| The only part of the speech that made me shudder was this sentence: “But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.” As soon as I heard that, I knew what we’d have to endure. I knew that there would be a stampede of editorial boards, columnists and academics rushing not to ignore race. A national conversation about race! At long last! |
(( Mr. Bones complains privately that Big Party neocomrade K-2 talkin’ ’bout not wantin’ to talk ’bout black and white is not such a surprise that one needs to drop everything instantly lest Princess Posterity fail ever to be informed of it. Let Bones make no mistake: the Gadarene swine and I reserve our right to rush whithersoever we please, even to commonplace destinations should some holy ghost so inspire us! However we can reassure him that this little ideoladdie does not automatically get our attention first thing every Monday morning. [1]
Should any student this side of Her Highness To Come really require more background, let him know (1) that K-2 despises BHO for asking "the convenient questions, not the difficult ones," and (2) that K-2 despises BHO for deploying "ridiculous and unfair comparisons to make a point," and (3) that K-2 despises BHO for doing "a disservice to the best in their own communities" out of naked ambition. Bein’ as it is a deep student of War and Peace as well as of Aggression and Occupation, K-2 avails itself of exactly three (03.00) post-Tolstoyan preludings before it gets down to what it really does not wanna talka ’bout and why it duzna wanna.
I read as I scribble, so we’ll learn together how the neobrat manages to indicate which questions about [exp. del.] are difficult rather than convenient and which comparisons involving [exp. del.] are à propos, without any discussion of [exp. del.] procedin’ from itself. Fortunately it can sermonize about its own ‘thirdly’ -- offering highest-quality service to the community -- without needin’ to say a single word about [exp. del.], unless it takes the line that the Rev. Jeremiah’s ethnocommunity and theocommunity have special peculiarities that must be addressed. ))
So then, onward!
| Of course, memories are short. In 1997 President Bill Clinton announced, with great fanfare, that he intended “to lead the American people in a great and unprecedented [if he did say so himself] conversation about race.” That conversation quickly went nowhere. And just as well. The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race. What we need instead are sober, results-oriented debates about economics, social mobility, education, family policy and the like — focused especially on how to help those who are struggling. Such policy debates can lead to real change — even “change we can believe in.” “National conversations” tend to be pointless and result-less. |
I account it characteristically neobratty of K-2 to make that particular appeal when it as an individual practitioner takes money from Neocomrade R. Murdoch to preside over a fishwrap of opinion at Wingnut City that distinctly features "heated conversation" over "sober, results-oriented debate." Princess Posterity may not instantly notice that the señorito implicitly muddles up its own and Massa Rupert's Weekly Standard with The Public Interest, "a quarterly conservative politics and culture journal founded by Irving Kristol in 1965" . The amount of "real change" generated by little Billy's big Daddy's mag is open to question, and has often been exaggerrated, but there can be no question that the sobriety of TPI was oriented towards change, let alone any doubt about the general unintoxicatedness of it all. [2]
It is not specifically señoritoly for rightists and neorightists of the more upmarket type to deplore democracy considered as ‘heated national conversation’ and wish for a Greenspan Commission or the like to settle all outstanding issues on the late Colonel Hamilton’s lines inside closed gates, say at Burning Tree or Bohemian Grove. K-2 and its ideobuddies cannot consider all national elections "pointless and result-less" -- if nothing else, there was 1932! -- although they wouldn't mind a bit if most of the unwashed ninety-nine percent thought something of that sort. The New York Times Company's banner organ notoriously does not deal in rabble-rousing, so little Billy may be confident that it is not gointa accidentally set off a conflagration of heated conversation no matter what it decides not to talk about. Why, even [exp. del.] itself may be mentioned freely in the august columns of Aunt Nitsy!
