Anomie, Anoma, Life Goes On Brah!

Glenn Greenwald has found another Pete Buttigieg position he likes.

Typically thoughtful answer from @PeteButtigieg to @ThePlumLineGS about white nationalism, the causes of it, and the solutions for it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/03/19/how-democrats-can-defeat-trump-his-ugly-ideas-according-pete-buttigieg/

I've used up my free access to Washington Post articles for this month, but Greenwald included screengrabs of some excerpts, highlighting the bits he approved.  Buttigieg said:

As we see dislocation and disruption in certain parts of the country, from rural areas to my home in the industrial Midwest, and in the economy, this leads to a kind of disorientation and loss of community and identity.  That void can be filled through constructive and positive things, like community involvement or family.  And it can be filled by destructive things, like white identity politics...

At another point:

I don't want this to slide into the idea that some of these racist behaviors can be excused because they can be connected to economic issues.  But I do think it's easier to fall into these forms of extremism when you don't know where your place is. 

There's this very basic human desire that historically has been supplied by the workplace. It's been based on the presumption of a lifelong relationship with a single employer.  This isn't just a blue-collar phenomenon.

This is, I think, another iteration of the "economic anxiety" argument that was mooted in the wake of Trump's victory in 2016.  Buttigieg's aware of that, and tries to hedge by rejecting "the idea that some of these ideas can be excused because they can be connected to economic issues," but that's a straw man. There may have been some who "excused" Trump voters by pointing to the stumbling US economy, but the usual motive was explanation, not excuse.  In very much the same way, pointing to worldwide Muslim anger over US foreign policy was not intended to excuse the 9/11 attacks, so critics of Bush's wars tended to try to forestall attacks by saying things like "I'm not one to blame America for everything that's wrong in the world."  It never worked, of course

So yeah, economic anxiety is probably a factor in some racism, and policy should attempt to provide a strong economy, not to prevent racism but because it's what people need and it's the job of those who run the country to give people what they need.  But I dislike Buttigieg's talk of not knowing where your place is.  I mean, my place?  Who decides what my place is?  At best this is a very clumsy way of putting it; at worst it's feudalism, which is also a "lifelong relationship with a single employer."  Capitalism, by contrast, has always regarded workers as disposable materials, except when organized workers were able to force their bosses to do otherwise; but that is the exception that proves the rule.

And what about racial minorities?   Buttigieg, who's a bright fellow, must know that economic insecurity and anxiety have been the norm for African-Americans and other non-whites in the US.  They have not been immune to the appeal of racist nationalism, but they have lacked the numbers and power to oppress the majority. But white supremacy has been endemic in this country since the first whites arrived four hundred years ago; economic downturns may aggravate it, but it never goes away.  I don't know how to get rid of it, or if that's even possible, but I think it will have to be targeted directly.

Perhaps, instead of alluding to highbrow literary totems like Finnegans Wake, Buttigieg should try reading something like Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields' Racecraft or even Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind: the latter work would inform him that the fear of losing status, no less than money, drives the well-to-do and highly educated no less than Joe Sixpack.  A tanking economy can exacerbate and inflame racism, but I think it's our human nature as social critters, rather than economic anxiety, that produces the us/them dichotomy of which racism is one form.

So, "thoughtful"?  No, and not "heterodox" either.  Buttigieg's remarks are straight outa the Washington Post or New York Times op-ed pages: they're the slogans someone repeats before thinking, as a prophylactic against thinking.  While some of his positions, such as his endorsement of US-imposed regime change in Venezuela, are hateful, some are I suppose arguable, though I'm not seeing much argument.  But they're all totally safe among American elites, and it baffles me that Glenn Greenwald is impressed by Buttigieg.  Read as many of the comments under this tweet as you can stand, for example.  I'm reminded of the way so many people went nuts over Barack Obama a decade ago, and that really worries me.

"This Man Should Not Be In Charge Of a Government"

What set off the exchange between me and the Democratic loyalist I wrote about on Sunday was my posting this screencap of a tweet by MSNBC pundit and despicable hack Joy Reid:

My acquaintance commented, "Your nihilism is adorable."  Though I'll admit to nihilism on a cosmic level, it was odd to be accused of it when I had just made a harsh moral judgment of Reid's celebrity-cult treatment of the Kennedys.  But then Reid and my acqaintance have no principles save partisanship and leader-worship.  She'll accurately catch Trump and the Republicans in their falsehoods, but she's uncritical (and an amplifier) of Democratic lies and misconduct.  My acquaintance didn't get it; he's a Reid fanboy for her partisan attacks on Trump, which are all that matter.

