Degradation
You may (or may not) have noticed that I’ve been posting more parochial US-political stuff than usual, lately, and you may (or may not) have wondered why. I mostly ignored the subject in 2004, and during the endlessly long primary process from 2006 on; why have I stopped ignoring it now?
Well, partly, frankly, just because I find Obama more interesting – more worth paying attention to – than any Dem candidate in decades. I think Obama is better than McCain on several dimensions – a better human being, a better candidate, a better potential president. A lot better. To that extent my posting could just reflect plain old political bias. But another part has to do with the flagrant dishonesty of the McCain-Palin campaign, which interests me. It interests me that Republicans pretty much always stoop to dishonesty, and Democrats don’t to the same extent.* Lots of Dems get angry at Dem campaigns because they don’t fight dirty enough. But – fighting dirty is a bad thing. The McCain-Palin campaign is a revolting spectacle. It interests me that there seems to be no braking mechanism, no floor, no point at which they just can’t stomach it any more. I realize they want to win, but I assume they also want to be able to live with themselves. Yet there is no floor. There is (as with good old Joe McCarthy) no shame.
However that may be – the prosecutor’s letter to the Times is interesting.
As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s…I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child. Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen. Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.
He didn’t put that last very well – he meant something like ‘the fact that Obama served etc cannot possibly link him etc’ – but we get the drift. There are two issues here. One, Ayers has changed; he is not the guy he was in 1968. Two, Obama was a child when Ayers was the guy he was in 1968. It’s just not morally respectable to ignore those two facts in order to pretend that Obama is now a fan of what Bill Ayers was in 1968.
The thing is – I can perfectly well imagine conservatives and Republicans that I would disagree with but still respect. Well I should hope so – it’s not that hard! And it would be pretty absurd to be unable to respect anyone one disagreed with. But all the same, there it is; I can. But I can’t respect these people; it seems to me they have covered themselves in ordure. I find that interesting.
*Do correct me if I’m wrong – seriously.
It’s amazing the way they’re able to constantly turn reality on its head and still convince a significant number of people to take them seriously.
The most obvious example is the way conservatives in the US seem to have convinced almost everybody – even liberals – that the media has a liberal bias.
They’ve perfected the technique of exploiting the media’s own self image. If Palin says Obama approves of Ayers’ terrorism, the media feel compelled to report it as if it might possibly be true because they are obsessed with “balance.” It gives undue credence to completely insane claims. Sort of like what goes on with alternative medicine.
Ophelia, you may find it interesting, I find it downright puzzling. Why hasn’t everyone thrown their hands up in disgust by now? How many times can that silly woman from Alaska try to make this link – over and over again – and retain one speck of credibility? What does it say about American democracy that she can do this without everyone (and I mean everyone)crying foul? It’s one thing to say that these people have no shame, but doesn’t the fact that this is repeated over and over again say something about a few more people too? I find it very puzzling and dismaying?
If a man like McCain – if even 50% of ‘Make-Believe Maverick’ is accurate – can run with a woman like Palin – the stories of her behaviour in Alaska beggar the imagination! – can be a credible ticket with a substantial (although slipping) proportion of the American electorate, what has happened to America? Were I an American, I would be very worried. As someone who lives in the world, I am concerned. This is beyond reason.
Is this just hyperbole?
Alas, for a “substantial proportion” of the electorate, this simply does not matter.
Obama is a “babykiller”. That’s the be-all and end-all for them.
And of course, they’re the ones most likely to stand in line for hours waiting to vote. “Reason” hasn’t got much to do with it.
I’m not even going to start on the “Obammy is a Muslim who hates America” crowd…
Well, Eric, I of course find it puzzling and worrying (and disgusting and infuriating) as well as interesting – in fact ‘interesting’ was a bit of lytotes.
“lytotes”–is that the Democratic or Republican spelling?
What outrages me is that while Ayers was building a bomb or two, McCain was busily bombing North Viet Nam, killing (I imagine) innocent civilians by the score. I’m not endorsing Ayers’ bombing, but I don’t find it to be very different in ethical terms than McCain’s bombing. Obviously, Obama is not responsible for what Ayers did. However, I would bet that McCain has more blood on his hands than Ayers and the entire Weather Underground does.
