Friday, June 20, 2008

Disinformation

Ken Schram and the idiocy of Libyan leader Muhammer al-Quadafi.


Source: Memri. Title of the video: Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi: Obama Suffers Inferiority Complex That Might Make Him Behave "Whiter Than the White." He Should Be Proud of His African, Muslim Identity. Ben-Gurion Gave the Green Light for the Killing of JFK"

Wikipedia has a few choice quotations on the subject of postmodernism, the belief that truth is whatever we want it to be.

In 1994, Czech Republic President, Vaclav Havel gave a hopeful description of the postmodern world as one based on science, and yet paradoxically “where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.”

Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler offer the following definition of postmodernism: “A worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesn’t exist in any objective sense but is created rather than discovered.”… Truth is “created by the specific culture and exists only in that culture. Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to dominate other cultures.”

In the introduction to his Treatise on Twelve Lights, Robert Struble, Jr. states: "The postmodernist worldview dismisses all forms of absolutism from eras past, especially Judeo-Christian faith and morals; yet the postmodernists idolize absolutely their new secular trinity of tolerance–diversity–choice."

Maybe there is no answer to the question: what is an idiot?

What has happened to us? After watching this brace of videos I went instinctively to my copy of Johan Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages, because I wanted to recapture a sense of what it was like to live in a world where light was precious. We love the shadow now, and indistinct form. Once we sought to see; and now we turn away.

When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had the degree of directness and absoluteness that joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child. Every event, every deed was defined in given and expressive forms ... The great events of life -- birth, marriage, death -- by virtue of the sacraments, basked in the radiance of the divine mystery ...

Just as the contrast between summer and winter was stronger than in our present lives, so was the difference between light and dark, quiet and noise. The modern city hardly knows pure darkness or true silence anymore, nor does it know the effect of a single small light or that of a lonely distant shout.

What light? What shout?




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40 Comments:

Blogger 3Case said...

I can't decide whether I would have preferred Moomie to have dyed his mustache to match his hair.

As to Schram, libs just love their ad hominem, don't they?

6/20/2008 04:38:00 AM  
Blogger Andrew X said...

"I wanted to recapture a sense of what it was like to live in a world where light was precious. We love the shadow now, and indistinct form."

As the blogosphere is all about putting pieces together that otherwise might not touch, allow me to reprint excerpts from a post from the great "Libertarian Samizdata. I have always been dubious of global warmings motives and intents, not to mention science, but nothing I have read on it resonated as deeply as this, a response to turning off the lights for glory of "Earth Hour":

THE DYING OF THE LIGHT

"With each passing day I become more convinced that the 'green' movement is actually a millenarian psychosis; a mental and spiritual sickness borne, perhaps, from some degree of civilisational exhaustion. Not just a belief that the end of the world is nigh, but an active desire to bring it about. And soon. Ours is not the first age to witness such pandemics of madness but, in the Middle Ages at least, there was the excuse of a near-universal poverty. In such a state of interminable plight, despair may not be the wisest response but it is at least an understandable one.

Life, laughter, love, food, drink, warmth, travel, communication, progress, a world full of unprecedented wonders and it's all too much for them. Better to sit in the darkness and curse the lighting of even a single candle.

'Stop the world, I want to get off' was the plaintive refrain of some Broadway comedy show I think. It could also be the motto for the greens, except that they want everybody off. Is that what they aspire to as they sit at home quietly in that seductive, undemanding cloak of blackness? To switch off civilisation and shuffle away into the perpetual tenebrosity dragging everyone else behind them?"

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2008/03/the_dying_of_th.html

6/20/2008 05:18:00 AM  
Blogger Andrew X said...

The full link (which didn't print correctly) for the above, well worthy of a visit, is here:

The dying of the light
Thaddeus Tremayne (London)

http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2008/03/the_dying_of_th.html

6/20/2008 05:22:00 AM  
Blogger Andrew X said...

OK, not getting it.

Google it, and how do you do HTML links here? Any instructions?

6/20/2008 05:23:00 AM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

<a href=“http:\\whatever”>Text to display</a>

6/20/2008 05:30:00 AM  
Blogger Cosmo said...

