Thursday, July 3, 2014

National Review Online: "A Heroine for Our Times"

"The narrative of decline is one of a slow and silent accumulation of ills. Looking backwards, we don’t remember a special moment when the evil days came, or the years drew nigh when all would be changed, but only the painful contrast between the days of our youth and the decrepitude of age. So it is with countries. We fail to see sharp breaks where we can say: There, there is where it all happened."
And yet such moments do exist, the points of inflection where the curve changes from positive to negative. We might have thought little of the changes at the time, perhaps, but they made all the difference, and it is the task of the historian to bring them to light.

I am no historian, but I have one such moment in mind. It was when The New Republic’s senior editor Jonathan Chait wrote in 2003, “I hate President George W. Bush.” TNR was always a liberal journal, but under editors such as Andrew Sullivan (before he went mad) and the restraining hand of Martin Peretz, it prided itself on its reasonableness. The magazine might have been coma-inducing boring, but by God it was reasonable. (read more)
The reason why I chose to highlight the h word from the passage, is because shortly after reading the entire piece I thought of posting it, but I didn't, because I didn't have something to ad to it right away, nothing came readily to mind. But, apparently the crux of the piece stay with me, because hours later, the Nixon quote “Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them...” came to my mind. The quote comes towards the end of this video.

 
 
Do you remember other "such moments" when, now looking back on it, the toxicity levels where so high, alarm bells should have rung out, condemnations even.

18 comments:

chickelit said...

Did Chait really write that? What a loser. Isn't Chait one the few whom Andrew Sullivan adores and respects (talking about another mainstream internet character who inspires a lot of hatred).

I too recall thinking that GWB had a "frat boy" aura. But that was 2000 when I voted for Gore -- the last time I voted for a Dem. I voted against Reagan (twice); against Bush I; against Bob Dole; and against Bush II (once). I have still given more votes to Dems than to Repubs. So what happened?

I had a Mamet moment.

chickelit said...

Thanks for posting that Nixon clip, Lem.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

NRO are on my shit list. Every comment I make there gets censored. They seem to have lost the will to fight and now prefer to just talk among themselves.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

You are welcome.

rcommal said...

Yes. In plural.

rcommal said...

Did anyone here go and see "America" earlier this evening? My son did.

rcommal said...

By the way.

rcommal said...

2000 was a tough one. It was. I ended up voting for GWB in that toss-up for, mostly, two reasons:

1) I was tired of the toxic, chaotic nature of the just-previous

and

2) Gore had morphed into b) a bitter-ish guy and a) someone who was not whom I admired in most (those emphatically not in all) aspects at an earlier time, well before that time. To me, there existed more than one sort of "alarums," so to speak, specifically and categorically.

---

rcommal said...

In many ways [though not all ways], at the time, I viewed 2000 as a toss-up, a true toss-up, and that's why it was a tough one for me. (Even now, I view it as a toss-up, in terms of "then," when I was living in real time that particular "then.")

---

Of course, Sept. 11, 2001, was a prism-shifter and/or a prism-changer. Ever interesting is those dynamics.

rcommal said...

It's interesting. We now, not just as folks but also as a people, take for granted labeling of all sorts of things. Far from fighting that, we embrace it. The fight now is about and over **which**, and not about "whether at all." Truly and really.

rcommal said...

It's interesting, in retrospect, how prescient Tipper Gore was, almost 30 years ago. Isn't it?

rcommal said...

At the time, in the mid-80s, Tipper was considered a throw-back to the mid-50s. Here we are now, in the mid-teens of the "next century," yet another 30 years later.

Does anyone else think about all of that? I sure do. Because it's interesting and not just because of that. I wonder, also.

rcommal said...

At the time, in the mid-80s, Tipper was considered a throw-back to the mid-50s. Here we are now, in the mid-teens of the "next century," yet another 30 years later.

Does anyone else think about all of that? I sure do. Because it's interesting and not just because of that. I wonder, also.

rcommal said...

Prince's "Darling Nikki." ZZ Top's "Pearl Necklace." For examples.

How much shock can be absorbed!?!

Dust Bunny Queen said...

I've always assumed politics and most politicians were corrupt. I never saw any of them as more than men or women. Some of whom may be good, an occasional great but mostly just ordinary people subject to all the failings and sins of the rest of us. Never seeing each person as a permanent fixture in politics or our lives.

However, the rabid hero worship of a man who had done nothing or very little in his life to warrant such worship. The people fainting at his mere presence. Listening to his vapid empty words and being convinced that he was the next actual messiah. The ONE who would save us all from.....something.

When all of the Cult of Personality about Obama hysterically took over the "low information" voters and even some who have information and refused to look at it (Yes...Althouse...I'm looking at you and your ilk) promoted this empty man, this is when I concluded that the Country had lost its collective mind and we were doomed. Thinking to myself...."This is how a Hitler comes to power" "This is how mob rule begins."

So while I can see all sorts of little markers throughout my life of the decay of society, morality and economy....the madness that overtook us, and still has its hold, during the Obama candidacy and even still when it is apparent that he is an evil petty tyrant, this marks the real beginning of the end.

Can we turn it around? Maybe. It might take the courage of the Founding Fathers and the will of some brave men and women. Consider that they didn't know what would come of their actions. They were desperate and had hope. Let us hope we don't waste their sacrifices.

rcocean said...

Obama is just the respectable face for the Lois Leaners,Rob Emanuels, Harry Reeds, and Rev Wrights, that make up the Democrat party.

Sadly, as long as the Republicans can only offer warmed over RINO's like Ford, Bush I, McCain, Dole, and Romney, we are doomed to suffer with these freaks.

I notice the "pragmatic" Republicans have forgotten about the SCOTUS. Its one vote away from a 5-4 democrat majority that will make the Warren court look like a KKK meeting.

rcocean said...

I don't have the slightest doubt that if we get a Democrat in 2016 and they get one more liberal, you'll see the "new" SCOTUS find the 2nd Amendment and the deportation of illegals "unconstitutional".

virgil xenophon said...

@DBQ/

Actually, for me the markers for decay came somewhat earlier. I was watching CNN one morn well into the l'affaire Lewinski when the blue dress had surfaced and he had been impeached. He was out on a political jaunt working the rope line and young female after young female continued to throw themselves at him. Mothers too--often with daughters in tow. One of the commenters said (para) "You'd think the Mothers would have second thoughts about bringing their daughters along." An embarrassed silence followed.

Later that day, purely by serendipitously happenstance, I was watching a special on the History Chanel about Hitlers' seemingly mesmerizing power over women. Movie reel after movie reel was shown of women rushing to his open roadster bearing armloads of roses, others sprinkling rose-petals in front of his car as the motor-cade slowly moved thru the pressing, adoring crowd. And the close-ups of the adoring, ecstatic looks on the faces of the worshiping women! And the social dynamics of it all even in smaller, more intimate gatherings like the opening of a new movie theater with Hitler in attendance was a real eye-opener as well. Coming, as it did, on the same day that I viewed the female adoration of a disgraced Clinton, I thought to myself: "NOW I understand--women (or most women :) ) should never have been given the vote--their emotionalism and worship of power overrides EVERYTHING!"

PS: Kate@smalldeadanimals is fond of saying: "I'd gladly give up my vote if I knew I could take all of them with me.." LOL!