I don’t know. Webster spells it with an ‘i’. But the litotes in question was clearly Democratic.
Oops. Litotes. Sorry.
Actually, I think in this case that John McCain has never had any actual integrity or honor, just the good sense to mimic those characteristics in a shallow way for public consumption. His personal life and career arc, when examined with an objective eye, is much like George W. Bush’s – the story of a shallow, self-serving child of privilege who was never permitted to suffer any consequences for his poor behavior and frequent failures. McCain’s reputation as a “maverick” and “reformer” was deliberately crafted in response to getting his hand caught very deep in the cookie jar during the Keating Five scandal, not a reflection of any sort of substantial political principles, or any other sort of principles that I’ve ever seen. He’s an unprincipled, temperamental bastard through and through by all reports. Even if I’m wrong that he never had any real principles, it’s quite clear that he abandoned them when he hired the very sleaze-maestros who torpedoed his last presidential bid in 2000 to run this campaign. Given his actual character rather than the crafted charade, and given his absolute devotion to the goal of becoming president (driven, I suspect, but the desire to finally outrank his Admiral father and grandfather), there is nothing surprising or shocking about the depths to which he has sunk throughout this campaign.
I think Barack Obama is just as much a man who has been planning his life and political career around the goal of becoming president for a very, very long time. The difference is, I haven’t seen any evidence whatsoever that he’s done so in a deeply unprincipled way. I don’t have any illusions that he hasn’t been corrupted in various ways by political life, but he seems to have begun his political career with substantial and admirable principles, and not to have substantially abandoned them. For all our sake, I hope I’m right about that.
I agree with you completely. McCain is going back 40 years to a time when Obama was a child and it’s illogical. Ayers was not committing acts of violence when his path crossed with Obama. And we hear precious little about the Keating Five, which was only 20 years ago and cost the Federal government billions of dollars in bailout funds. Eerily familiar?
Ayers has changed? In a New York Times interview published September 11, 2001 Ayers said, “I don’t regret setting bombs, I feel we didn’t do enough.”
“Two, Obama was a child when Ayers was the guy he was in 1968. It’s just not morally respectable to ignore those two facts in order to pretend that Obama is now a fan of what Bill Ayers was in 1968.”
Let me know when Obama apologizes to Trent Lott.
Honestly, I find it mesmerizing, too, in a really pretty horrifying way. Knowing in a theoretical way how really big, really nasty lies can be told by demagogues and repeated by their supporters until the lot of them believe them true is one thing. Seeing that process in action–and in full, runaway, spiralling bloom–it’s quite another.
And no, there probably is no bottom, for some of them. For McCain himself, maybe, sort of, apparently, there is some limit at least to what he’ll say and allow publically, as he feels the pressure from those less swept along to do something about the crazier and scarier things being shouted at the rallies. At the very least, knowing he’s likely to alienate any moderates left in his column, he probably feels he has to say something (he did make an attempt to cool off a few of them earlier today, I hear). But for the sources of the poisonous voices surfacing in the online fora, there probably isn’t even that check. Because it feeds on itself, and any call to reason just sounds to them like treachery, a call to corruption from the perceived purity of their mission. They get angrier and angrier and build up their mythos, turn Obama and anyone who supports him from opponent to villain to monster to demon, step by relentless step.
The sad thing is: I don’t think it’s going to be especially reversible, for many of them. Calling them ‘polarized’ hardly cuts it. They believe now they are soldiers fighting a vital and deadly evil. Talking them down isn’t going to be easy. I do genuinely fear what they may do, almost regardless of where and how the polls move between now and Nov. 5–no hyperbole to say this at all.
And even McCain, I suspect, is probably responding more to a perceived political necessity in asking for ‘respect’ and, perhaps, some guilt over that danger–than actual reconsideration of any of what he and his campaign are saying–watching him, especially at the debates, I’ve begun strongly to suspect he finished making his political enemies into demons weeks ago, now. Because he thinks he’s earned this position he seeks, because it’s *supposed* to be his, because he thinks he’s been cheated out of it, anyone who participates *has* to be evil. Obama simply *must* be grasping and dirty and vile and so on, because he’s between John McCain and what he wants.