Watching Khaddafi, dressed in yet another one of his Michael-Jascksonesque get-ups, the term 'lunocracy' springs to mind (HT: Victor Hanson).

It is often said that one reason the Brits didn't succumb to the Continent's fascist fever during the middle of the last century was because they couldn't take seriously people dressed as clownishly as the leaders in Berlin and Rome.

So it is with various third world dictators strutting around in over-the-top, medal-draped tunics. I think it was P.J. O'Rourke who once asked what unreported wars had these guys been fighting which entitled them to such recognition?

Lucky me. Able to safely ridicule these men as buffoons, instead of fearing them as the ruthless tyrants they are.

6/20/2008 05:59:00 AM  
Blogger NahnCee said...

I loved Khaddafi's speech when I read it last night on LGF. He lays out in the open so many of the rumors that have been flying around even if it is deluded guesswork.

For example, how is his perception that Obama is a Muslim ready to throw the US under the bus any more in error than a KosKidz' perception that Bush/Cheney are evil?

If Khaddafi recognizes a Muslim, an Islamic worldview, and a Muslim's tactics in B. Hussein, shouldn't we respect his expertise?

6/20/2008 06:27:00 AM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

Rick Moran, who's not particularly a fan of Obama's, doesn't think he's a Muslim and stoutly maintains that it's a myth. David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, is on safe ground when he maintains Obama isn't any one thing, calling him "the most split-personality politician in the country today". But Obama's many worlds property, rather than being a liability, actually works in his favor.

For example, I had source in Indonesia who was convinced, based on the buzz among the locals that Obama was a Muslim, that it was true, even though there wasn't any solid documentation to prove it. Khadaffy, as anyone who watches the video can see for himself, is utterly convinced Obama is Muslim. Interestingly enough he expects him to lie about it as a matter of course. Hence, Obama could actually be telling the truth in claiming he's a Christian, but that won't diminish support from those who say, "oh, he's just pulling the wool over those infidel's eyes". On the other hand, those infidels who want to believe Obama is a Christian can convince themselves of that too. So in some strange way, Obama can be both a Muslim and a Christian yet get away with it. Barack Obama may be the first documented proof that the many worlds interepretation of quantum physics is the correct one. Who says you can't be in two places at once?

Which brings us back to the subject of truth. How can we get at it? I included the Schram video because it illustrates how it isn't enough anymore to say "I saw it on TV" to believe that something is true. We have opinions. But what is the truth? And because we have opinions, does it matter. I claim it does, yet am no further ahead.

6/20/2008 06:50:00 AM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

I'm going to go out on a limb and argue that Rick Moran, who is getting beat up by commenters, is probably largely right in saying Obama isn't a Muslim. And here's why.

If man in the public eye is a devout and practicing Muslim that fact is hard to hide. That doesn't necessarily mean Obama wasn't nominally or even a devout Muslim in his youth, but for all practical purposes, that isn't his central identity any more.

So Daniel Pipe's argument that he was technically a Muslim may be correct, but the chances are, given his observable interests, is that Obama's religion is really Obama. And there's enough there to keep a person busy without using up energy examining his childhood attachments to Islam, which are now relatively distant memories.

By focusing attention on Obama's Muslim links, there's the danger of buying into misdirection and missing out on all the linkages that we should really be looking at. It's like putting a decoy in the water or dropping a flare to soak up the missiles. If I had to bet on which the solid target was, I'd blow through the ghost image and head for what I think the real thing is.

6/20/2008 07:30:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Wretchard, I'll be honest. When you ask "What is truth", I get really confused. The truth about what? Dinosaurs?

Everything comes down to what is and what is not. They're facts. When you ask questions like "Is Barack Obama a Muslim" you just need to keep breaking down that that means; what qualifies someone to be a Muslim. Is is his actions? His stated preference? Some inheritance?

Eventually, once you break "being a Muslim" down to its concrete facts you can determine, factually, whether Barack Obama is or is not a Muslim. There's really no difference between that question and "Is he Human?" or "Is he a White Sox fan?"

6/20/2008 08:14:00 AM  
Blogger Jrod said...

Watching the Kaddafi I was reminded of Michael Totten's exceptional photo essay on Libya from a few years ago.