It's amoral to celebrate the Kennedys, or anyone else, for their glamor while ignoring their actions.  "Teddy chased redemption" seems almost a Freudian slip, since Teddy, like Jack and Bobby, chased women with a good deal more sincerity; if these guys were alive today, they'd probably be on the hot seat for sexual aggression and assault along with so many other American elites.  I have some sympathy for Mrs. Kennedy, who I presume didn't know what she was getting into when she married that compulsive cockhound; but "pathos" is not a moral virtue, nor a particularly attractive quality; I'd say it's downright creepy of Reid to voyeurize her pain, when she surely knows what caused it.  I suppose she was visualizing Jackie in her bloodstained pink suit, or draped in widow's black at the funeral.  That's no better.

(I suddenly realized while I was writing this that 2017 is JFK's centennial, and that must have been what Reid was referring to.  I haven't noticed the kind of celebration that I'd expect for such a national icon; is it just me?)

But there are graver concerns, which Reid presumably is also aware of but is happy to ignore: JFK's attempts to block the Civil Rights movement and the 1963 March on Washington, his waging of state terror against Cuba and other Caribbean countries, his escalation of the US invasion of Vietnam.  And perhaps his most discrediting achievement:

On 14 October 1962, in the classic pose of a public-school boy after lunch, legs straight out from a leathery armchair, I picked up a newspaper and saw on the front page that Kennedy had threatened Khrushchev with atomic war unless he recalled some ships carrying Russian missiles to Cuba.

I was horrified.  I'd paid no attention to the Bay of Pigs fiasco, I had little interest in unilateral disarmament, I'd gone to only one 'ban the bomb' march and I disliked Bertrand Russell.  I'd dismissed the subject from my head, for the simple reason that it would never happen.  Yet here we were, on the brink of the smouldering pit.

For me this was the beginning of the Sixties.  I was never an 'easy rider' or a counter-culture protester, but when Kennedy gave his ultimatum I thought: Gambling with the end of the world is dumb, this man should not be in charge of a government.  The hero of that dreadful confrontation was never, for me, Kennedy. The hero was plump, occasionally foolish, even though ruthless, Nikita Khrushchev.

This did not mean I automatically supported Russia from that moment on, but it did mean I was an early convert to one of the great illusions of the Sixties: where power is involved, there's nothing to choose between one side and the other [279].

In one of those cases of synchronicity that keep life interesting, I've just finished reading Matthew Spender's 2015 memoir A House in St. John's Wood: In Search of My Parents (Farrar Straus & Giroux), which contains the passage I quoted above.  Spender, the son of the poet Stephen Spender, was 17 at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.  (I was 11, and though I remember watching news coverage of the crisis, I don't remember what I thought of it.)   Then, today, I read David Swanson's reflections on Daniel Ellsberg and (among other issues), the Cuban missile crisis.  Like any important historical question, there is room for disagreement about Kennedy's legacy, but the kind of fatuous celebrity adulation Reid exhibited is inexcusable in a self-styled journalist.  I suspect she has fantasies of a hot fifteen-minute tryst with JFK in a White House closet; many people do, as they fantasize about Barack Obama. 

Donald Trump also has glamor, after all: it's part of what his fans love about him. C'mon, Joy, can't you see Melania's "glamour and pathos"?  So did Ronald Reagan -- but I'm going too far there, assuming that Reid is immune to his charisma.  Many sincere Democrats hold Reagan in the highest regard.  Our wise and noble leaders have frequently responded to the glamor of dusky foreign men in uniform, such as Mussolini.  Which is fine and dandy, but a bad idea when you're supposed to be thinking about issues and policies that affect the lives of billions of people.

I think it's possible, and not really all that difficult, to recognize Khrushchev as the real hero of the missile crisis without succumbing to what Matthew Spender called a great illusion of the Sixties, "that where power is involved, there's nothing to choose between one side and the other."  In this case, there certainly was a good deal to choose beween JFK and Khrushchev.  One can condemn one side without overlooking the faults or crimes of the other, and certainly the crimes of the Soviet Union didn't excuse the crimes of the US.  But this is also a great illusion of the present day: for example, that if the Republicans are bad, the Democrats must be good; if the Republicans are stupid, the Democrats must be smart; if Hillary is crooked, the Donald must be honest.  The evidence simply doesn't support such a conclusion.  But who needs evidence?  The situation is far too grave to worry about such trivia.