In fairness G. Mcain was offered freedom by the V.C. but chose to stick with first captured first home,he was badly injured so he could have had a good excuse to come home with honour.
Actually, Richard, McCain was not offered the opportunity to come home until years into his imprisonment, when he had healed as much as he was going from his crash injuries. In fact, he would have died from his injuries within days of his crash if he hadn’t revealed to them the strategically valuable information that he was the son of an Admiral – and other militarily important information, actually – which earned him a trip to the hospital instead of a shallow grave. These facts, by the way, are a matter of public record and are corroborated (albeit sketchily) by McCain’s own account of events.
Moreover, the deal the VC offered him in return for his release – years after his capture – was the same deal they offered many POWs (who also refused), denounce your country publicly and you can go home: He would have come home to face a court martial if he had actually accepted what the VC offered in return for release, far from returning home with honour. He frames the story as if he and he alone bravely said “I’m not accepting special treatment, I’m not going home until we can all go home.” But in fact, many of the POWs in his camp were offered the same deal over the years, and all of them refused.
I’m not saying McCain didn’t serve honorably during his stint as a POW. But there is no evidence whatsoever that he served exceptionally or notably when compared to the other POWs who shared his tribulations, many of whom give very different accounts of events in the POW camp from McCain’s sanitized and heroism-enhanced narrative.
At this point, I have encountered so many thoroughly documented instances of McCain lying about himself and others over the course of his career (not just this campaign) that I would feel compelled to double-check for myself if McCain announced that rain is wet.
“It interests me that there seems to be no braking mechanism, no floor, no point at which they just can’t stomach it any more.”
You may be wrong about this OB at least in McCain’s case. This was John McCain yesterday:
” He just snatched the microphone out the hands of a woman who began her question with, “I’m scared of Barack Obama… he’s an Arab terrorist…”
“No, no ma’am,” he interrupted. “He’s a decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements.”
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/is-mccain-final.html
Too little too late? Maybe, but it’s something.
There’s nothing parochial about the US politics, except maybe the continued & absurd presence of the words “God” and as a close 2nd “patriotism”.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23316912/makebelieve_maverick/print
If anyone can read this and still believe for a minute that John McCain is fit to serve as the POTUS, then they have been mainlining right-wing propaganda for far too long.
“Too little too late? Maybe, but it’s something.”
I’m not convinced of McCain’s sincerity here. I think his scheme did what it was meant to–summon up the worst kind of right-wing nativism. Now that it’s on the march, he’s trying to cast himself in the role of good-guy-who-deplores-these-terrible-things-but-what-can-you-do-it’s-a-free-country.
Either that, or he’s a confused old man who forgot the things his handlers told him to say.
The real measure of his campaign’s sincerity will be if Palin continues to beat the drum of hate for him.
It seems clear to me that Obama is a pretty decent and very bright guy, and probably would make a good President. That doesn’t make it immoral to try to compete for the job.
In my opinion, both sides are feeling the same way – that their opponents are acting dishonestly and dishonourably.
The fundamental mechanism operating is IMHO ‘confirmatory bias’. Each side is collecting the dribble that passes for writing among politicised journalists and bloggers, and accepting it as evidence for bad values in the other side instead of exceptions that could highlight the good. What confirmatory bias does not help, denial does – its like creationists dismissing the weight of evidence.
ChrisPer, it’s simply not true. There is a well-established knee-jerk reaction in this country that any time someone points out some incredibly dishonest or dishonorable Republican campaign tactic to say something along the lines of “Well they’re politicians; they’re all the same. The Democrats do the same thing.” But it is not true.
