts shomem, don't you know? Lib. Dan. IX:27. As with the epithet shiqq’sâ for a dhimmiyya, Christojudæan correctness has made sure that the expression is rarely, if ever, translated ad litteram.
[3] Ep. Pet. Prim. V:8
[4] Ep. ad Rom. XIV:4.
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