It's not nihilism to recognize the faults or crimes of one's own side along with those of one's opponents; it's more like nihilism to ignore them and denounce those who point them out.  I agree that Donald Trump should not be in charge of a government; but I also agree with Matthew Spender that neither should John Kennedy have been.  (Nor Obama.)  Kennedy's apologists have tried to defend him, pointing to the pressure he was under from militarists and hard-liners, but those defenses backfire: if he couldn't resist such pressures, he had no business being President.  We lucked out in 1962; we may not be so lucky next time.

My Country, Drunk or Sober

I had a small difference of opinion today over the slogan "Not my president," a childish phrase that annoys the hell out of me.  It reminds me of those pseudo-legal notices that periodically go viral on Facebook, announcing the user's legal ownership of his or her posts.  (I saw a new variant of those on Facebook today, in fact.)  If I say that Trump is not my president, then that is #Resistance!  It will weaken his demonic power, praise Jesus, every time I say the magic words.

Alas, Trump is the President of the United States, which makes him my president, your president, our president, like it or not.  (Which I don't.)  We've gone through the looking-glass to 2008, when the Far Right chanted the same mantra, only now it's the Near Right doing it.  It was laughable when Republicans said it, and it's laughable when Democrats said it.

But there occurred to me one other reason why the slogan annoys me so much.  I think that the people who are saying "Not my president" believe that if you claim a president as yours, you can't criticize him.  You stand behind your president, you defend him against any and all criticism whether valid or invalid, you might occasionally concede that he's a disappointment in some trivial way, but while he may not be perfect he is still the Greatest. President. Evar.  These are the people, I believe, who reacted to criticism of Obama from the left by accusing the critic of having voted for McCain or  Romney, of being a Republican, etc.  The main reason I voted for Obama, twice, and for Clinton once, was so that I could tell such people that I had done so.  It was a useless gesture, of course: they couldn't hear it.  It did not compute.  If you didn't adore their president, you had to be a Republican.  The only way you can criticize a president is if he's not yours.  If he isn't yours, anything goes.

Connected to this, of course, is the belief that Your President is your friend.  You feel not just proprietary about him, but you feel intimacy with him and his beautiful family.  You identify with him, so of course an injury to him is an injury to you.  This cult of personality is traditional in America politics, as probably in all countries, and it ensures that people will only deal in personalities, not issues.  The president may not be a monarch, but he (or she, when the day comes) is the Nation, the head of a body whose members we citizens are, and shall the members criticize the head?

So the reason "Not my president" bothers me is not just its petulant childishness, but its rejection of principle and reason in favor of personal fidelity to the Sovereign.  If the United States is ever going to be something like a democracy or even a republic, we need to focus on issues rather than people.  Acknowledging that Trump is our president doesn't mean we can't criticize him, resist him, fight him.

As Hope and Change Sink Slowly in the West ...

 

I'd pretty much given up on Pearl Cleage because of her relentless cheerleading for Obama, but then today she posted this on Facebook:

I know it's unrealistic to dream this dream, but a part of my imagination keeps seeing a scene where President Obama goes to Ferguson and walks through the streets, talking to people, reassuring Michael Brown's family that justice will [be] done, being present on the scene, smelling the tear gas in the air, making sense of things,, articulating a vision for the next phase of our national life...

This is pretty mild stuff, but it's the closest to actual criticism of Obama that I've ever seen from her in the past five and a half years. When someone like Cleage lays down her pompoms and faces reality, even if only for a moment, even someone like me finds it difficult to do the "I Told You So" dance. But only for a moment.

Sunday Afternoon Mashup

The comments under this meme slobbering over two celebrity scientists are about what you'd expect.  I wrote sourly that if elected they'd probably put the entire federal budget into the space program and other high-tech industry, while abolishing social services for mere humans.  The earth is already destroyed!  Who cares?  We're going to the stars! ... Well, not all of us.  Just the rational elites.

I don't really know anything about their politics in general; one commenter complained that Nye has spoken negatively about home schooling, so maybe he's a socialist.  But I know that Tyson fantasizes about a return to the Cold War space program, which indicates a willed historical ignorance that would suit a Republican very well.  I commented to that effect, and another person who'd already endorsed the ticket ("Merica would be fixed in like two minutes!") replied, "Exactly!"  I'd like to think he was being sarcastic too, but after reading the other comments I'll take nothing for granted.