Democrats do not have a well-established pattern of trying to block people from voting based on spurious “disqualifications” which always turn out to be lies. Democrats do not have a history of falsely crying “Voter fraud!” every time a voter registration drive kicks out inevitable, perfectly expected duplicate registrations. Democrats have not been repeatedly caught push-polling. Democrats have not pushed to have flawed electronic voting systems with no paper trail forced down the voters’ throats. Republicans do all these things and more, and every time they get caught they just trot out another lie or false counter-accusation. I’m not saying no Democratic political operatives have ever pulled any of these stunts, but in documented fact the politics of dirty tricks is almost all on the Republican side of things, and has been for decades.
In this particular election, the Obama campaign has almost entirely attacked John McCain’s actual positions and record, with a few minor distortions based on how one interprets votes “for” this and “against” that in the complicated push and pull of actual law-making. Both sides do that sort of thing, it’s business as usual. But the McCain campaign has lied repeatedly and furiously, smearing again and again with slanders so outrageous that even staunch conservatives have said again and again that they’ve gone too far. Sex ed for kindergarteners? Palling around with terrorists? Ridiculous lies. What happens when the McCain campaign gets called out on the smears? They repeat ’em some more.
You type IMHO, but your opinion is anything but humble – because you presume to make judgments about things you actually don’t seem to know very much about. Who wins any given debate is all about confirmatory bias. But how the two campaigns have conducted themselves is a matter of public record.
G. I dont mean to pick a fight here but how is saying senator Obama is friendly with terrorists a lie? Maybe it is overblown but his friendship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayres is a matter of record? And yes Ayres is still a terrorist untill he repudiates his former acts of wanton violence.
G, duplicate registrations are inevitable? In my country, they could only exist as an act of fraud.
“As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s…I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.”
Strawman alert!
I know we RWDBs are stupid, but maybe not stupid enough to try and pass off Obama as being involved in those bombings. (Did you read the article by the child who WAS involved? He was to be one of the victims.)
Obama is as clean as a whistle so far, but if the ideological air he breathes is so radical he doesn’t notice people like Wright, or Ayers, then that is a legitimate ground for considering whether he should be your man.
Richard: The bombing of civilians in North Vietnam was completely unethical as was Ayers’ bombing. Democratic nations commit atrocities, and the United States committed many in Vietnam and in the invasion of Cambodia. I will stand by my comment that I don’t see much ethical difference between McCain and the Weather Underground. Or rather perhaps there is a difference: Ayers has changed his profession from bomber to expert on education, while McCain is still singing “Bomb, bomb, Iran”.
“I am not sure if is spoof or what?”
Neal Boortz is a libertarian-leaning (read: more extremist than your average American winger) radio host who has honed the gloating-dickhead style of Republican humor to a razor’s edge.
ChrisPer – when I said ‘correct me if I’m wrong’ – I meant by offering evidence, I didn’t mean just by offering the ‘opinion’ that both sides are equal and it’s all confirmation bias. That’s especially the case since I pointed out the possibility of confirmation bias myself at the outset – so just saying ‘confirmation bias’ adds nothing.
The specific distortion I was questioning here was the stupid (and probably dangerous) exaggeration of Obama’s ‘friendship’ with Ayers.
Richard, please don’t link to garbage.
Hasn’t the thread of this discussion been lost somewhere?
OB said that the Republicans, through their advertisements and Palin’s repeated accusation that Obama is a friend of terrorists, had covered themselves in shit (although she said it more politely).
Well, that’s what they’ve done. And even if the Democratic campaign is not innocent of playing dirty politics, they haven’t made use of anywhere near some of the most shocking things that both McCain and Palin are guilty of! For a little peek, take a look at:
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/mccain_palin/
Well, I think OB is right, and I think, as I said, that it’s more than just interesting, it’s downright appalling. OB said that her remarks were litotelic (can you make that word with ‘litotes’). The problem with being soft on the sort of thing that Palin and McCain have been up to (though McCain did come in with something small rather late in the game) is that there’s so much of it. This is dirty politics, really very dirty. So dirty that people at Rupublican rallies are calling out to ‘Kill him’ (meaning Obama), no less. Now, that’s a pretty serious level of dirt or ordure or just plain old shit.
