Light On Dark Water

A Melancholy Inauguration

 I've had a very pleasant three-day weekend (thanks to the Martin Luther King holiday). And I've made an effort to pay little attention to the inauguration, but of course whenever I look at the headlines online I'm reminded. And I did, out of curiosity, read Obama's address. Fine words, some of them. And mostly either with very little meaning, or with a meaning that makes me pretty uneasy. I fell, just a bit, for his rhetoric when I heard it at the very beginning of the 2008 campaign, well before he had even been nominated: unity, good will, shared purpose, community, etc. etc. etc. 

Most of the sycophantic press is stil buying into it, of course: 

Obama Makes Inclusion Theme of Swearing-In

Obama's Political Legacy: Returning Community as an American Value

Obama Looks to Bridge Political Divide With Second Inaugural

etc. etc. etc.

All three of those headlines are objectively false, because Obama's idea of "inclusion"–the general liberal idea–requires the exclusion of those who disagree. And those who disagree are not just a few cranks and malcontents, but somewhere around half the population. It has long since become clear that his idea of national unity is that we should see things his way, and that if we don't it's because we're misguided or malicious, and that we will do things his way, preferably voluntarily, but involutarily if necessary. Those of us who have opposed him, and are by now pretty used to the divide between what he says and what he intends ("the enormous and completely shameless disparity between his goals and his unifying, inclusive rhetoric," as Neo-neocon put it), see that mixed in with all the high-flown rhetoric about the American dream, rhetoric with which few would argue, there are clear notices that he intends to continue as he began: to enforce his and his party's will on those who disagree, with no regard for their objections, except insofar as the objections have to be dealt with politically.

And so I wait uneasily to see how much more damage he will do over the next four years. Which is not to say that I think everything he has done is wrong–I think he is right to end the war in Afghanistan, for instance (though I suspect we will be at war in that region again within my lifetime). But he has seriously damaged the already fraying fabric of the country, and he doesn't regret it, or intend to alter his course. I have no affection for the Republicans, but I hope they retain control of the House. 

Maclin Horton
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40 responses to “A Melancholy Inauguration”

  1. Mac

    Ramesh Ponnuru: ‘We cannot “treat name-calling as reasoned debate,” Obama said, in a speech made possible by a campaign that described his opponent as seeking to ship jobs overseas, oppress rape victims and spread cancer.’

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  2. Art Deco

    Is ‘incorporeal’ the right word for the president? He has always seemed like a man playing a character, his curriculum vitae like a bit of backstory dreamed up by an author.

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  3. Marianne

    I’m beginning to think Obama is gaslighting us.
    And I’m only half-joking.

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  4. Mac

    Or, as I’ve suggested, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one: President Saruman. Even now, reading parts of his speech, I felt a bit of a need to pinch myself and remember his cold intransigence about the HHS mandate, and the very nasty campaign he just finished.
    As for his Hollywood-ish backstory, well, it certainly worked. He would not be president if large numbers of people hadn’t been so excited by the idea of a black president.

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  5. Craig

    But did you see Justice Scalia’s hat? I wish things like that would happen in Canada.

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  6. Mac

    No, I didn’t. Did they make him wear a dunce hat or something?

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  7. Mac

    Oh, and by the way, re my earlier comment about people liking the idea of a black president: I did, too, although not enough to vote for him. I think it did have an effect in making it take longer for me to see the kind of guy he really is, though.

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  8. Art Deco

    Oh, and by the way, re my earlier comment about people liking the idea of a black president: I did, too
    His connection with the domestic black population is as follows: he married into it. Gov. Blagojevich, former shoe-shine boy and dishwasher, once said (with some justice) “I’m blacker than Obama”.

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  9. Mac

    That’s funny–I hadn’t heard it. And yes, well…the whole concept of “black” in this country is a pretty weird business. Personally I prefer the more literal “mixed-race” for Obama, but for socio-political purposes he counts as black.

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  10. Noah G.

    On the Scalia hat thing:
    http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/01/21/scalia-wears-martyrs-cap-to-inauguration/
    I don’t know much about Scalia, but I like that he did this. It’s a small gesture, won’t effect much, but it’s something.

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  11. Mac

    Well, having read all the discussion there, I’m not sure what to make of it. I hope he did intend it as it seems.

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  12. Louise

    Could I get me a hat like that in Texas?

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  13. Paul

    When I saw the picture, before reading the explanation, I just assumed it was part of formal academic dress from one university or another. Academic headgear does vary widely at European universities.
    You can always tell the clergy in an academic procession. They’re the ones in suits.

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  14. Paul

    When I saw the picture, before reading the explanation, I just assumed it was part of formal academic dress from one university or another. Academic headgear does vary widely at European universities.
    You can always tell the clergy in an academic procession. They’re the ones in suits.