Nothing more to add on Kaddafi besides that he looks like one of the Baldwin brothers in disguise; or perhaps that dead guy from Weekend at Bernie's.

Regarding Obama, he's a blue screen on to which people who are dizzy from hope for change they can believe in can project anything they want. He proves that mass hypnosis is still possible in the modern era.

6/20/2008 08:24:00 AM  
Blogger wretchardthecat said...

Wretchard, I'll be honest. When you ask "What is truth", I get really confused. The truth about what? Dinosaurs?

The truth about Obama. The simple facts about him. You'd think they'd be easy to get. That you'd at least know the religion or background of a person who was running for President of the United States.

The surprising thing is that the simple facts are surprisingly hard to find. That's not to say that the facts don't exist. But tell me, why are we arguing to this die about this subject. Is it because the VRWC has invented this subject or is it because the whole trail is as murky as hell.

6/20/2008 08:58:00 AM  
Blogger NahnCee said...

The reason I personally think it's important to know whether or not B. Hussein is a Muslim or adheres to Islam is because I want to know if he thinks it's OK to lie.

I'd also like to know if he's been raised to believe that a certain percentage of the population are lesser beings, whether they be women, kaffirs, or Jews.

I've seen evidence that he's hewing to an anti-Semitic agenda and I don't know if that's his own personal bias, or if he's being paid to go in that direction. Equally, what's the difference between his continual mis-statements and flip-flops and telling lies?

I think that characteristics like the two above are inculcated at a VERY early age -- about age 5. So that the person who has been brainwashed in that direction in his early youth can learn to lie about it later and claim that he's (for example) a Christian, but the early belief is still there and a basic part of the personality.

Between his hippy-dippy mother and his Muslim father, how on earth would he escape thinking that he's superior to a huge percentage of the rest of the population?

6/20/2008 09:08:00 AM  
Blogger joe buz said...

Yeah, I guess things hinge on whose definition one applies to someone else's interpretation of the truth and facts. And then of course there is the side that believes that what matters is how someone makes you feel. I just read that in some areas of southern Africa, folks of Chinese descent are now legally considered "black".
In these days of identity politics, I dont know what to think.
I should hold my twisted malformed thoughts until our local purveyor of facts, macdadyO has his turn. I wouldnt want to go off half cocked again, as to do so is quite the waste of powder.

6/20/2008 09:31:00 AM  
Blogger NahnCee said...

If McD is your arbiter, doesn't that mean that the terrorists have won?

6/20/2008 09:47:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

The truth about Obama. The simple facts about him.

OK, cool. I was afraid you were getting mystical on us.

The surprising thing is that the simple facts are surprisingly hard to find. That's not to say that the facts don't exist. But tell me, why are we arguing to this die about this subject. Is it because the VRWC has invented this subject or is it because the whole trail is as murky as hell.

Everything about Obama is murky. He doesn't commit to anything (except Obama), to there will never be a clear record of commitment one way or the other. He's quite different from his wife or George Soros that way; they're pretty clear about where they stand.

6/20/2008 10:07:00 AM  
Blogger joe buz said...

Nah Nahn, I dont consider him the judge. But then yes, in my less than humble opinion he and the Tangos have won the right to a bit of lame snarky sarc. Got any?

6/20/2008 10:10:00 AM  
Blogger Whiskey said...

Wretchard, what happens when Obama has to decide one way or another?

Disappoint Muslims, and back Israel, or disappoint Christians, and back Muslims?

He can evade only for so long, be two things at once for so long. As soon as he has to decide, he becomes only one thing: the product of that decision for everyone to see. No obscured, multiple identities.

Moreover, arguing that Obama is a Muslim is effective, since it paints him as both foreign, and dangerously foreign (related to Muslim terrorists) and sympathetic to Osama and AQ. Obama ran on the hip/cool/foreign image among wealthy white Yuppies, now he has to pay the price. Since he made much of his foreign background, his middle name of Hussein, his appeal to Muslims world-wide, he ought to reap what he has sown, politically.

Mickey Kaus calls this the undernews. I agree with Rick Moran, Obama's religion is worship of himself, but calling him a Muslim is a devastating label, because it fits his previous assertions that he's "outside America" and completely foreign to America. Live by the trendy, die by the trendy.

