Random Thoughts

Only human…

Had a good dinnertime discussion with Youngest Son, who is at the age where the drama of US politics is interesting enough to make him ask lots of pointed questions.

His main question: “Why do people think our enemies will like us better just because our president’s changed?”

Nothing quite like trying to explain irrational hatred and equally irrational adoration to a 12 year old, but he’s smart, he gets it: “When people see he’s not God, maybe they’ll stop acting like he is.”

We can only hope, son. Tracey of Beyond the Pale has more to say about this:

Why is it that neither of these men, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, is allowed to be human?

Why are they viewed with such ridiculous hyperbole?

George W. Bush is subhuman, a devil, a demon, the man who’s ruined the world, whatever. He’s made mistakes as our president, but he’s positively reviled for his mistakes. That bastard! How dare he screw up?? And because of his mistakes, it seems to me, he’s now deemed subhuman. And it’s not fair.

Barack Obama, by contrast, is superhuman, an angel, a savior, the man who will redeem the world. He doesn’t make mistakes, it seems, or won’t, or if he does, we will likely not hear of them. He’s “The One.” He’s superhuman. Also not fair.

These men are human, for God’s sake. Bush is not subhuman; Obama is not superhuman. Bush made mistakes; Obama will make mistakes. I abhor this black-and-white thinking. It degrades both men, actually, when neither of them is allowed to be human beings. It’s ridiculous and unfair.

Added bonus: Tracy shares my appreciation for William Bouguereau. But I digress.

Best perspective from across the pond (H/T The Anchoress) I’ve read all day: Melanie Phillips

I think that the desperate dangerousness and complexity of our world and a profound terror of what properly facing up to its problems would entail have led people to believe a cartoon version of why we’re in such a state - and to have invested their hopes similarly in a fantasy figure of hope, to such an extent that they have shut their ears to some very loud warning bells ringing from his past history.

People believe that Obama represents a renunciation of an America that throws its weight around the world. And they think it’s that ‘war-mongering’ characteristic, represented in particular by President Bush and the war in Iraq, which has caused so much global trouble and resentment.

I believe that’s a dangerously false analysis which fails to grasp the extent to which western civilisation is under attack from a world-wide enemy that intends to destroy it, and which further fails to distinguish between true aggression and true self-defence.

Ah, but now that Obama is in office the world will love us! They have to, we’re a totally different nation today…aren’t we? In Germany and France apparently it’s now cool to be an American.

Jennifer Granger, 34, a teacher from New York who lives in Prague, said she no longer hesitates to say she is American.

“Thank God! It feels better,” she said. “The people I work with give me high-fives and say things like ‘You can be proud to be from your country again.’ “

I’m with Rachel Lucas when she says in response:

I don’t know why this pisses me off so very much but it does. Just seems to me that if I’d moved to England a few years ago, the only decent and adult thing for any English or European person to do would have been to treat me with all due respect just for being a nice person who means them no harm. I don’t want their respect and interest just because of who the American president is, because that has nothing to do with me and my own personal worth as a human being.

So knowing that now, only now, because America has elected a black president, people overseas will like me better? I am unimpressed. They can blow it out their ass is what I’m saying. I’m the same person I was before any of them ever heard of Obama.

I know why it pisses me off:  Because I have ALWAYS been proud to be an American. I was proud to answer “America” in 1995 when people in Scotland asked me where  I was from, and I was proud to say “America” in 2007 when people in Italy asked me where I was from. I think of my family’s ancestors who emigrated to America in the 1700s and 1800s from England, Germany and Finland . If those countries were so damned great, if they could have lived safely and comfortably there, they wouldn’t have left. They deliberately chose to travel at no little risk and considerable hardship to a country where they didn’t speak the language and could only get jobs as laborers. They chose to become Americans, to raise their children as Americans, and to me it would be akin to spitting on their collective graves to deny my own citizenship. I am alive today because they chose America.

Okay, rant over.

I am trying, really I am, to adopt Andy Levy’s To Don’t List, particularly these key points:

DON’T make it personal. We don’t need another Derangement Syndrome. We don’t need people doing things like emphasizing Obama’s middle name in a derogatory fashion. How anyone would think that’s beneficial to their cause, or to the country as a whole, is beyond me. Also, it’s not even clever. Neither are smushwords like BusHitler, or sillywords like Rethuglicans and Dhimmicrats.

…DON’T automatically think people who disagree with you are stupid or evil. Some of them are, of course. But most of them aren’t, and you might actually learn something if you listen to them.

And finally, DON’T use the fact that many on the left behaved abominably for the past eight years as an excuse to behave the same way. America needs adults. And if it bothered you when they did it, it’s a good sign that you shouldn’t do it.