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  15. Paul

    Odd – I don’t remember posting that more than once …

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  16. Paul

    As an educator, these are words that would fill me with foreboding:
    “No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or … Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”
    It’s true I can’t train every single person in my discipline on my own, but I can train some of them, and if somebody else is training some others, and so forth, then quite a lot will get trained, and there will be a fruitful mix of approaches and assumptions in circulation, beyond the basics that make the discipline a discipline at all.
    We might not necessarily need a thousand civil servants and administrators (all with their own supervisors, assistants, support staff and trainers, of course, amounting to thousands more) telling us all how to do it and checking that we’re applying the “one size fits all” matrix that they will have developed.
    And I suppose “one nation and one people” is an allusion to the Pledge of Allegiance, and won’t make Americans’ spines tingle in quite the icy way it does mine.

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  17. Art Deco

    And yes, well…the whole concept of “black” in this country is a pretty weird business.
    I would not say so. The typical black man in the United States has his roots in the South, is predominantly descended from the slaves manumitted in 1865, and has a biologic heritage that is (on average) about 85% west African. There is a modest minority who are descended from West Indian immigrants and a very small minority who are immigrants from some other place (or descended thereof). Obama does not fit into any of these categories. Of his 11 siblings, his sister Maya is the only one with whom he has more than a passing acquaintance, and she has no African ancestry at all.
    The United States differs from the West Indies in that ‘black’ and ‘white’ form a binary. The intermediate terms on the spectrum (mulatto, quadroon, creole, &c.) are not used outside of odd locales like New Orleans. We differ from Brazil in that racial classification is purely a matter of heritage and not affected by one’s social class. (An academic who specialized in Brazilian history put it to me this way: “a black man wearing a tie is a mulatto; a mulatto wearing a tie is white”).
    Race is a simpler concept here. It is just that Obama’s background is odd. For Blagojevich, blacks were people he interacted with daily; Obama was trying to learn to be black by talking to that oddball Frank Marshall Davis and watching episodes of Soul Train. It sounds like a fragment of a satirical short story by Joan Didion.

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  18. Mac

    It does. Though I disagree that race is not a weird concept here. Not in the same way as Brazil. More on that later if I have time.

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  19. Mac

    “Ein Volk,” etc., I guess, Paul? No, I daresay most Americans wouldn’t even have thought of it. I mean, apart from not speaking German. I think he would have had to throw in “one president” or “one government” or something for it to register as a signifier of Nazism for us. Nevertheless, there is something a bit chilling about Obama’s use of it. I can’t offhand think of it or something close to it having been used by another politician, though that doesn’t mean much.

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  20. Mac

    In the context, Obama’s “we must do this as one…” is a reference to what is reportedly a pretty poisonous effort to enforce one curriculum, the “Common Core” on every school in the country.

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  21. Janet

    Somehow the comments about race remind me of this:
    “I’m a peace activist, a civil rights leader, a beekeeper, a championship racket ball player and an enthusiastic volunteer for Democratic politics here in the state of Mississippi.”
    That’s 53-year-old Kelly Jacobs from Hernando who’s not just the proud holder of a South-Lawn standing area ticket to the swearing-in ceremony – but also the official inaugural ball tonight. And in case you wondered what she’ll wear to that…
    “I’m going to be wearing an outfit that I made,” explains Jacobs . I sewed sequins to a top that I made in the shape of President Obama’s face. The sequins on the front are his face in black, the sequins on the back are his face in white to signify President Obama’s mixed heritage. Because, in my opinion our President is just as white as he is black.”
    You can see the top and the rest of the article here.
    AMDG

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  22. Art Deco

    I didn’t know their were squish-heads in Mississippi (and in the town my family settled in after the recent unpleasantness to boot). I thought one of the benefits of Southern living was that the squish-heads live elsewhere.

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  23. Louise

    Belloc states that compulsory education is, of itself (regardless of content) antithetical to the Catholic Faith. I think he’s right.

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  24. Louise

    “No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or … Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”
    I love the smell of BS in the morning.
    What kind of observation is this? Whoever was suggesting that one person could or should teach all the teachers?
    And why “now more than ever?”
    I smell political BS.

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  25. Louise

    Obama is a good-looking man with a nice voice who seems to just string lots of fine-sounding, but basically meaningless phrases together. Sadly, many people fall for it.
    My mother still has not realised that I cannot stand Obama. I loathe the man, whereas she thinks the sun shines out of his rear end. I decided, when he was elected the first time that I would not lose friends and family over American politicians, but it grates on the odd occasion when I have to hear him eulogised. I have become quite skilled at changing the topic. 🙂

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  26. Louise

    “I’m going to be wearing an outfit that I made,” explains Jacobs . I sewed sequins to a top that I made in the shape of President Obama’s face. The sequins on the front are his face in black, the sequins on the back are his face in white to signify President Obama’s mixed heritage. Because, in my opinion our President is just as white as he is black.”
    What a sorry waste of talent.

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  27. Paul

    Not that I’d compare Obama to Hitler, you understand – just that his speechwriters appear to be cloth-eared to some sensitivities.

