Sotomayor Confirmation Hearings: A Centrist’s Lament
I found Sotomayor’s head-down, dogged evasiveness almost unbearable to listen to. I am told Alito and Roberts were equally careful, and that it’s all about Robert Bork, who as far as his qualifications went (very far indeed) should be on the Supreme Court right now, but who was lured out in the open on the content of his ideology — which should not be the measure of a SCOTUS nominee — and slaughtered. All presidents and their nominees swore “Never again,” and the result is this travesty of a hearings process.
It made me reflect on how I often feel the two political parties are ruining our country. Perhaps this is how the real world works and there’s no alternative, but the way real philosophical differences get contaminated and distorted by sports-fan emotions and patronage interests is so disheartening. The net result is an “Our side must win for the good of the country, no matter the cost to the country” mentality. It verges on the treasonous: what is it called when your loyalty to an internal entity trumps country? Very complicated, since each side claims to be the true patriots, loyal to their own vision of the country. It’s as if King Solomon faced two mothers more ready to cut the baby in half than to tolerate the other one having it. The Democrats who savaged Bork did inestimable damage to the Supreme Court confirmation process, and I’m sure examples from the other side are near to hand (the Republicans trying to impeach Bill Clinton instead of just censuring him?).
Is it still the unhealed wound of the Civil War haunting us? The Hamiltonians versus the Jeffersonians? Is it, finally, all about social class? Or what? I suggest revisiting this thoughtful and thought-provoking post of Donna B’s from June. To extend Donna’s thoughts:
“Centrists” or “moderates” are misunderstood if we are seen as wanting to blend distinctions together into an inoffensive gray mush. We want more distinctions, not fewer. What we resent is being pressed to choose between two straitjackets, two Procrustean beds, neither of which fits. Maybe what we have in common is an anti-ideological, antiutopian bias. We don’t lack passion, or fear confrontation, but maybe we get more passionate about embodied cases — particulars — than abstract principles. The truths that seem self-evident to us cross and straddle party lines. We value the flexibility to respond to what’s in front of us without pre-cut filters. Guiding principles are there in the belly, but they feel preverbal, more like an operating system than a manifesto. There’s a sense that as soon as you articulate them you’ve crippled them, curtailed their ability to respond to the full spectrum of cases. “I know it when I see it.” Taoist.
I’ve been traduced by both liberals and conservatives for liking Senator Lindsey Graham (not coincidentally, he first came to my attention as the only Congressman to split his vote on the Clinton impeachment), but I enjoy the way his responses seem unconstrained by ideology (though not devoid of it) and powered by common sense. He acknowledged Sotomayor’s success story and qualifications (citing, in support, Ken Starr), and then told her some of the things she said and thought bugged the hell out of him. That mix of generosity, anger, and humor suits me. So sue me.
A lot of those who write and read here are centrists. We don’t agree on everything but we have in common a certain fluidity and unpredictability. Your thoughts?
Devouring the World, Tiger by Tiger [UPDATED]
The Chinese, and the poachers who supply them, are not going to rest until they have destroyed every last wild tiger left on the planet.
When you put the life of a tiger in one pan of the scale and some human’s arthritis or impotence in the other; and when you then consider that the traditional remedies in question have no efficacy but what is bestowed by the human imagination (that most potent but fleeting and insatiable efficacy); and when you note that the supply of sore joints and soft penises is practically endless (1.3 billion mainland Chinese) while the supply of wild tigers to feed that demand is almost gone (perhaps 500 left in Malaysia, a few thousand worldwide); and when you ponder the irony that the rarer magnificent wildlife becomes, the higher its value, both to the domesticated, deracinated human imagination and to the poacher and the gangster-smuggler . . .
Dan Tri Newspaper on Thursday said a kilogram of fresh-frozen tiger meat costs about 20 million dong (1,130 dollars).
Tiger bones and other parts are often used in traditional Vietnamese medicine. ‘Tiger paste’ – made from boiling the bones of the tiger and said to restore the bones of the elderly – can sell for as much as 5,000 dollars a kilogram on the black market.
Less than 100 of the cats are believed to survive in the wild in Vietnam, where habitat loss and poaching have taken a heavy toll on endangered flora and fauna in recent decades.
According to Vietnamese law, those hunting, transporting or trading in rare animals are subject to a prison term of up to seven years and a cash fine of up to 1,250 dollars.
. . . well, it can make you feel like a self-hating sapiens deep ecologist for a few moments, seeing our planet pullulating with multiplying primate vermin. Yet who’s to say my refined sentimentality about tigers I’ve mostly seen on calendars is any less disgusting a human trait than some Chinese guy’s desire for a tiger’s tireless potency? “Speer-itch-ew-all” yearnings can at least consume their objects’ mojo without devouring the source, but in the muscular marketplace they’re laughably feeble; they come cheap and don’t make anybody any money (well, except the calendar companies). Hey, what do I know, maybe God wants the whole biomass of the planet converted into human beings, ugly critters but with that inner jewel of priceless awareness 98% of which they squander on porn and videogames . . .
