Elections

The Tempting Irrational

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Voltaire observed that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”   Well, maybe;  he sparked our adolescent conversations late into boozy nights and forty years later we haven’t settled it. But we also feel the need  of Satan, directing frustration and anger at Emmanuel Goldstein, internalizing a picture of Bush taking the form BDS dictates.   We laugh, but the haters’ anger makes us uneasy; we feel the impotency of rational arguments against passionate irrationality.

That disease is one I fear for myself. It is dangerous: to our understanding, our reasoning, and our souls. I don’t want to feel what I’ve seen from the opposition the last few years. I don’t want to simplify & ignore the causes of war, natural catastrophes, history; I don’t want to become conspiratorial; I don’t want to ponder the sexual preferences of a chief justice’s four-year-old or gloat over the young death of someone whose chief fault is representing that opposition. I don’t want to lose my sense of proportionality, always a small enough counterweight to my passions and assumptions. I don’t want to become the worst of them and need to remember most of them are not the worst.

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Foster’s Clip – and Others Floating Out There

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Another comment to yet another interesting post by Foster.   (The advantage I have over some of our commentors is that I can put up a post when I realize I’m getting too long-winded and too off-topic.)

Palin’s high energy may not  rescue the McCain candidacy but at least it’s enlivening.   Obama appears to have energized some passions in  Manhatten as well as across the country,  if  dulling other  civil & communal qualities.    Transferring religious fervor  to the political leads to  some strange results.   Of course, that is why political fervor is both compelling – and disturbing.    Belmont Club discusses one.

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Sad and Disturbing…but not Surprising

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McCain/Palin supporters walk through the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Affluent liberals and “progressives” respond with the grace, class, and tolerance that we have come to expect of them.

(via Neptunus Lex)

UPDATE: See also my 2004 post an incident at the movies. I’d bet there is a 90% overlap between the kinds of people booing this recruiting film and the kinds of people snarling at the McCain supporters in the above video.

Also, be sure and read Ginny’s post.

UPDATE 2: Bookworm writes about another example of “progressive” rage at anyone who dares disagree with them.

Abomination!

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You might think this is funny.

I found myself shouting at the computer screen a few minutes ago, spitting mad and cursing up a storm. The tirade stopped almost as fast as it started, when I realized what a spectacle I was making of myself. Lucky thing I live alone.

And what brought on this emotional storm? A blog essay entitled “Obama sought rape victim for ad”.

Seems the campaign for the Democrat candidate is seeking a female rape victim to use against the Republicans. The thrust of the ad will be that sexually abused women should vote for the Democrats because Republicans don’t fight for rape victims.

We don’t? That is news to me. Looks like it is the Democrats who let the victims down.

There are a lot of things in this world I can’t do anything about. This is one of them.

A Pause for Wretchard

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Richard Fernandez discusses Dostoevsky and abortion, noting that

Fyodor Dostoevsky, speaking through Ivan in his Brothers Karamazov, wrote that the only questions which really mattered were the eternal ones. They are what return in various guises generation after generation not because we can never resolve them, but because we resolve ourselves in them.

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