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  28. Mac

    I meant to respond to Janet’s comment earlier. As weird as it is that the woman seems to be an Obama cultist, I do give her credit for making the fact that he’s half-white so prominent in her project.
    Oh yeah, Art, we have plenty of emotional lefties here, if that’s what you mean by squish-heads. Though I think they tend to have a bit of an edge which comes from their sense of being embattled.

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  29. Mac

    I certainly wouldn’t compare Obama to Hitler, either, but there are definite connections between American secular progressivism and the European currents that produced totalitarianism. A lot of that is documented in Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism, of which I’ve read only a few excerpts. It’s an unfortunate title because one takes it to mean “liberals are fascists,” but it’s actually a quote from H.G. Wells describing what he thinks society needs. What I read of the book seemed flawed by a tendency to pick on superficial examples. But progressives do have a distressing tendency to want to bring everything under the supervision of the enlightened.

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  30. Mac

    I’m good at changing the topic, too, Louise. I sympathize.

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  31. Mac

    And about all that “no single person” stuff in his speech. That was bizarre. Here’s the whole passage:
    “For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”
    Has anyone ever suggested that a single person can train every teacher? Or build roads?!?! I mean…bizarre. And note that weird jump from “muskets” to “single person.” How is it that no one said “this doesn’t actually make sense”?

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  32. Louise

    How is it that no one said “this doesn’t actually make sense?”
    Bad teachers? 😀
    Or maybe bad teachers who were all taught by the one bad teacher?
    Thanks for your sympathy, Maclin.

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  33. janet

    Art, I live in a rural area about 12 miles from Hernando. I keep thinking I might see Ms. Jacobs at the grocery store–or church. I bet she’s Catholic.
    AMDG

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  34. Art Deco

    By squish-head I mean:
    1. The caricature of the Californian current ca. 1980.
    2. Someone fool enough to make politicians into icons, most particularly politicians of the calibres which are normal in our time.
    There are people who are admirable in this world. The dynamic which makes for the reward system in electoral politics tends to screen them out. You get a lot of poseurs and hustlers. It was not quite that way a generation ago. I was never all that enamored of George Bush the elder, Thomas Foley, and George Mitchell. Now we have Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid. Guess you don’t know what you got ’til its gone.

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  35. Mac

    Yes, they definitely exist in the south.
    Personally I have never been in any danger of turning any politician into an icon, so I’m always baffled by the phenomenon. But it’s true–even Tip O’Neill looks good in comparison to, say, the bizarre Mr. Biden.

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  36. Mac

    About Tip O’Neill: never mind.

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  37. Art Deco

    O’Neill was vituperative in front of public audiences, but he actually liked Reagan personally. A certain generation in Congress could say the most atrocious things in one setting and make congenial deals in another. Gerald Ford’s explanation for this to a neophyte aide was, “that’s politics”. Another saying current in that era was “politics stops at five o’clock”. Jimmy Carter, a capable and generally honest if irritating man, had difficulty navigating in that environment. Barack Obama is, by all accounts, quite arrogant in dealing with some interlocutors and quite insular with regard to his socializing. He cannot deal.
    Vituperation is corrosive, but a more problematic aspect of O’Neill was how hidebound he was. No innovation in the existing architecture of public benefits was to be entertained. Henry Fairlie contrasted O’Neill unfavorably with Sam Rayburn, saying Rayburn attempted to educate his caucus and O’Neill did not; he called O’Neill’s ten years as Speaker “the years the seed corn was et”. It was O’Neill who set the seminal pattern of Social Security demagoguery, for instance. We live with that today.

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  38. Art Deco

    Another thing about that era: scandals concerned sums in six figures. Michael Kinsley complained that Walter Mondale had increased his net worth by about 500,000 during the years running between 1980 and 1984, working as a lobbyist for the law firm Winston & Strawn. There was another complaint that James Watt bagged about 300,000 for making eight phone calls to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Oliver North’s security fence cost $15,000. Given the changes in nominal income per capita in the intervening years, contextually equivalent sums would be about $2 million, $900,000, and $45,000.
    Now, consider that Rahm Emmanuel, a man whose previous experience in the private sector consisted of a job at Arby’s, was paid $16 million by the investment banking firm Wasserstein Perella, ca 2000. Consider that $100 million has now stuck to Albert Gore in spite of the fact that he had zero background in business. Is it really credible that a 52 year old newspaper reporter turned politician (who failed at one attempt at graduate school and abandoned another) was just a fantastically able entrepreneur yearning to breathe free?

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  39. Mac

    Possibly a case study of the often-hypothesized possibility that people in politics and entertainment view all business as corrupt and cutthroat because that’s been their experience of it. If you’re a dealer in stolen goods, you will come into contact with a good deal many more thieves than the average person.

    Reply
  40. Paul

    That’s an interesting hypothesis, and not one I’d ever heard before.

    Reply

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