6/20/2008 11:55:00 AM  
Blogger Bob said...

He's that cat in the box.

6/20/2008 12:15:00 PM  
Blogger Tamquam Leo Rugiens said...

Obama is is probably neither Christian nor Muslim. As best I can determine he is a man of the rather far Left. As such I cannot depend on him to have the kind of consistency that either a Christian or Muslim framework would give him. He is something amorphous, undefined, shadowy, an opportunist that perpetually skates on the edge of expediency, remaking himself into what he never was, and asking us to remake ourselves in his image, no matter what the cost to ourselves and all we once held dear.

6/20/2008 02:00:00 PM  
Blogger eggplant said...

Wretchard said:

"By focusing attention on Obama's Muslim links, there's the danger of buying into misdirection .... If I had to bet on which the solid target was, I'd blow through the ghost image and head for what I think the real thing is."

On the subject of "ghost images", google:

"obama 12th imam"

This of course is utter lunacy but it brings home Wretchard's point about misdirection.

6/20/2008 03:53:00 PM  
Blogger hdgreene said...

Dear Mr. Ram,

I heard at work the other day that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Is Sen. Obama really a Muslim? I ask you because I know you will give it to me straight.

I heard it at an OPEC meeting where "Mo'hammer" Quadhafi was MC. He kept going on and on about how Obama's a Muslim and will not get a square deal in the election. And to get elected he'll be a bigger Zionist than Ben-Gurion and act more white than a albino Laplander. I also heard his mentor is one crazy communist, which sounded good. I asked what a "mentor" is and was told a mentor is a person's grandmother who is at the same time his mother's mother, which I didn't even think was possible! Could it be some sort of, I don't know, sign? Could it be a virgin birth type thing, because I do not think that communists make babies. Or is that just in Russia?

Also, Mo said when Sen. Obama is President the USA will take over the oily oil companies and then dominate OPEC because the Democrats keep more crude off the market than any old dictator. Mr. Ram, they are taunting us! Saying we owe them big. That we'd be nothing without them! We'd get hardly no money for our honey if America drilled. Drill in Alaska, Mr. Ram, and you drill us.

Also, if the USA joins OPEC, does that mean we will have to open our meetings to those liars at the New York Times? And rely on LGF to protect our honor? Geez, this is crazier than Russia joining NATO.

So Mr. Ram, please to inform!

1) Is Barack a Muslim?

2) Is his crazy mentor-mother a commie?

3) Will he bring the USA into OPEC and make the rest of us Tyrants look like egg sucking Munchkins by comparison?

Yours sincerely,
Confused in Caracas

Dear confused,

You are an idiot! Your friend "Mo'hammer MC" is an idiot! However, I do support you in your quest to rid us of the Sulfurous smelling swine in the White House. He is, as I am sure you are aware, an idiot! But he don't even believe Barack Obama is a Muslim! Idiot!

Yours,
Ken "The Doll" Ram

6/20/2008 05:11:00 PM  
Blogger watimebeing said...

"Kaddafi..., looks like one of the Baldwin brothers in disguise; or perhaps that dead guy from Weekend at Bernie's."

Naw, he's LUIGI, from Mario Brothers video games. Got the Red commie Star flag back in there somewheres too I'm sure.

6/20/2008 09:07:00 PM  
Blogger bg said...

++

just my 2 cents again..

Libyan Leader Qaddafi

"Arab World Ready to Finance & Back Obama"

excerpts:

["There are elections in America now. Along came a black citizen of Kenyan African origins, a Muslim, who had studied in an Islamic school in Indonesia. His name is Obama.

"All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man. They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency."]

["We hope that this is merely an elections 'clearance sale,' as they say in Egypt - in other words, merely an elections lie. As you know, this is the farce of elections - a person lies and lies to people, just so that they will vote for him, and afterwards, when they say to him, 'You promised this and that,' he says: 'No, this was just elections propaganda.' This is the farce of democracy for you. He says: 'This was propaganda, and you thought I was being serious. I was fooling you to get your votes.']

what did Obama know & when did he know it..

excerpts:

[Ten years after first stepping foot in Wright's church, in October 1995 Obama accompanied Wright to Farrakhan's "Million Man March."

