The comfort of racism

There is a certain sort of liberal that only seems comfortable in a racist society, as illustrated by the attempts to declare the Romney slogan “Obama’s not working” to be racist.  Why are many liberals eager to find in this an evocation of stereotypes about lazy black men, instead of the obvious critique of a president’s failure?  While various reasons undoubtedly intersect, I think the primary reason is that “racism” has become a comforting political theodicy* for many on the left.  Racists don’t have to be taken seriously, and their arguments can be dismissed–thus, there is a strong incentive to cry racism in order to explain and indict conservatives.  In a case like this, it’s more comforting for a liberal to focus on imagining what racist code words conservatives might be hearing than to have to defend Obama’s record as a success.

*Yeah, the term is imperfect but it’s the best I can come up with right now.  Perhaps poliodicy?

Hope and Change to Demonization and Distraction

Now that the Republican nominee is set, one of the most interesting struggles of this election has begun: whether the many supporters and well-wishers who believed Obama’s promises of hope, unity, a new politics, etc… will be turned off by the relentless demonizing and distracting that is his only hope of re-election.  While the more astute have always know that Obama could be as dirty and vicious a Chicago politician as anyone else, many people believed better of him.  But now, with the economy still terrible after three years of Obama, his only chance of winning is to demonize his opponents and distract from the disaster that is the economy.  He cannot claim that an economic recovery is beyond his control, because he promised that he would deliver one, and his entire philosophy of government rests upon faith in the power of the state to achieve such goals.  Failure, therefore, can only be due to his own incompetence or the wicked machinations of his political opponents and predecessor.  Guess which option he’s going to try to sell to America?

But this might not be enough, so he’ll engage in a relentless negative  campaign to denigrate Mitt Romney and to distract from the economy.  Obama wants to run on the trivial and the personal, because he’s been a miserable failure on the big issues.

Going to the dogs

The election that is.  After trying to make dog-care the standard of the election, Obama and his allies have found that turnabout is fair play and payback a bitch (though not the sort the young Obama liked to dine on).  And now the serious people who wrote serious pieces in serious news sources like the Washington Post and The New York Times about Mitt Romney and his dog are wondering how things got so silly.  So the young Obama ate dogs, so what?

Yeah, I’m loving this.  All the jokes, the photoshops, etc…  Our failure of a president and his allies were trying to run their campaign on how Mitt Romney transported his dog a few decades ago, and the media was playing right along.  Watching them scramble as the narrative suddenly turned against them was a beautiful thing.  A couple of my favorite (publishable on this blog) jokes from around the web.

“Obama spent ten minutes trying to find the Westminster Dog Show on TV; finally, someone told him it’s not on the Food Network.”

“Obama: “I can’t believe Romney strapped his dog to the roof of his car. That ruins the flavor.””

 

Penguins and population control

First, in the feel good story of the week, Newt Gingrich got bitten by a penguin.  Epic Win!

This second link ain’t so cheery, but it documents how population control policies are aptly named–they’re all about controlling the populace.

Seersucker season

One of the few upsides to the climate around DC is that it affords plenty of opportunity to wear seersucker (the downside, of course, is that summers are hot and humid, and even the lightest summer fabrics can only do so much to ameliorate the mugginess).  Unfortunately, there is no apparent agreement on when seersucker can be worn.  Labor Day is too late for this climate, Easter is a moving target and the Kentucky Derby isn’t relevant to me, though if those attending wish to make it the start of seersucker season I don’t object.  Perhaps the best standard I can formulate is “whenever the weather calls for it.”  I’ll probably done the summer stripes within the next week or two.  Fun times.

Santorum’s future

If Romney wins, he should make Santorum HHS Secretary.

Easter notes

I have the impression that many liberal secularists utterly fail to understand Christian conservatives because the experience of church is so alien to them.  For them, it often seems, conservative Christianity is understood in purely political terms, yet for those same Christians it is not.  Today, as it is most Sundays, orthodox Christians are concerned with salvation and sanctification, they are going about the business of their faith.  Yet while observing many media outlets (which are populated by liberal secularists) there is inordinate concern over where Christians stand on gay marriage, abortion, government-mandated distribution of contraception, etc…  These are, of course, issues where Christians should take a stand, and many have.  But they are not the reason for our faith; Christians did not gather this Easter Sunday for political purposes but to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.  The political and cultural stuff that gets so much attention is not our focus, Christ is.  Even those whose business is politics (and there are plenty around DC) do not come for politics.

 

And then they came for the t-shirt printers

A shirt-printing company in Kentucky is being investigated by the local Human Rights Commission on charges of hurting someone’s feelings.  As the party with injured feelings is a local gay group, the shirt-peddlers will undoubtedly face the full wrath of the commission for refusing to produce shirts for a gay pride festival.  The situation is a microcosm of liberalism: productive business owners will be dragged before a kangaroo court of parasitic government officials (the commissioners themselves are apparently unpaid, but there are various staff members, facilities, services, etc… that cost taxpayer money) to face charges that they chose to enter (or not enter) business contracts as they saw fit.  God, I mean, Obama, forbid that someone decline to produce goods promoting an event they consider wrong!  They can’t do that!  What do they think this is, a free country?

Power upon power

As the Supreme Court’s oral arguments over Obamacare proceed, a seemingly minor example illustrates the dangers of the ever-growing power of government.  It’s a small case, where Virginia is persecuting Asian supermarkets for their sale of live seafood, ostensibly in violation of various conservation laws against poaching–never mind that these species are not endangered and are in fact being farmed.  Felony charges were filed and arrests made after a series of undercover operations in which live sea bass were purchased.  One imagines the scene as the officer steadies himself before entering this brightly-lit den of iniquity, preparing to prove that contraband fish are indeed being sold: the manager also deals in soft-shell turtles, and the agent knows he might never see his family again if he’s detected.  His face sets into grim determination, and he walks in and up the seafood counter…

If a state government can exercise such arbitrary and capricious power with a mere anti-poaching statute, how much more can the federal government do when given the power to compel and regulate all commerce?  Well, for a start it’s going to make you pay for abortions.  The contraceptive mandate isn’t the only wickedness Obama’s HHS has in store, it’s only the beginning.  Their next step: directly forcing you to pay for abortions through your private health insurance (and prohibiting insurance companies from distinguishing the abortion funding plans from the rest in advertising).  Pick a plan, any plan, and if it covers elective abortion money will be taken directly from you and put in an abortion-only slush fund.

Not buying it

The Martin/Zimmerman shooting continues to make news, with the usual agitators seizing on it and the media eagerly running stories on it.  The Orlando Sentinel has what it claims to be a summary of Zimmerman’s account to the police, which, to no one’s surprise, would seem to put Zimmerman in the clear.  I’m skeptical.  I can believe that Zimmerman came out the loser in a physical confrontation with Martin before shooting him, but I’m skeptical of the rest.  I doubt that Zimmerman, after angrily following Martin and calling him in to the cops, not only gave up after losing sight of him, but was conciliatory when Martin approached him, and so let his guard down that he allowed himself to be sucker-punched.  I also doubt that Martin, after apparently trying to get away from the guy following him, suddenly became the aggressor when he saw Zimmerman turn to leave.  It’s possible, but it seems very unlikely to me.  That sort of sudden change on the part of both does not strike me as very credible.  Far more likely, I think, that Zimmerman provoked a confrontation, found himself losing a fight, and went for his gun.