posted
I've mostly yawned past this T.V. program, not long enough to even take in any of its dialogue, but saw a few minutes tonight.
Yawn . . . . . .
This is, of course, Hollywood's best grooming effort leading toward the 2008 elections, but has no substance to it, inasmuch as anything really critical about Islam mostly fails to make it past internet blogs.
One line in the dialogue shows the inspired and conscience-striken president sentimental over a an Islamic terrorist; she hands a pink-slip to one of her primary advisors (also female, which I suppose is meant to dramatize her lack of gender-bias) who promoted torture as a means of interrogation. Now, I'm not a little conflicted about the use of torture. My moral sensibilities don't allow me to support its cruel and crude necessity, but then I don't believe one's private moral compass has anything really to do with how that level of reality - geopolitical warring - is organized and run.
Before her fem-fatale staff member is fired, she makes the thread-bare statement: "Those morals aren't for them, there for us!" and, of course, the writers let that be the line meant to keep government looking like an extension of one's hearth and home. Her White House adversary had made the comment that Islamic radicals don't operate by the same moral standards.
The arrogant and mostly liberal notion, driven by private entitlements turned into shoddy moralisms, is that the United States must lead the way in demonstrating a moral integrity that passes the muster of public perception (which like Jimmy Carter, wouldn't know what to do with itself if it had to face the lethal duplicities of those global polemics), which is just to say we are secretly regretful for such things as the fire-bombing and nuking of Japan. Meanwhile, the U.N. turns its back on Tibet and Dafur, and hardly a word from these refined minds. And this is where the moral train disappears, since nobody confident about where his next meal is coming from can really argue either way: we cannot say with any personal assurance that these deadly means shouldn't have been used, or global economics sacrificed for humanity and its cultures, and we can't say they are morally justified either, at least in the clean way we like to finish arguments before closing our eyes at night.
Where we have to lead morally is in our treatment of our own citizens, not in our regard toward those who pose such dreadful threats. Morality, born of empathy at the individual level, doesn't even exist in the same way in this realm of political subversion and pragmatics, even though our Constitution is crafted with great delicacy toward the deepening of our own consciences. And so the less convincing we are in being dreadful and decisive to Islamic terrorists, the more they can exploit our ambivalence, which exists because we are trying to resolve a moral dilemma that simply has no personally inspiring rationalizations.
Our enemies have never been formed out of our own failed morality, but born of their own accord, with means and ends that can only be confused at our own peril. Islamists don't seek the withdrawal of western interests as their prize, but as a necessary pre-condition for turning a failed ideology into a broken-hearted, morally-bankrupt version of civilization. Israel's kindnesses have only been met with renewed vitriol, since the notion of western peace requires the inconceivable collapse of "honour" into the grief and shame it really is.
posted
Do I have to send you money or somethin', WC, for doing us the service of being the guinea pig and watching this show? Five bucks? Ten bucks? A small price to pay for the time you just saved me.
Posts: 5365 | From: Washington State | Registered: Sep 2001
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Brad:
Israel is the perfect example of what happens when leftists get their facile notions put into practice. Bush is actually behaving in this leftist fashion by insisting Israel relate with Palestinian Arabs as though they really can co-exist harmoniously. If modeling a more evolved moral sensibility in the face of terrorist crudities was going to have any value, it would have already payed big dividends. Leftists want political and cultural enemies to behave like family members needing to resolve conflicts, like a parent facing a rebellious teenager, assuming that there really is some undercurrent of humane regard that can be tapped to save the day. But it simply doesn't exist, or operate, at this almost mechanistic level of reality. When power-brokering drives what is shared based upon survival needs, then conflict resolution requires someone who wins and another who loses. For Arabs, any particular loss (even in the form of compromise) to the west, which values individual sovereignty, just momentarily reawakens them to their shame, a degree and kind of shame that is worse than not existing, since in terms of individual sovereignty Arabs hardly exist at all (hence, their failed attempts at alliances with each other).
Our attempts at peace are, in effect, attempts to get them to not exist in their own minds. And we can't say, "Well, just as they know themselves to be," since at the collective level there is little room for this kind of psychological device. And so by seeking "peace" we are asking Arabs to do the one thing they are culturally evolved to avoid at all costs: to turn inward to the shared existential dilemma that no form of politics can arbitrate for them.
When instinctual awareness has been devoted for centuries through cultural and religious experience to the maintenance of shame to resist the separation and loss of individuals from purely role-based ethnic communities, then there is simply no room for negotiations that imply a common way of looking at the world.
posted
Bush is actually behaving in this leftist fashion by insisting Israel relate with Palestinian Arabs as though they really can co-exist harmoniously. If modeling a more evolved moral sensibility in the face of terrorist crudities was going to have any value, it would have already payed big dividends.