As one commentator said, the Republicans are playing with fire. As a former McCain supporter, Frank Schaeffer) put it in the Baltimore Sun:
“John McCain and Sarah Palin, you are playing with fire, and you know it. You are unleashing the monster of American hatred and prejudice, to the peril of all of us. You are doing this in wartime. You are doing this as our economy collapses. You are doing this in a country with a history of assassinations.” (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.mccain10oct10,0,7557571.story)
This is a pretty serious level of concern. I think it’s justified. What is wrong down there, folks? Something is.
Yeah, the history of assassinations worries me, and is one very good reason for not dabbling in these waters. Another is just principle.
I crossed with G and Eric crossed with me. Busy thread for a moment.
Yes, OB, mine crosse with yours an G. So I didn’t get a chance to see G’s quite brilliant note before I posted mine. There have been a lot of really silly things said on this thread, but G’s (and your original note, OB, plus your occasional input) have returned things to a nice balance. Let the politicians play politics. We’re trying – just trying – to make sense of it all here. This is where principle comes in, surely. Thanks OB. Thanks G.
A “history of assassinations”? Talk about guilt by association.
Oh don’t be schewpid, Carter, it’s not guilt by association, it’s pointing out a danger.
I wish the right-wing opponents were of a higher calibre. (But then, actually, maybe there are no higher calibre opponents on this issue. Apparently many Republicans dislike McCain’s tactics, so maybe high calibre people just don’t defend them.)
Another thing…because it gets up my nose.
ChrisPer: “That doesn’t make it immoral to try to compete for the job.”
Of course it’s not immoral to try to compete for the same job. What’s that got to do with anything? I’m so sick of that trope. Competing for a job is one thing and telling untruths is another. Or don’t you think so? Do you tell lies about your rivals whenever you’re competing for a job?
Here is a transcript of the Wright speech that originally ignited the furor: http://stevecotler.com/tales/2008/04/27/rev-jeremiah-wright/
I challenge you to point out the hate or bigotry in it.
Richard, which right wing talking head told you that Ayers has never repudiated violence? To quote Ayers’ own description of his book about his radical youth, Fugitive Days, “My memoir is from start to finish a condemnation of terrorism, of the indiscriminate murder of human beings, whether driven by fanaticism or official policy.”
Like I said above, Ayers hasn’t abandoned his progressive politics and still thinks the mass carpet bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia were criminal acts of a terrorist government – and he’s right. But the fact that Ayers still thinks that what the U.S. government did in Vietnam was wrong (which it was) and still thinks that it was morally important to oppose the Vietnam war (which it was) does not mean that Ayers still thinks that the terrorist methods used by the Weather Underground were right or justified. Ayers has in fact said that terrorist violence is never justified, period.
But he’s still a terrorist in your book. And if he’s a terrorist then Obama is a bad person because Ayers is one of Obama’s literally millions of political supporters and contributors. And never mind McCain’s much closer and more recent association with lobbyists for murderous third-world tyrants and well-known unrepentant convicted criminal and ultra-right lunatic G. Gordon Liddy.*
More to the point, so what? From your vast experience as a plumber, you don’t believe that someone would host a fundraiser for a fairly casual acquaintance, so they must be really close friends who share every possible political opinion and so Obama should be labeled a terrorist? Well, you’re wrong on both counts. Wealthy, politically active people hold lots of fundraisers, and the only reason they need is that they think the person would be a good candidate for public office – or maybe just better than the current occupant of the office. Ayers and Obama sat on the same charity board. Obama is smart, articulate, and passionate. Ayers thought he’d be a good state senator, and when one of Obama’s supporters asked him to host a fund-raiser, he said yes. What a damning story of entangled lives and ideals!
But what really matters is that Barack Obama himself has never expressed any view whatsoever that remotely resembles Ayers’ youthful radicalism or Wright’s grotesque (but not uncommon or surprising) reverse racism, and in fact has clearly and universally stood against such views in general and in these specific cases. So why the hell should anyone care about these bullshit associations that you are trying so strenuously to believe are important? Seriously, your unthinking willingness to swallow and regurgitate Republican talking points never ceases to amaze and confound me, since you can be quite independent-minded and even thoughtful on less directly political topics.
