from Nicholas | There's a rather sad article in today edition of London's Mail On Sunday by that well-known life-loving pixie, Peter Hitchens, entitled "The night we waved goodbye to America..." in which he postulates (nice word, that: I don't think I have ever used it before) that the USA is now fallen into the hands of a left-wing dictator totally incapable of running the country. It's difficult to know exactly how to describe the main thrust of this article, although the words "drivel", "mindless" and "a load of" do spring to mind.
Yes, I will concede that Obama’s victory speech did contain the odd anodyne phrase or two, and yes, he did say “Yes we can” a time or two too often. Big deal. It wasn't anything to do with cults, or brainwashing -- it was euphoria that the right man had won and that what has gone before is about to come to an end, and not a momen too soon. But Obama as a socialist? A left winger? For shame, Peterkins! Obama could fit very comfortably in the centre of the British Conservative party. He is pro capital punishment, hasn’t said a word about universal free healthcare for life, has never advocated public ownership of production or distribution. Granted, in the USA a left winger is someone who doesn’t advocate public execution of people who don’t go to church and a Marxist is someone who cares about the welfare of people who aren’t white and rich, but in the real world Obama is as much a socialist as Hitchens is.
Anyway, read the article if you want. And if you don’t, you won’t be missing much. Today’s Mail On Sunday will be lining bird cages tomorrow. There is, though, one point I’d like to make. Hitchens implies that Obama is totally unsuited as an advocate for poor blacks in the USA because
Mr Obama, thanks mainly to the now-departed grandmother he alternately praised as a saint and denounced as a racial bigot, has the huge advantages of an expensive private education. He did not have to grow up in the badlands of useless schools, shattered families and gangs which are the lot of so many young black men of his generation.
And your point is? Do you forget that two of the twentieth century’s strongest advocates for the rights of the common man, FDR and JFK, were high born from an undeniably patrician background? The one does not rule out the other.
I was delighted to see the other Hitchens brother, Christopher, on the election night coverage panel on BBC America for an hour or so that evening, and he welcomed Obama’s success. As we all should.
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Nicholas' post is astonishing in how completely it avoids addressing the central point of Peter Hitchens' diatribe, which was the cult-like quality of President Obama's following, and the fact that his support is built on no record at all.
Nicholas tries to make it seem as though the point of Hitchens' editorial was to paint Obama as a socialist. The words "socialist," "communist," and "marxist" do not appear in the editorial. The phrase "conventionally Left-wing machine politician" does appear once, but the main point even of that sentence is that there's no reason to believe Obama is a savior of any kind.
However, Nicholas does seem to illustrate Hitchens' point. Obama supporters seem so totally devoid of the ability to reason that they're now acting like Moonies, or like devotees of Princess Di. If Hitchens is correct, then we should expect responses like Nicholas', responses that show no evidence that the respondent understands the complaint. Understanding would require self-awareness sufficient to break out of the swooning frenzy and self-deception. That's clearly lacking here.
Posted by: philwynk | November 09, 2008 at 07:34 PM