One wonders instead of "no blood for oil" if the real slogan should be "no lies for oil" because it sure seems like we pussy-foot around the truth out of a fear of being cut off. Say what you will about Israel. Perhaps somehow the very existence of Jews is so repellant and repugnant that it's a reasonable thing for a person to want them all dead. I just don't personally find that to be the case. But the Jews are not trying to run anyone out of their own country (the thousand lies regarding Palestine notwithstanding.) The Jews are not sending homicide bombers across the border into shopping malls and busses to kill innocent people at random. And so with two sides diametrically opposed this would seem to be the perfect place for the peace activists of the world to intervene. The problem is, perhaps like Bush (but to much more of a degree) they too are afraid to face the truth. If two sides are both equally wrong then perhaps a person can step in, Ghandi-like, and resolve the situation. But if one side is displaying all the characteristics of intrinsic evil, and the other is not, to swoop into the situation and ask for a 50-50 compromise is ludicrous. Of course, this is not what happens. What happens is that the world swoops in and asks the innocent party to make all the concessions and treats them like the criminal.
If buttercups buzz'd after the bee, If boats were on land, churches on sea, If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows, And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse, If the mamas sold their babies To the gypsies for half a crown; If summer were spring and the other way round, Then all the world would be upside down.Posts: 5365 | From: Washington State | Registered: Sep 2001
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"What happens is that the world swoops in and asks the innocent party to make all the concessions and treats them like the criminal."
Which is the leftist notion of trying to make government the extension of the family. But even to use their metaphor, once the children are grown-up, at least chronologically, the dye is cast, and you have to expect adult accountability from them, at least in terms of behavior. And so, in effect, the left is promoting the freedom of criminals to endlessly exploit civilians who can never satisfy the former's desire for destruction (not just Israel's, but the endless Arab drama over the threat of sovereignty of reason and individuality to their family and community systems).
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posted
And so, in effect, the left is promoting the freedom of criminals to endlessly exploit civilians who can never satisfy the former's desire for destruction (not just Israel's, but the endless Arab drama over the threat of sovereignty of reason and individuality to their family and community systems).
Well, I would say you're correct, WC, except that there is only a certain kind of criminal that they wish to be soft on. Others, like Republicans, they are more interested in trumping up charges on, not letting them off the hook. And so we simply have a case where, for one reason or another, the left identifies with the oppressed Palestinians (and they are indeed oppressed…by their leaders and supposed Arab brothers) and homicide bombers. And we see that politics is, and has probably always been, an extension of individual psychology, family or otherwise. Do we not see this playing out in the irrational hatred of Bush? The other side of this coin would be the irrational love of Bush which I can assure you I don't have because I'm rather pissed off right now concerning his choice of Harriet Meirs for the Supreme Court. This nomination may show some of Bush's personal psychology, in this case a disdain for Ivy League intellectuals (not that I don't share some of that disdain, but I agree with Coulter and others in the Supreme Court is just the spot for the typical nerdish intellectual).
It would truly be interesting, WC, if the leaders of the world spoke more openly and publically (and one would hope, intelligently) about the family-shame and other psychological factors at play in the world. Do we not hear over and over (and with good reason, I would think) about how mankind must evolve and raise his or her consciousness if we are to escape the cycle of violence? Well, sure seems the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a good place to start, especially for the left. And so you see, if I have a deep disdain for the politics of the left (but not necessarily the people who hold these ideas), it is because of the lower consciousness that they typically display. The left, time and again, lets personal acrimony and ideology trump the truth.
Posts: 5365 | From: Washington State | Registered: Sep 2001
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- I've never watched it, so I'm not sure what goes on. It's likely that the producers/directors are trying to promote some kind of image of what a "real President" should be like and do. No doubt, that's what "West Wing" was about, to some extent.
There have been a few good reviews of the show and some negative ones as well, the latter emphasizing that the Pres. seems to have little going by way of some kind of coherent political philosophy, the main point being, "see, a woman can be President." I also hear the portrayal of Republicans is anything but flattering.
Problem with all this is that most Republicans/conservatives see right through this stuff; it will make no difference to them whatsoever. Some 80% of the people already know which party they'll vote for in the next Presidential election. Whether shows like this will influence that "undecided" 20% remains to be seen.
Perhaps Fox will start a series with a BlacK woman President who looks a little . . . and acts a little . . . like Condi!
-------------------- "The Light shines on in darkness . . ." - John 1: 3 - Posts: 7539 | From: Wichita, KS | Registered: Aug 2001
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Fence-sitting Phil said: Maybe it's just a TV show?
Markle? Markle? Is that you?
There he goes again, WC, using his balanced conservative/liberal ying/yang to take the fun out of things.
The one portrayal of a president in recent times that didn’t make me want to puke was Kevin Kline’s portrayal of Dave Kovic/President Bill Mitchell in the movie, Dave. It was a cute premise, well written, and I think positively, appropriately, and quite adeptly hit on the theme of one’s humanity getting lost in the political process.
[ October 26, 2005, 05:08 PM: Message edited by: Brad ]
Posts: 5365 | From: Washington State | Registered: Sep 2001
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