———
* Actually, the G. Gordon Liddy connection in that second link is a completely bogus smear – which is the point, because the Ayers connection to Obama is even more tenuous and less relevant than McCain’s coziness with Liddy. The first link is a matter of substance that really does speak to McCain’s politics and character, since it’s just one of the many areas of concern about how loathsome the people who fill McCain’s campaign staff and fundraising machine really are. McCain sells himself as a pro-reform, anti-corruption “maverick,” yet virtually all of his top campaign staffers are highly paid professional lobbyists for corporations and foreign governments and such – the very people at the heart of America’s deep political rot. Some maverick.
Another thing…because it gets up my nose.
ChrisPer: “That doesn’t make it immoral to try to compete for the job.”
OB:”Of course it’s not immoral to try to compete for the same job. What’s that got to do with anything? I’m so sick of that trope. Competing for a job is one thing and telling untruths is another. Or don’t you think so? Do you tell lies about your rivals whenever you’re competing for a job?”
Is it or is it not true that Obama has a long association with Ayers? Is it or is it not true that Obama has deflected enquiries as to the nature of that association?
It would be extremely dishonest to claim a direct association with his terrorist acts, but it is not dishonest to claim that they are strongly associated in activist work still, and that Ayers has relatively recently affirmed them in public. It is not dishonest to exploit the little known about Obama’s career and associates to cast them in a less favourable light.
I am not sure that what you are calling lies are actually lies. I think that in general, people are re-framing things until they can see a way of calling them lies, then doing so.
For instance, in the past you have used the word ‘swiftboating’. It is my poor understanding that the verb ‘to swiftboat’ implies character assassination using falsehoods.
But in what I have read, very few indeed of the Swiftboat vets claims about John Kerry have been found untrue. Rhetorical devices have been employed to allow supporters to set aside the claims of the Swift Boat vets. That case, if my understanding is correct, illustrates that claims after processing through one-sided reframing become ‘true’ to the extent they help the partisan case, and that framed truth supersedes actual truth.
This example seems to show that the Obama campaign is trying to obscure the details of his actual actions and associations, by removing evidence from the public domain.
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/7231
And here you can see a RWDB blog attacking the unethical mutant 1% who provide the fodder for the activist reframing of the message:
“Some Republicans are, alas, the exact same sort of unsophisticated angry morons who shout things like “Terrorist” about Obama when McCain is speaking, thus putting him on the extreme defensive, or having temper tantrums on blogs when the proprietor requests they refrain from exposing him to any lawsuits.
They substantially vindicate every stereotype the left and MSM has about us, and make the rest of us not only look bad, but make us squeamish from even being political associates. And they lose us precious votes.
Can you begin to consider the possibility that you are consistently ignored, and have to resort to shouting “Terrorist” or throwing temper-tantrums on blogs, is because you’re a mutant idiot that non-mutants non-idiots just don’t have time for? And perhaps you’d best go back to just lurking?”
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/275438.php
ChrisPer, did you just say something?
Richard: The discussion has gone on, but yes, I consider that the bombing of North Vietnam is terrorism just as are the actions of the Weather Underground. So I don’t see much ethical difference between Ayers’ youthful terrorism and McCain’s participation in bombing North Vietnam. There are undoubtedly subtle ethical differences between the actions of a uniformed military man who obeys orders and those of a bomber who acts on his own initiative, but I don’t see the point of getting into them here. By the way, McCain wasn’t drafted: he volunteered to be a pilot.
Eric, who me? It seems not.
Amos, your moral equivalence is a crock.
“Is it or is it not true that Obama has a long association with Ayers?”
It is not true (unless by ‘association’ you mean merely ‘acquaintance’).
“it is not dishonest to claim that they are strongly associated in activist work still”
Yes it is, because they aren’t (unless by ‘associated’ you mean merely ‘acquainted’).
Stop with the acronym already, I don’t know what it means (and don’t care).
