If it takes a John McCain to call him out, so be it. by Random Outlier
(libertarian)
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Today's duel between knaves has the John McCain forces calling Barack Obama just the latest incarnation of celebretwits Paris and Britney.
To which one libertarian says, "Hot damn, Senator. Right on, but what took you so long?"
Can there be an operational set of neurons anywhere on the planet which fails to see Barack Obama is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- other than a befuddled young senator who toed the line for the Cook County, Illinois, political machine and who suddenly finds himself annointed as the most famous man in the world?
Says the good senator from Daly: "Hope for America. Change." And that's about it.
They are outstanding ideas, actually, Senator, but I suspect we differ on how to implement them. In my opinion, thusly:
Change One: Immediately drop the argument that the media, in whatever smug and cynical corner they lurk, are ideologically prejudiced. They are not.
Change Two: Understand that the only media prejudice is pro-media, specifically their profits and their power.
Change Three: Learn that media wealth and power depend solely on the number of qualified readers and viewers they can attract and that "qualified" means the propensity to lavish their paychecks (if any, otherwise yours) on whatever can be made to sound "fun" in a 30-second spot or the print equivalent.
Celebrity results from media adoration of anything attractive to these emotionally stunted, mal-educated, slack-jaws whose idea of policy analysis begins with "How much will I get?" and ends with "I like."
Such critters may or may not represent a majority of the electorate, but they sure as Hell seem to constitute the swing vote.
Nothing will ever change this very much, but the McCain camp has inched us forward. Calling the foul on the wall-to-wall fawning over Obama's slightly premature victory lap abroad was public service of the highest order, and it represents Hope for America.
The immediate threat to this little infusion of truth into a mendacious campaign is that McCain and Company will retreat into a mealy-mouth set of explanations and qualifications. You know what sort of abuse will be heaped on him (not by Obama, which is wholly expectable) by the corporate board rooms of our great newspaper/teevee/cable chains. It's a torture I hope he can withstand.
On this issue, Senator -- Obama as a vague, vapid, almost imaginary character existing only in the collective mind of the American media machine -- I want you to firewall it. Kick in the afterburners. We'll worry about maintenance back in Dago.
---
I know, Gentle Reader. You're mouth-foaming at a professed and practicing libertarian once again playing pretty about McCain. I refer you to two novels by Drew Pearson ("The Senator" and "The President") for a detailed examination of a priniciple that draws far too little attention: "The right thing often gets done for the wrong reason."
And if pointing out that Obama has proposed nothing to identify his mind as more advanced than that of Nancy Grace isn't a good thing, I don't know what is.
Of course McCain offends libertarianism and carries a bag of irrelevant celebrity-hood himself, much of it as far removed from the question of his fitness for the Oval Office as Obama's.
He's famous for being heroic under vile abuse by the Hanoi statists. He is famous for being married to one of the world's richer and more attractive women.
Even as a callow kid he entered the United State Naval Academy already famous for being the son and grandson of American admirals. A male Jane Fonda, if you please. Where would she have been without Daddy Henry?
In sum, there is nothing in the McCain biography crying out for his elevation to the presidency.
The serious flaw for most of us, I think, is that McCain fails to understand the concept of individual sovereignty except as do most other senior military officers of his generation.
When they -- and he -- think "liberty" the image in their minds is permitting an enlisted sailor who hasn't broken any rules to go ashore for a few hours, constrained only by a list of places and activities officially designated "off-limits" -- mil-speak for some place or some thing of which the admiral disapproves.
That mindset identifies the individual as a carefully torqued bolt in the machinery of government. Individualism as a moral concept with great practical benefits is foreign to most members of the military caste.
Okay, this is a sometimes necessary way to control a military unit.
Otherwise it is a hideous world-view, no different in principle from any of the renowned tyrannies of history, and Sen. McCain has given us some reason to believe it is his world-view.
But enough of that, other than to glory again in a brief moment of pleasure because the top of the today's news is a discussion of Obama as merely the latest shill for advertising departments and their servant news rooms across the nation; a creation every bit as marketable as Paris almost showing a nipple.
My buddy Reardon is still heading for St. Paul, scheming and plotting, determined to do something good for Ron Paul -- the man, if possible, the ideal if not. He will report to me, and there's little doubt in my mind that his notes will provide fodder for a column or two suggesting to McCain specific areas in which he might open his eyes to the vast possibilities of Constitutional government.
But on this day, after a somewhat gutsy teevee expose of Obama as the creation of air-wave tycoons pandering to the intellectually unwashed, Sen. McCain has earned a certain tactical admiration from me.
If he should become President, I suppose we can check him into a moral and intellectual rehab center, and if the CATO Institute is not well along in establishing one, it has received its last buck from me.
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