The following year, in January 1996, Farrakhan returned from another trip to Libya. It was the same month in which Barack Obama became an Illinois State Senator. By then, Obama had been attending Rev. Wright's church for ten years, the latter five as a committed member.]

[Colonel Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, quoted by the state press agency, said: "Our confrontation with America used to be like confronting a fortress from outside. Today we have found an opening to enter the fortress and to confront it from within."]

btw: Wright (& Jesse Jackson) accompanied Farrakhan on his visits with Qadaffi in 96 & 84 (Obama also helped Farrakhan organize his Million Man March).. Qaddafi also financed & supported Ralia Odinga, Obama's genocidal Sharia proponent Kenyan cuz..

Obama

excerpt:

[An American Expat in Southeast Asia blog, written by an American who has lived in Indonesia for 20 years and has met with both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, contains the following:

"Barack Hussein Obama might have convinced some Americans that he is no longer a Muslim, but so far he has not convinced many in the world's most populous Muslim country who still see him as a Muslim and a crusader for Islam and world peace."

"Barack Hussein Obama's race, his staunch opposition to the war in Iraq, his sympathy to Islam and Muslims worldwide and his Muslim heritage receive the Indonesian media coverage. There is no mention of his apostasy."

"A good example of how some of the Indonesian media is reporting on Obama's religion can be found in the following."

"What I found interesting in the article was the use of the word 'mengaku' when refering to Obama's conversion from Islam to Christianity. The word 'mengaku' in Indonesian means "claimed" and as such leaves the insinuation to the native Indonesian reader being that Obama might actually still be a Muslim.

But this is how Indonesians see Obama, they don't see him as an apostate at all, they see him as a crusader for the cause of Islam."]

bottom line:

matters not what we think, or whether Obama is a Muslim or not, what matters is what he is in his heart, as well as in the hearts of Muslims..

what also matters is why he would lie (even if he eventually came to view himself as not being a Muslim) about having been a Muslim in the first place??


==

6/20/2008 10:53:00 PM  
Blogger bg said...

++

and just a bit of serious humor.. enjoy!!

==

6/20/2008 11:03:00 PM  
Blogger Gary Rosen said...

"Obama is is probably neither Christian nor Muslim"

Obama is Christian AND Muslim, and Jewish and Buddhist and Hindu too. He is everything to everybody and whatever you want him to be. If he's making a speech in front of you today, that is.

6/21/2008 12:24:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

Steve Jobs can never die - Rumors of the superstar CEO's ill health make you think, does death really play favorites?

"Why does it always seems to be "the good ones" who are plucked off without warning or reason? Or, put another way, why does it seem so rare to we read about the death of one of the darker, uglier creatures of the planet?

After all, rarely does the headline read "noted misogynist, homophobe, right-wing hate radio personality and neighborhood defenestrator of baby livestock found dead in his Hummer after eating one too many deep fried jumbo prawns at the Red Lobster buffet" — you know, the kind of stories that really test the limits of your compassion, because while you know you should offer sympathy, you can't help but feel a bit like cheering.

On it goes. Why someone like, say, the famed Swedish jazz musician Esbjorn Svensson whom, until a few days ago, I'd never heard of and yet who was, apparently, a wonderful and talented award-winning European superstar musician who just died in a diving accident at the tender age of 44? How sad is that? The international jazz world is in mourning. Did you know? Something seems, I don't know, not quite right about it.

The Svensson story put me in mind of the incredible Jeff Buckley who drowned so young, and then Heath Ledger, and then various others who were snatched away (or, in the case of Ledger, wandered off on their own volition)

There are, I suppose, a few ways to look at it. Maybe there really is an imbalance, and in many cases a few too many good ones are taken prematurely and the more toxic ones are left behind because, in a lopsided way, they serve as the more powerful and necessary teachers.
Like Bush, like Rove, like Kim Jong Il or Robert Mugabe, they take us to the darkest places of our psyches so we can, by sheer contrast, understand how vital it is to find the light. You think? "

6/21/2008 05:53:00 AM  
Blogger Doug said...