Chris: Just to please you, I spent the whole morning reading up on Ayers in internet, because two weeks ago, I had no idea who Ayers is. In fact, after reading several interviews with Ayers, he appears to me to be a far more ethically reflective and intelligent person than McCain is. He made mistakes when he was young, as most of us do. Unlike McCain, Ayers has the capacity to recognize his ethical errors, to reflect upon them, and to change his ways. The only remarks about Vietnam that I have had heard from McCain are infantile triumphalism about how the United States could have won if it had bombed more. Compare McCain with Kerry, who returned from Vietnam and threw his medals away in protest against U.S. atrocities in Vietnam. I admire Kerry. I can’t say that I admire McCain. I admire what Ayers has done with his life after renouncing violence.
And by the way Richard, no, no one was killed (or injured) in any of Ayers’s bombings. That doesn’t let him off the hook, because bombing certainly carries that risk, but all the same, the answer is no. (You could have looked it up you know. You’re always setting everyone straight, yet you don’t check your facts.)
You can’t publish long articles here, Clem. Articles have to be submitted to the editor, not posted in comments.
“And also isnt a just war very much a subjective judgement?”
Oh well then, I guess if you’re going to descend into ‘that’s just your opinion’ territory then we can consider the conversation stopped.
The “I was just following orders!” defense was shattered decades ago, and with good cause.
Richard I think whether a war is just can be determined on more than subjective opinion, even if partisans refuse to agree.
But morally equating a domestic terrorist with a serving soldier doing his lawful duty in war is preposterous. Its interesting how moral equivalence is deployed against you in one post by using it, and in another by decrying it.
Richard, try to read carefully. I didn’t ask why you specifically cared about this campaign, I asked why ANYONE should care about these ridiculous trumped up accusations about Obama’s character based on people he associates with, however tenuously. Barack Obama clearly does not agree with the politics of the young radical Ayers or current radical Wright in any way – not just because he says he doesn’t, but because his entire political record SHOWS that he doesn’t. These attacks are bullshit smears with no relevance whatsoever to Obama’s character or fitness for office, period. I asked why you keep insisting that they are relevant. You don’t provide any new reasons to think they are, nor do you provide any actual objections or responses to my arguments for why they aren’t relevant, you just keep repeating the bullshit smears. It’s not particularly convincing, nor productive.
And why would you rather have heard Obama cast Wright aside like so much embarrassing trash? Do you think otherwise good people who fight poverty and disease and despair should be immediately tossed aside when they turn out to also have some decidedly nutty beliefs? Shucks, Richard, I think *you* have some decidedly nutty and sometimes downright unpleasant beliefs about life and the world – but I don’t think they make you a bad human being.
So I thought it was refreshing for a politician to have the kind of character that says, essentially, “So my old, dear friend believes nutty things. I reject those nutty beliefs, but I don’t think those nutty beliefs make him an irredeemably bad person – any more than my grandma’s occasional racism made her an irredeemably bad person. People, and life, just aren’t that simple – and you don’t toss aside good people that casually.” In that attitude, Obama is truer to the ethic of hating the sin and not the sinner than any other Christian I’ve ever encountered. That speech was especially courageous in my opinion for the very part of it you would rather not have heard.
And ChrisPer, I can’t see that you’ve done any better than Richard by insisting that the Obama/Ayers connection is a deep and abiding political love affair based on … what, exactly? A link to a completely unrelated pseudo-scandal, where apparently someone committed the horrible sin of correcting an error on an Obama website which overstated his lack of association with yet another trumped-up scandal. So now changing a false statement to a true statement on a website is a “cover up”? Seriously?
Incidentally, the right wing smear machine has a huge hate on for ACORN, but as far as I can determine the only documented cases of anyone working for ACORN actually committing any type of crime involved in voter registration, the criminals in question were turned in by ACORN itself. Gosh, what a nefarious organization, going around daring to register poor people to vote, and policing themselves effectively and publicly when something goes awry! For shame! See this in-depth article for some details on just one set of anti-ACORN smearing.
Richard: World War 2 appears to me to have been a justified war on the part of the allies, while the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam was not justified. I don’t see why a pilot cannot make value judgments, inspite of his training. As a matter of fact, military men have been tried in many instances, here in Chile for example, for following orders which lead to atrocities in cases of human rights violations. I’m not suggesting that McCain should be tried, by the way, merely that following orders is not a defense in the case of atrocities. The war in Vietnam occurred a long time ago. Perhaps it’s time to forgive past sins and crimes, including those of Mr. Ayers.