So then, will the neobrat actually mention the dread topic or will it confine itself to praise of sobriety and shrinkin’ away from democratic hot-talk and/or hot-talk democracy? Let’s see, skipping over Paddy Moynihan and and Benign Neglect®, an obvious predecessor of Kristolminorism, we arrive at
| Racial progress has in fact continued in America. A new national conversation about race isn’t necessary to end what Obama calls the “racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years” — because we’re not stuck in such a stalemate. In fact, as Obama himself suggests in the same speech, younger Americans aren’t stalemated. They come far closer than their grandparents and parents to routinely obeying Martin Luther King’s injunction to judge one another by the content of our character, not the color of our skin. Over the last several decades, we’ve done pretty well in overcoming racial barriers and prejudice. |
’Twas a pretty stroke, though scarcely an innovative one, for the señorito to point out that youth must inherit the world at last, but apart from that, there is nothin’ señoritoly about that passage at all. Every Elephant Person without significant exception agrees that there exists no racial stalemate. Few loyal Elephant Persons are worried that in terms of the official positions of the Party of Grant since the year of disgrace 1876, there has never been any racial stalemate worth mentionin’. Regardless of objective conditions, that is what they think now, and what they have always thought back to a remote period when slavery and Free Soil™ and abolition remained live political questions. Amendment XIII (18 December 1865) resolved America's racial stalemate forever. One hundred and forty-odd years have now passed without any sign of a racial stalemate in the United States. (Golly, just think of it!) [3]
The neobrat comes close to wallowin’ in the gutter with the Big Management Party's base and vile at this point, however. There is nothin’ that Narcissus Dexter loves better in all the world than to be solemnly assured for the 145,609th time in his short and wombschooled life that Wunnerful US really are real wunnerful. [4] The "Over the last several decades, we’ve done pretty well in overcoming racial barriers and prejudice" tripe and baloney is like so much catnip for the denizens of Rio Limbaugh. Customers of the New York Times Company are less addicted to having their flattery laid on with a dumptruck, so perhaps Señorito Kristol can find a viable niche market chez Nitsy. Time will tell.
Finally, here's the neobrat's peroration, plus a slight overhang:
| Over the last several decades, we’ve done pretty well in overcoming racial barriers and prejudice. Problems remain. But we won’t make progress if we now have to endure a din of race talk that will do more to divide us than to unite us, and more to confuse than to clarify. Luckily, Obama isn’t really interested in getting enmeshed in a national conversation on race. He had avoided race talk before the Reverend Wright controversy erupted. And despite the speech’s catnip of a promised conversation on race tossed to eager commentators, it’s clear he’s more than willing to avoid it from now on. This is all for the best. With respect to having a national conversation on race, my recommendation is: let’s not, and say we did. |
Master Billy pretends to be a disciple of M. Pascal, what ‘we’ want is to clarify our thinkin’ -- Travaillons donc à bien penser : voilà le principe de la morale! And what could be more clarifictory than just not thinkin’ about [exp. del.] at all?
Still, we are not all Pascalians, not yet, and a critic from amongst the others might criticize that it was not made clear to her exactly how "a din of race talk" prevents the headache, not brain tumor, of [exp. del.] from healing. Does the learned Doctor of Undemocracy mean that even the headache is a purely psychogenic symptom? Perhaps not, since it allows that problems remain. On the other, hypochondria is the name of a problem too, is it not? The señorito might have added a sentence to its diagnosis to make perfectly plain that there exist other problems over and above the din. (He might even have offerred to explain what the non-din problems consist of, in his next 750 words if not right here. But let’s not be greedy.)
The bottom line is not altogether satisfactory rhetorically: after hollerin’ ‘Wolf!’ like that itself, the neobrat admits that there isn't actually any wolf in sight at the moment and that B. Hussein Obama, for his part, is not going to start hollering either. At this point Master Kristol dabbles daringly in predictions about the future, and its credentials for doin’ so are not, in my judgment, the best available. We can count on there being no ‘debate’ or ‘conversation’ about [exp. del.] in America, that much is safe. The Party of Grant will make quite sure that nothin’ of that sort is permitted to happen with their participation. After all, it's only a headache, not a brain tumor, and it will go away shortly if we just ignore it.