I will
Stand With the Muslims

Today’s title comes directly from a quote on page 261 of Obama’s book
The Audacity of Hope, and the exact quote is
“I will stand with them (Muslims)
should the political winds shift in an ugly direction”.
I checked.
Franklin Roosevelt never said
“I will stand with the Nazi’s should things get ugly.“
---
The tapestry of a carefully woven biography of Barack Hussein Obama is a cloth of deception and self-promotion this candidate has been weaving since
childhood called in Arabic “Taqiyyah”, adapting and amending his life story to fit his circumstances.

The accumulation of research from primary sources about his Muslim past is deep and undeniable; as far back as Tine Hahiyary one of his teachers who states “Barry actively took part in the Islamic religious lessons during his time at the school.

I remember that he had studied mengaji” (recitation of the Quran). Emirsyah Satar, CEO of Garuda Indonesia says “Obama was often in the prayer room wearing a sarong at that time”. The list would make a book:
“The Audacity of Lying”.

In a New York Times interview Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng stated “My whole family was Muslim and most of the people I knew were Muslim.” In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, (NY Times) Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, with a first-class Arabic accent.

6/21/2008 06:39:00 AM  
Blogger peterike said...

The degree of O's Muslim bona fides don't matter to me. What, is he sneaking off to pray towards Mecca each day, out of the reach of TV cameras? I doubt it. And who cares.

What matters are his symphathies, and clearly they are the sympathies common to men of the Left. The West is evil, America is evil, the white man is the cancer of the human race, the Third World is pure and good and repressed and exploited. Revenge must be had on the West. The hegemony must be ended.

I don't like McCain much, but at least he's an American.

6/21/2008 11:12:00 AM  
Blogger Slade said...

Bobal: He's that cat in the box.

That reference is so good that it is worth elaborating since it might not have fully resonated as
Schrodingers Cat

The pun was good too.

6/21/2008 12:48:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

You give Sheik al-Bob too much credit:
It was scat box humor.

6/21/2008 01:58:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

6/21/2008 01:59:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...


The Obama Bargain -


How to turn one's blackness to advantage?

The answer is that one "bargains." Bargaining is a mask that blacks can wear in the American mainstream, one that enables them to put whites at their ease. This mask diffuses the anxiety that goes along with being white in a multiracial society. Bargainers make the subliminal promise to whites not to shame them with America's history of racism, on the condition that they will not hold the bargainer's race against him. And whites love this bargain -- and feel affection for the bargainer -- because it gives them racial innocence in a society where whites live under constant threat of being stigmatized as racist. So the bargainer presents himself as an opportunity for whites to experience racial innocence.

This is how Mr. Obama has turned his blackness into his great political advantage, and also into a kind of personal charisma. Bargainers are conduits of white innocence, and they are as popular as the need for white innocence is strong. Mr. Obama's extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence.
---

Thus, nothing could be more dangerous to Mr. Obama's political aspirations than the revelation that he, the son of a white woman, sat Sunday after Sunday -- for 20 years -- in an Afrocentric, black nationalist church in which his own mother, not to mention other whites, could never feel comfortable. His pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is a challenger who goes far past Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in his anti-American outrage ("God damn America").

How does one "transcend" race in this church? The fact is that Barack Obama has fellow-traveled with a hate-filled, anti-American black nationalism all his adult life, failing to stand and challenge an ideology that would have no place for his own mother. And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?

What could he have been thinking? Of course he wasn't thinking. He was driven by insecurity, by a need to "be black" despite his biracial background. And so fellow-traveling with a little race hatred seemed a small price to pay for a more secure racial identity. And anyway, wasn't this hatred more rhetorical than real?

But now the floodlight of a presidential campaign has trained on this usually hidden corner of contemporary black life: a mindless indulgence in a rhetorical anti-Americanism as a way of bonding and of asserting one's blackness. Yet Jeremiah Wright, splashed across America's television screens, has shown us that there is no real difference between rhetorical hatred and real hatred.

No matter his ultimate political fate, there is already enough pathos in Barack Obama to make him a cautionary tale. His public persona thrives on a manipulation of whites (bargaining), and his private sense of racial identity demands both self-betrayal and duplicity.

His is the story of a man who flew so high, yet neglected to become himself.