Though I'm also taking time out for daily reflection with Skeletor Is Love.  The Culture of Therapy loves you.  And finally, for no particular reason:

Do We Have His Back?

You know what it means, don't you, when President Obama announces (and his fans echo him) that this time the gloves are off, he's through putting up with these Republican obstructionists, there will be no prisoners and no negotiations!!!!!!   It means that he's busy preparing to cave in and give his opponents what they want.  Not that it makes much difference, since as Whatever It Is I'm Against It put it (via) so pithily, "It's pretty much always Obama's working assumption that he will lose any fight.  And then, funnily enough, he does."

Last night I said as much, when an old friend linked to this story on Facebook and declared stoutly, "In this I am fully behind the President."  He replied that I'm "so cynical," and then expanded on that theme, in tropes taken wholesale from inspirational memes:

Cynicism is the easy way out, even lazy. True, cynicism is born out of frustration but hope can lead to greater things. Cynicism is always a dead end.

I won't bother debating whether I'm cynical; of course I am.  But I'm also being fully realistic, based on Obama's past performance; he's been depressingly consistent.  And as I asked my friend, is it "cynical" to point to the Republicans' record?  My friend, like most of the Obama apologists I know, loves liberal-site memes that compare the GOP's performance to the Democrats'; often the comparisons are even accurate.  But his own team is off-limits: you must judge them by their pretty talk and their promises, not by their deeds.  And that, I would argue, is real cynicism, given Obama's record of the past several years, including his time in the Senate.

I'd also argue that the function and the purpose of my friend's rhetoric, which he gets from the Obama organization (borrowed from time-dishonored party politics), is to prevent "greater things" from being aspired to, sought, organized for, demanded, fought for.  We are supposed to allow ourselves to want only what President Obama, Blessed Be He, is willing to give us.  If he fails to deliver even that, as has generally been the case, it's always someone else's fault: the GOP obstructionists, the Professional Left, those of his base who sat at home instead of mobilizing themselves in his support.  This line is finally wearing thin, thanks to Obama's sheer mean-spirited excess: the NSA revelations, the warmongering about Syria.

But who knows?  I might be wrong this time.  I wouldn't mind in the least if I were, though what Obama actually wants is not necessarily a good thing.  He still wants to cut Social Security benefits, for example, and in keeping with the non-existent recommendations of his Bowles-Simpson commission he wants to cut "the deficit" even more, as long as only social programs are gutted.

Do the Americans Believe in Their Myths?

I know I should let it drop, but it's getting to me, this cult of personality.  An intelligent friend of mine on Facebook quoted today someone else's remark that "Seriously, Michelle [Obama] is like...the statue of liberty. Only with more compassionate eyes, and better fashion sense."  This comparison -- to an inanimate object, mind you! -- seems totally loony to me.  Luckily, Democrats base their politics on principle and fact, not on emotion.

The Onion has a good piece that sums up my reaction to Mrs. Obama's speech very well: "Good Evening, It's An Honor To Be Used As A Political Prop In My Husband's Campaign."  After reading a few more status messages gushing inanely over her speech ("Regardless of if you like President Obama, how can you not want First Lady Michelle Obama back?!"), I posted a link to the Onion piece.  A right-wing acquaintance of mine, who'd been drooling over Clint Eastwood just a few days ago, shared the link.  I commented, "Funny, you didn't feel that way about Ann Romney's speech"-- and she didn't ("a darn good speech at the RNC.  Who knew!").

But enough of this.  I decided to write this post to quote a couple of writers quite unrelated to one another whose remarks feel relevant to the way intelligent, educated adults act as though they believe that national politicians and their families are their personal, intimate friends.  One is from Glenn Greenwald:

Indeed, as I've written many times, "trust" is appropriate for one's friends, loved ones, family members and the like -- but not for politicians. That's what John Adams meant when he said: "There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." "All" means "all" and "none" means "none."

But that's not how our political culture works generally. Our politics have become entirely celebretized. Political discussions typically resemble junior high chatter about one's most adored and despised actors: filled with adolescent declarations of whether someone "likes" and "trusts" this politician or "dislikes" that one. "I trust Obama" has long been a common refrain among his most loyal supporters. The fact that, as Krugman says, that is much less true now is quite significant, even if "trust" is an inappropriate emotion in the first place to feel towards any political official.

