Expeditiousness

Purveyors of political correctness will, in the final analysis,
not even allow others their judgments...
They celebrate “difference,” but they will not allow people truly
to be different -- to think differently, and to say what they think
--Mark Berley

It is the absolute right of the state
to supervise the formation of public opinion
--Joeseph Geobbels

I love to go to Washington,
if only to be near my money
--Bob Hope
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On yesterday's Political Junkie (NPR Talk of the Nation), journalist Matt Bai addressed the impact of the Netroots movement in the Obama campaign's success and declared them "marginal." Fawning bloggers who were expecting to "crash the gates of power" may be disappointed, but they were never part of the team anyway.

"He's bigger than any bloggers," he said. "I mean, they can make noise," but the majority of the internet presence is his, implying that the majority of the internet presence is on Obama's election team. It's a great lesson in life: if people take the expedient choice once (see Rev. Wright), they are probably expedient actors: tigers don't change their stripes, political or otherwise. So long, and thanks for the fish.

So all the good folks who bleated their hearts out, paying their way to the convention and hoping for change from their new messiah have just been thrown under the bus.

We at Ranger didn't eat the slop from any feed bag, so we're not too broke up about it. It is, however, rather condescending towards those Believers who paid their way to the conventions to bray at the foot of the dais. We just stand aside and observe the Obamabilia and his "polebritiness" (Riding Obama's Coattails, Making a Buck Along the Way.)

Yes, he's our next President. And yes, I'm as hopeful as the next guy, really. (Disclaimer: this next bit has nothing to do with Obama himself.) But here is my beef: why has there been no opposition to the contention that we need leaders of a "new" generation, and that somehow newness equates to an actual meaningful change.

In this new ageism, 71-yr.-old Colin Powell says we need a "President who is a generational change." Is he so sick of his own toadyism that he imagines the fault lies in the stars and not in himself?

John McCain becomes, "the freed prisoner from a failed war. . . a story with roots sunk too deeply in the past for this moment (Change)." 42 years -- "too deep in the past"? This generation is poised to have its very own "failed war." Read Santayana.

On Bush, "father and son, World War II and Vietnam, a faded generation and a fading one . ." So even veterans in their late 50's and 60's are now "fading"? Can they be swept to the margins any more quickly?

So much for the hopes for rejuvenation of the Cougar generation, huh?

My beef is not with Obama, per se, but rather with a press which is collusive in heralding His coming. "New" -- as in new color, new age, new style, new music -- is all veneer-thin. All the deficiencies which plague their forebears can attach to their inheritors. Even if the behaviors are creatio ex nihilo; even if one has only dreams of one's father.

To be an X-er, Y-er, whatever, doesn't mean much in the whole scheme of things. People haven't evolved in a generation or five to the point of tossing off the yoke of covetousness, greed, sloth -- the unique mix of human traits which has landed us in our current precipitous situation. It is shallow thinking to say that because someone looks different, they will be different and somehow better than the ones they replace.

Obama's rhetoric is inspirational --straight from the pulpit. What change he can implement is another matter. Moreover, just because you may be enlightened doesn't mean you can bring your brethren along. Humans are burdened by laziness and distraction and exhaustion -- a perfect trifecta which has met its match in the wired 24/7 world in which we live.

Everyone has cable, Netflix, computers, Blackberry's, iPods, TiVo. There is so much to see, from the vantage point of your own couch. How much change can you implement when you are three episodes behind on "Lost"?

I resent the simplistic idea that the election of a younger candidate is somehow gonna whip this tired, lazy dog that is America into shape. The WaPo article is typical of this sort of triumphalism: McCain is of a "dying generation," his Vietnam story, "passe." George Bush's Oedipal Complex is REALLY passe, by some 2,300+ years.

C'mon: these are timeless human dramas and tragedies. The hubris to state that their time has passed is galling. We're not that evolved, thanks. Because you present with sang froid doesn't mean you, too, are not a part of the human tragedy.

What kind of grotesque society have we become, where disposibility and forgetfulness have become assets? Lethe, Greek goddess of forgetfulness, may have made one feel better for the time, but ultimately one would return to the same problems.

Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, served as an invaluable check to this desire for the easy fix.