6/21/2008 02:44:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

"And what portent of presidential judgment is it to have exposed his two daughters for their entire lives to what is, at the very least, a subtext of anti-white vitriol?
"

That people can overlook this is what has amazed me most from the outset.

...as if one would get a pass doing the same thing with their kids in a KKK oriented "Church"

6/21/2008 02:48:00 PM  
Blogger NahnCee said...

Following from our latest child abuse scandal in the black community in Los Angeles. Two (and sometimes three) women systematically tortured a five-year-old boy for a year or two, while their neighbors and relatives listened and saw and chose to do nothing.

Because he was the mother's property and she could do anything she liked with him. Therefore, given this mindset in the black community, B. Hussein's two daughters are his property, he can brainwash them, teach them hatred and arrogance, and ultimately marry them off to whom-ever he deems to be most politically beneficial. I wonder how he feels about the concept of "honor killings".

Hutchinson and others said suspicion and fear of authorities runs deep in parts of South L.A. -- and that extends beyond the police to social service agencies and other public providers. They said some people are afraid that calling authorities could end up making the family situation worse -- particularly if the child is taken into foster care. Others fear authorities might end up checking on them.

Hutchinson said residents are reluctant to call authorities in such cases because of a strong belief that it's wrong to interfere in the way other parents treat their children.

They "feel that children, no matter what, are really the province of the mother and everything they do is their right and their business," he said. "Someone hears a child screaming, they're not going to say anything because their thinking is that's their child, that's their business."

It took a stranger -- the person on the Green Line platform -- to finally call the county with a tip.


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-abuse21-2008jun21,0,2859324.story?page=2


These are, of course, the same group of people who acquitted OJ Simpson because they couldn't understand the DNA evidence, because they didn't see a connection between spousal abuse and murder, and because they thought the skinny white bitch had it coming.

6/21/2008 04:18:00 PM  
Blogger Doug said...

Deuce made a post of this at the Elephant Bar.

American Thinker - Obama Drops Pre-Emptive Race Bomb

6/22/2008 05:52:00 AM  
Blogger Sparks fly said...

John 8:31-37
31 So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."

Without believing Jesus the world sees the data of the truth but set it aside for various reasons. They do not RECEIVE the truth.

So what is the truth? The truth is man is broken and needs a Savior. Save me Jesus; something is wrong with me.

I heard from some Christian Missionaries second hand that many Iraqis are turning to Jesus. If that's the case then every nickle spent on this hanging of Saddam has been well spent.

It used to be that every literate person was well versed in this Bible passage.

The person in authority who gave the order to murder Jesus rhetorically asked Jesus, "What is the truth?"

Right now though, Global Warming is the burning issue. Ha Ha.

6/22/2008 10:14:00 PM  
Blogger Bob said...

Save me Jesus; something is wrong with me.

Ah, wake up sometime Sparky, there is noting wrong with you, my friend.

Take Jesus as a guide, and he is an exellent one, rightly understood, though not the only one, relax a bit, relax.

There is always somthing more.

Chill out, dude.

6/22/2008 10:29:00 PM  
Blogger Sparks fly said...

Pray tell Bobal
if noting is wrong with me
then what is wrong with you?

6/23/2008 12:45:00 AM  
Blogger mercutio said...

Wretchard wrote:

"What has happened to us? After watching this brace of videos I went instinctively to my copy of Johan Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages, because I wanted to recapture a sense of what it was like to live in a world where light was precious. We love the shadow now, and indistinct form."

Belmont Club, as a result, wins this year's Huizinga award, given to anyone in the blogosphere who would honor his work.

The autumn/waning lasted a long time, and the image of Millet's 'Angelus' is a memorable expression of the waning's poignancy.

But how quickly, too, in other venues the light faded. Marlowe reflects the elite renaissance cynicism nicely in "The Jew of Malta": "But, of course, that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead." Post-modernism has deep roots.

Away with the stained glass. Let them have light. And so much that they will forget the dark.

When Benedict XVI chose his name, his meaning was perfectly clear: this is the time for regrouping and reclaiming. It is the time, in the words of St. Paul and Bob Dylan, "to strengthen the things that remain."

6/23/2008 07:18:00 AM  

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