While I agree with Greenwald's basic point about trusting politicians, I disagree that American political culture is any more celebritized than it was in the past.  The scale has increased vastly from the original thirteen states, and mass media have extended its reach so that millions of people at a time can adore their rulers in closeup.  In fact, I believe that electoral politics is primarily glorified "junior high school chatter" about who's the dreamiest and most popular; concern about issues, logic, and fact is at best secondary.  Whether anything can be done about this I don't know; I'm inclined to doubt it.

The other quotations come from Paul Veyne's book Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths? (Chicago, 1988), page 81:

Indeed, the pleasure that citizens took in hearing an orator pronounce the panegyric of their city cannot be believed. These speeches of praise were a fashion that lasted for a millennium, up to the end of Antiquity. People spoke of mythical origins and of kinship among the cities of Greece as often as the people who frequented the salons of the fauborg Saint-Germain talked genealogy, and for the same reasons. … “When I hear praised,” Socrates says ironically, “those who have just died in battle and, with them, our ancestors, our city, and ourselves, I feel more noble and great; each of the other listeners feels the same on his part, so that the entire civic body comes out of it exalted, and it takes me three days to get over this emotion.”

And from page 90:

Worship and love of the sovereign reflect the efforts of the subjugated to gain the upper hand: “Since I love him, therefore he must wish me no harm.” (A German friend told me that his father had voted for Hitler to reassure himself; since I vote for him, Jew that I am, it is because in his heart he believes as I do.) And, if the emperor demanded or, more often, allowed himself to be worshiped, this served as “threatening information.” Since he can be worshiped, let no one think to contest his authority. … [91] Under France’s Old Regime, people believed and wanted to believe in the king’s kindness and that the entire problem was the fault of his ministers. If this were not the case, all was lost, since one could not hope to expel the king as one could remove a mere minister.

The chorus of adulation for the President's wife (who, to repeat, is not running for office herself), the widely-expressed wish to have a Celebrity Death Match between Betty White and Clint Eastwood, and the endless flood of cute pictures of the Holy Family -- all this and more keeps reminding me that Democrats, even the more "liberal" or "progressive" ones, are no more rational than the Republican opposite numbers they scorn so lightly.  Who scorn them as lightly in return, with as little basis.  Whether, and how, we might construct a sensible politics in this country I don't know.  But it won't be built by either party.

But He's So Dreamy!

It's a hard time for liberals when they're reduced to stuff like this:

Whatever my feelings about Obama's centrism I've got to say that he and Michelle really adorn the White House. As a couple they are just...well...magnificent and the children are fucking adorable (same age as my two so I really feel for them). The huffpo lineup of former first ladies and their dresses at these state dinners was like the evolution of humanity from grotesquely old and billowy faux victoriana to blooming, statuesque, youth.

Those words were written by a commenter on this post at alicublog, a hardcore Obama supporter and Democratic party loyalist. (No permalink, but it's on the first page of comments.) Now, I confess I paid tribute to the Obamas' charm (with due reservations on the table) before the killing, torture, jailing, and general suppression really got going, and his emptiness was confirmed once and for all. On one hand, slobbering about their glory like a courtier (who probably has never yet gotten within grovelling range of Himself, but evidently still Hopes) while brushing aside his "centrism" (! -- does she consider Dubya a centrist?) is obscene. On the other, even she recognizes that she has nothing else positive left to say about her Leader's policies and actions. Flattery: the last refuge of political apologists.

And then I found this on the FAIR blog. Obama's new press secretary is a former journalist, and married to a journalist. (Hell, why didn't he just appoint Rachel Maddow his new press secretary?) The writer, Peter Hart, then quotes Howard Fineman, whom we've heard from in these precincts before, and he's nothing if not consistent: always on the side of the cool kids, the In Crowd.

Among his other attributes, Jay Carney is a cool dancer. I know that because I saw him and his wife, Claire Shipman, getting down on the tented dance floor of a fancy Georgetown wedding years ago. Jay Carney, who went to Yale and was a foreign correspondent in Moscow, is--besides being smart, savvy, loyal and well-connected with the right sort--suave.

Don't touch that dial! There's more:

There are few better-connected couples in the Washington media and social scene than Carney and Shipman. Their children attend the Sidwell Friends School with the Obama girls. They are the kind of well-liked, Ivy-credentialed insiders who make the Tea Party boiling mad. But why should Obama care?

