"I can hear the right wing mutters,
that all I does is stutters,
'cause I did too much cocaine!
If I could give a simple answer,
wouldn't be the artful dancer,
if I only had a brain!"
Posted on 08/19/2008 5:05:59 PM PDT by mojito
Poor old John Edwards. Now the victim of scandal and looking more than ever like the charlatan he always was to us non-believers, he has had the additional bad luck to see his political career crash and burn at the very moment where his campaign theme about the "two nations" seems to have been vindicated. Of course he was wrong about what the two nations were. Rich and poor are ever more fluid categories, which is one of the lessons of this and other economic downturns. Many of those who were rich are now, at least, much less rich, while many of those who were poor continue as they always do in the land of opportunity to move up the economic ladder and into the middle classes. But those other two nations, so well represented by the two parties’ candidates for president this year, really do seem like the East and the West of which Kipling so memorably said "never the twain shall meet/Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat."
We could call this East and West the party of the Scarecrow and the party of the Lion: the one values brains and their related qualities above all; the other values courage and its related virtues. "Leadership," for example, a term often in the mouth of Senator McCain, is a form of courage. By contrast, "judgment," so highly prized by Senator Obama that he has made it the cornerstone of his appeal to the electorate, is a species of brains. He (so he plausibly represents himself) was "right" about the dangers of invading Iraq: therefore he has the brains necessary to avoid dangers. If you’ve got that, what do you need leadership for? Who needs to brave dangers when they can be simply avoided — as they can if you’re as brainy as he? Amazingly to me, millions of Americans actually seem to buy this argument. It just goes to show that we are really two nations.
Sally Quinn in today’s Washington Post wants to call them the nations of "clarity" and "nuance." Oh how she wishes she lived in John McCain’s simplistic, black-and-white world of moral clarity! But she’s too smart for that, you see. She may even be as smart as Barack Obama — smart enough, at least, to know that Senator McCain’s world is an illusion and Senator Obama’s world, the nuanced world, is the way things actually are.
That kind of nuance is hard to understand sometimes [she writes] — it’s unclear, complicated. Obama’s world can be scarier. It’s multicultural. It’s realistic (yes, there is evil on the streets of this country as well as in other places, and a lot of evil has been perpetrated in the name of good). It’s honest. When does life begin? Only the antiabortionists are clear on that. For the majority of Americans (who are pro- choice), it is "above my pay grade," in Obama’s words, where there is no hard and fast line to draw on what’s worth dying for, and where people of all faiths have to be respected. I would rather live in McCain’s world than Obama’s. But I believe that we live in Obama’s world.
Or, to put it another way, vote for the smart party. Vote to be as smart as Sally is. Oh, and by the way, also vote for "no hard and fast line to draw on what’s worth dying for." You never know when that will come in handy. There’s really no argument when you think about it. Who wouldn’t vote to avoid the bad things in the world rather than fighting against them — if you could be as sure as Senator Obama that they can be avoided. Or to remain agnostic about the hard moral choices — if you could believe, as Senator Obama apparently does, that to remain agnostic isn’t also to choose. No wonder the Scarecrow party gets so impatient with the Lion party! It’s all so easy when you’re as smart as they are. And as sure as yourself. And as, er, humble.
Humble? Yes, it seems that Senator Obama also believes that "the one thing that I think is very important is for us to have some humility" — particularly when it comes to "confronting" evil, which is what he believes needs to be done with evil. A humble confrontation? With the brainiacs of the Scarecrow party, I guess, anything is possible. Certainly it is an article of faith with them, as their standard-bearer puts it, that "a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil." Oddly, however, this evil — the evil that is perpetrated by claiming to try to confront evil, which is the reason we have to be humble in our confrontations with it — is apparently not itself an evil that needs to be confronted. Or even identified. Let’s just tiptoe past that sucker. Anyway, it’s sure to turn out to be another of those evils that we can avoid simply by being smart and relying on nuance. Sally Quinn is right: we do live in Obama’s world, at least until evil decides to confront us again. For when it does, something tells me, it won’t be humble.
It’s also a liberal adjective used to describe an issue they’re on the losing side of. “Nuance” implies depth and reflection, they think and it makes them sound smart, and they always like it when they get to do that.
We could call this East and West the party of the Scarecrow and the party of the Lion: the one values brains and their related qualities above all; the other values courage and its related virtues.
Yeah, and like Baum understood, they value what they lack.
“Certainly it is an article of faith with them, as their standard-bearer puts it, that “a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil.” Oddly, however, this evil — the evil that is perpetrated by claiming to try to confront evil, which is the reason we have to be humble in our confrontations with it — is apparently not itself an evil that needs to be confronted. Or even identified. Let’s just tiptoe past that sucker.”
Tee hee!
The Dems, and liberals in general, have the same kind of brains that the Wizard gave the Scarcrow. Humbug ones.
Actually, by “nuanced” they mean “us intellectual liberals understand what he said while you extra chromosome conservatives don’t”. More condescending than smug.
No, what it means is "our answers are morally and logically indefensible so we will apply an aura of intellectual mystique to them and then scam you with a claim that you are to stupid to understand."
The truth is that we understand only too well, as do they, but they cannot explain or justify their position.
In Senator Obama's world, there are no moral absolutes (that would be a bitter clinging to religion), there are only opinions, each of which is as valid as another. No truth, only relativism. Morality is dead, there's no right and wrong, humans have moved "beyond good and evil". But, is this really true? Unfortunately, it breaks down under further scrutiny.
We can now nuance the nuance: Perhaps the ambivalent feeling is not beyond good and evil, but between it. All of liberal ideology says it's better to do X than it is to do Y. They live in a world where they have made a decision, they value some things, and don't value others.
The bottom line is that all of this nuance is a smoke screen to make them feel smarter in what they believe, but they have values just like everyone else, bitterly clinging to their beliefs of right and wrong.
“Nuance”.....means FUDGING THE ANSWER.
Sally needs to face it: she and her crowd are not that smart. Articulate to some degree? yes. But intelligent? Not nearly as much as they want to believe.
Nuance has it’s purposes. If you spread it in your garden you get some amazing results!
"I can hear the right wing mutters,
that all I does is stutters,
'cause I did too much cocaine!
If I could give a simple answer,
wouldn't be the artful dancer,
if I only had a brain!"
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