So no debate or conversation, but how about a ‘din’ instead? K-2 and its playmates do not worry themselves about their parents' generation's problems, as for example how to pay for and how to muster public enthusiasm for the various aggressions and occupations that take the fancy of Kiddie Krusaders. A ‘conservatism’ that doesn't have any economics or any interest in how to get political results is a curious hothouse flower, but fortunately for Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh and Daddy Warbucks and a number of other grown-up factions and fractions, the GOP is not just Grant's Old Party, it is also the neo-Party of the late Lee Atwater. Master Atwater made a fine din about Willie Horton, and it is at least possible that his restless ghost will inspire some Young Republicans for Fascism, or anyay, some 2008 militant Republican Party extremists, to go and do likewise with the Rev. Mr. Jeremiah Wright. Most likely it genuinely never occurred to Kristol Minor that there could be a din about [exp. del.] generated by its own Big Party crew, yet of course the thing is possible and not even unlikely. Indeed, to judge from WRKO AM 680 Boston, the thing is already happenin’. [5]
____
[1] Like Big Party neocomrade D. Brooks, W. K-2 shows signs of deterioration as he tries to scribble for the Worst Newspaper in the Known World .
[2] The señorito faction is not to be trusted an inch about ‘debate’, however, and least of all when Presslord Murdoch is anywhere within a thousand kilometres literal or figurative. The op-ed pages of the Wall Street Jingo are rather more sober than those of the Weekly Standard, but in neither case does the range of ‘debate’ venture beyond Dr. Pott's animadversions on Prof. Kettle. Tweedledumb and Tweedledee get the whole shebang to themselves in both these Wingnut City forums: the Monstrous Crow pretty well never manages to get a word in edgewise.
Notice that K-2 thinks Jim Crow must be somehow related to Monstrous Crow -- persons to shut up about oneself and to gag if one can.
[3] "Mr. Roebuck says to the Sheffield cutlers:-- ‘I look around me and ask what is the state of England? Is not property safe? Is not every man able to say what he likes? Can you not walk from one end of England to the other in perfect security? I ask you whether, the world over or in past history, there is anything like it? Nothing. I pray that our unrivalled happiness may last."
[4] Accordingly, what Narky Dexter and Mr. Roebuck will make of the world to come is a stiff challenge to the imagination. In the Republic of Heaven™ it will (I presume) be considered rather bad taste to go on and on about Yankee Exceptionalism, and everybody will be able to walk from one end to the other without stumbling over a racial stalemate.
With K-2 itself, the question does not arise. ‘Neoconservatives’ in the strict Kristolcentric sense think of religionism as a tonic that is good for the servants but not usually required by Herrenvolk.
[5] Like ‘racism’ or race relations, talk radio is a subject that the Doctor of Undemocracy would prefer not to waste any diagnosis or therapy on. He can’t be unaware that it exists and that its existence benefits the Party of Wisdom and Virtue and Col. Hamilton, yet Rio Limbaugh exists at a level remote from the level of señoritos and, indeed, of the New York Times Company.
In effect, though maybe not consciously, little Billy K-2 leaves all that not-so-nice business for Uncle Rupert to handle in conjunction with Cousin Lee. Billy itself concentrates on the libido dominandi and Griff nach der Weltmacht side of neoconnery, which side is more than sufficient to keep it in scribble fodder.
Unfortunately it obviously takes the same view as its neocomrade D. Brooks does: a columnist for the New York Times has to be an all-’round kinda guy. Nobody should be surprised that these specimens perform less impressively than usual when they get out of the shallow end of the tank. For that matter, Prof. Krugman is in much the same case, great on economics, but only a child when he reflects more broadly.
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