Ayatollah Montazeri’s Awesome Fatwa
“A regime that uses clubs, oppression, aggression against [the people’s] rights, injustice, rigged elections, murder, arrests, and medieval or Stalin-era torture, [a regime that] gags and censors the press, obstructs the media, imprisons intellectuals and elected leaders on false allegations or forced confessions… – [such a regime] is despicable and has no religious merit…
Hmmm.
If there were no speech, neither right nor wrong would be known; neither true nor false; neither good nor bad; neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Speech makes us understand all this. Meditate on speech.
For true and false are attributes of speech, not of Things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood.
Palin and Obama [UPDATED]
Tonight I’m thinking about how much these two politicians are alike.
Of course, they are the figureheads of diametrically opposed tribes and worldviews. But the way they serve in their respective roles is uncannily alike. They are of the same generation, a generation weaned on symbols in an age in which the din of symbols (often clashing) drowns out substance. Humans may once have found symbols in the forest along with food, but modern humans live in a forest of symbols. They’re a large part of what we hunt, make, consume, and trade.
Obama and Palin are both magnetic screens for projection, both positive and negative. A broad range of people can see in Barack or in Sarah what they want to see. And that makes both of them extraordinarily polarizing: you either love them or hate them (and if you love one you hate the other). They’re held up as either redeemers or wreckers. Both are remarkably well suited to be seen as exemplars and embodiments of the values they stand for: cosmopolitanism in Obama’s case, frontier faith and fortitude in Palin’s. Underneath, both are more complicated than that. Both combine lofty ideals, apparently sincerely, even zealously held, with an ability to be pragmatic, and even ruthless, amoral and cronyistic. Even their names are weirdly symmetrical, contrasting little morality plays — notice where the stresses are, the tone color of the vowels — in almost the same number of letters.
There’s an apocalyptic sense that the armies of these two worldviews are in a fight to the death, captained by these charismatic young avatars. Yet the complete triumph of one, and destruction of the other, is impossible — and would be a disaster.
UPDATE: The Anchoress says much the same thing:
We live in a very polarized age wherein we too often and too-willingly segregate ourselves with an “us good, them bad” mentality. That is not new, of course. Humans have always drawn their lines of demarcation between themselves and others – mostly either because of ethnicity or language or creed. Lately, as ethnicities blend and languages fade, the lines seem increasingly to be drawn mostly over ideologies disguised as creeds. Or creeds disguised as ideologies.
It’s distressing to see. It is terribly distressing to watch what appears to be an inexorable move toward national self-destruction in the pursuit of “squashing the other side,” when in fact both sides are America’s, and an America without healthy discourse and respectable, honorable and loyal dissent will not need an outside enemy to render her impotent and eventually inconsequential.
Photo by Shocked, Shocked . . .
. . . conservatives are, to find out that Obama was a student radical. Funny: plenty of them were, too. But because Obama has been unevenly outgrowing his youthful radicalism instead of stridently repudiating it and ricocheting to the other extreme, he isn’t given credit for moving an inch; he must still be right back there.
Uneven outgrowing, however, presents serious problems of its own.
This was my comment at Anchoress:
I’m shocked, shocked, to discover that he was a student radical — so were many of today’s repentant neoconservatives, and some of them were shriller than young Obama. His juvenilia means no more than anyone else’s. Do you want to be held to and hanged by yours?
The question is where he stands now. I do not think he’s remained a secret radical; I think he’s genuinely evolved towards the center. My fear is that he’s a work in progress and doesn’t know yet WHERE he stands, so his views are a contradictory jumble from all along the spectrum.
A “contradictory jumble” should not be mistaken for a mature synthesis. My own biggest fear about Obama remains what it always was: he wasn’t ready to be president. He is green and uncured.
The Blogging Wave Has Ebbed.
It’s obvious now. And official. So there if you gave me grief, back when I wondered if it was just me.
The Wisdom of Humility on Abortion
I’ve linked to this post before, in which popular blogger and “Brazen Careerist” Penelope Trunk talks frankly about her two abortions and how they were related to her career ambitions.
There are more than 450 comments on the post to date, and they run the gamut on the issue. This new comment today really impressed me. The author identified herself only as “Me” (it’s not me).
Author: Me
Comment:
Its interesting how this post brings out the anger from people on both sides of the fence. Pro-lifers saying “how dare you have an abortion, twice.” Pro-choicers saying “how dare you say that people will regret it.”I think to the point of regret, its important for a woman to examine and know her self thoroughly, you run a very real risk that you will regret an abortion for your entire life. Not that all will, maybe not even the majority. But you probably shouldn’t care about all, or the majority in this case. You should know if you, yourself, will regret it.
Another thing I will add is that I have never heard a parent say they regret having kids. I’ve never heard someone say, “I love my kids, but I really would have preferred [insert sport or University education or Job title] instead. They wonder about it, but not necessarily regret.
I am of pro choice sentiment, but my choice would always be life. I also don’t believe its my choice to choose what other people do. If God gave you the choice to sin, who am I to try and take it away?
Anyways, my soapbox is unsteady, im gonna get down now.
Ambiance 