To my mind, there are better ways to infuriate the Teabaggers, but it doesn't surprise me that Obama chose this one.

Howie -- I'm sure he won't mind me calling him "Howie" -- concludes by comparing Carney and outgoing press guy Robert Gibbs.

Gibbs, the son of teachers at Auburn University, liked to celebrate Auburn football victories by wrapping White House trees in toilet paper. I could be wrong, but I don't think Jay has done or will do that for a victory over Harvard.

Well, I'm sure that at the very least Carney would have underlings TP the trees for him. When I was a child, I TP'ed trees as a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things and let the servants do them on my behalf.

Cult of Personality

Back in the early years of this century (pardon that, but I couldn't resist), I worked with a student who told me that she didn't want to discuss George W. Bush's conduct as President because she knew him personally. She'd met him at a state dinner while he was governor of Texas, and she liked him.

I respect her feelings, but something is wrong when adults (and as a college student old enough to vote, she was and is an adult) can't even conceive of a difference between their feelings about a person and their judgment of his or her conduct. This seems to be a basic human trait, though; I'm beginning to realize that what I consider a basic necessity is for most people an ability to be gained, if at all, only slowly and painfully, with regret that it's even necessary. It's so much nicer and easier simply to judge people by their cuteness or lack of it, by their accent, by their shared fascination with this or that Saturday-morning children's tv show, by the color of their skin, by the way they dress or walk or wear their hair.

One reason I've always liked online discussion is that you get to know people only by their words and, ahem, ideas. It took me a while to figure out that for most people, this is a major downside. It especially seems to bother people who are used to getting their way either by being cute and charming, or by being threatening. Suddenly the physical presence they've always relied on doesn't work any more. Wink! Grin! Twinkle! Menace! Loom! Argh! What's the matter with this thing?

It took me a while to figure out that, as I mentioned once before, many of the political / intellectual writers I follow know each other in person, and underlying their debates with one another is their personal friendships and enmities. Which, of course, they're entitled to -- they're only human, after all -- but it sometimes introduces undercurrents and weirdnesses in their published writing that interfere with their argument and analysis. I am still haunted by the memory of mentioning to a friend a scholar of Judaism I'd been reading with interest. Her response: "Oh, I've heard he's really hard to get along with!" I was boggled. What does that have to do with his scholarship? I'll never meet him; nor, as far as I know, did my friend. But gossip takes precedence, I guess.

So, of course, I've been working my way around to our new God-King, Barack Obama. As I've said before, I suspect I would like him if I ever met him. (Weirdly, over the past few weeks I've had several dreams in which he was a character.) But that had nothing to do with how I voted, or how I'm going to evaluate his presidency. For many people, though, it's all that matters. I decided to write this posting after I found a comment on another blog by someone who found it "amazing to feel such closeness--true 'intimacy' with the occupants of 1600 Penn..." Even if she does (and I think it's a self-deluding fantasy), so what? A good many Americans felt "true 'intimacy'" with George W. Bush and his lovely family, or with Sarah Palin and hers.

Still, I admit to a slight, infinitesimal sense of inner conflict. My friend Anne Haines mentioned at her blog that

Later on, I watched an online video of the Obamas dancing at one of the balls -- not the ballroom dancing with each other, but cutting loose a bit and dancing with the crowd. And there was Barack, big as life, DOING THE BUMP.

... with a teenaged girl who asked him to, it turned out when I found a clip.

It's true, Obama is a good dancer, if a bit too contained. (On the other hand, can you imagine the corporate media's reaction if he'd let loose and done something fancy?) I wouldn't mind dancing with him myself. And it was sweet to see him dance with the girl; I'm sure she'll tell her grandchildren about it. But a few days later, Obama was killing children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He's talked about how he'd feel if his daughters were killed by Palestinian missiles; but what if they were killed by US missiles, fired at the orders of the President of the United States?

Then there's this photo. Had I known before that Obama is a southpaw?


(But then, so is McCain; and so were Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bill Clinton. The horror ... the horror... ) That gives me a sense of fellow-feeling with him. Intimacy, though? Huh-uh. He also used that hand to sign the orders that killed civilians a few days later.

Finally, there's this photo by White House photographer Pete Souza:

Such a likable man, really. But he's taken on a job that enables him, requires him to do horrible things, and he's shown no hesitation about doing them.