Oh, and today presents me with a link to another detailed discussion of the GOP efforts to smear ACORN because they don’t want poor people and minorities to be registered to vote, not because ACORN has ever actually done anything wrong. And I’d forgotten how this whole ACORN smear campaign ties into the Attorney General Gonzales political firings fiasco. Read it all here:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/10/facts_about_acorn_and_alleged.php
The money quote: “This is politics, plain and simple. The GOP cannot come up with a single documented example of someone voting twice or voting fraudulently, but they continually raise the specter of voter fraud in order to cover up their longstanding voter suppression efforts. And those efforts, unlike the allegations of voter fraud, have been documented and proven in court many times. Multiple courts have found the RNC and various Republican state committees guilty of illegal voter suppression and issued injunctions against their voter caging programs. And that is the sole purpose of these voter fraud allegations, to distract attention away from all of that.”
Get a grip, Richard. Obama has about ten million associates and former associates by this time. There is zero reason to draw any conclusions from 2 out of the ten million. There is zero reason to focus on two out of the many many many people that Obama knows. This is just campaign bullshit and has nothing to do with anything.
Richard: I agree that question of legal responsibility for some acts of war is complicated. However, by admitting that some U.S. bombings in World War 2 may have been atrocities, you have conceded my main point: that McCain may have an ethical responsibility (let’s leave the legal question aside)for his role in bombing North Vietnam. Ayers has an ethical and an obvious legal responsibility, for which he was tried. However, my original point was that in ethical terms I did not see a big difference between McCain and Ayers. In legal terms, there is a difference between them.
Amos I dont for one second concede that, within the historical context I would defend all of those actions I listed,I just said that if you alow pilots to make value judgements they might be some raids that they might choose not to partake in.
Look im not saying dont vote for the guy I think you should,just dont tell me its not a problem that this guy spent 20 years listening to the kind of bile that G. or yourself wouldnt suffer for 5 minuites. The Ayres thing I think you guys are probably right its not that important.
G: “every single word you’ve heard out of Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s mouth was selected for your viewing pleasure by people who have looked through every available snippet of footage of him speaking trying to find him saying bad things? You’ve let your view of a complete, complex human being be shaped in its entirety by a smear campaign.”
Absolutely correct G. Does that apply to Palin’s and McCain’s lives as displayed in the media too, or are only Republicans selecting and misrepresenting the useful bits?
What fighting h.i.v by telling his flock that the goverment(code for white people)created it to get rid of black people G. I am sorry if I am making a big deal over this but (to me) I think it matters! I was quite clear I wasnt just talking about the selected horrors from Wrights speeches but his general world veiw of black victimhood that he pedals as well.I have said it is not reason enough not to vote for him but just dont expect that he will be much different than other politicians because he will disapoint you.
G. and please dont asume that I swallow the right wing propoganda whole, I like to test it out on you because you give me a well reasoned responce that is dificult to find elsewhere, you probably have had a better than 50 percent record of covincing me that there is no substance to it. but you will fail to convince me Wright doesnt matter.
Well that’s your problem then, isn’t it?
Richard…you may like to ‘test’ right wing propaganda on G but that doesn’t mean the rest of us like reading you doing that. And we don’t. Yes, G gives well-reasoned responses, but you don’t, and reading your rapid-fire provocations is not much of a joy.
The joy is in G.s responnce nothing I write would ever reach the level of one of his first year students.
I have been trying my best not to tick people off, I thought I getting better because you were scolding me less?
Gee, ChrisPer, do you have any genuine distortions of McCain’s or Palin’s actual actions, associations, and records to trot out? Or are you, as usual, just dropping in and saying something contrary-minded without any actual evidence to back up your insinuation.
In your own way, you are much more tediously consistent than Richard.
And Richard, how about this? Instead of testing out your right wing talking points to see how I refute them, stop listening to them in the first place. It’ll do ya good.