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Clark, Day, and a ‘Licence to Loathe’
Some of you chided me (in a friendly sort of “get-a-grip” way) for my last post. Therein, I confessed my revulsion at the “discovery” that our newest presidential aspirants are nothing more than the same old politicians, after all.
To those who scolded, I can only say “point taken, lesson learned” — which is precisely why I yawned at the maelstroms surrounding the re-introduction of Wes Clark and Bud Day in the latest news cycle.
Such nastiness has clearly become the imbedded stuff of not only our politics but our culture — not only among Republicans but Democrats, as well; not only in the States but in Britain, too — as Libby Purves eloquently and mercilessly argued in a colum for the The Times, which I first read while vacationing last month.
Riffing on the book Makers and Takers by Hoover Institution Fellow Peter Schweizer, Purves concludes:
… every strong ideology offers a licence to loathe …
The fact is that deep down we are all a bit nasty and selfish. When we use ideologies to camouflage what should be our shame, any belief will do. Mr Schweizer calls his book Makers and Takers. He should have admitted that every banner also shelters fakers, snakes and haters: unoriginal sinners all.
So, yes, I remain sour on the human race. Nor do I see a splinter in the eye of our species without recognizing the beam in my own. I can only hope that recognition of our shared problem — acknowledgement of our collective faking, snaking, and hating — is the first step toward recovery.
For those interested in more on and by Libby Purves, check out her brief bio next to the column I linked above, as well as her bio at BBC Radio 4. Her latest columns for The Times can be found here. She also blogs on “religion and thought” for The Times here.
7 Responses to “Clark, Day, and a ‘Licence to Loathe’”
We all have a tendency towards good and bad behavior. What a community can do is to find ways to encourage the good and discourage the bad. In politics one remedy is to neutralize the influence of money and of political operatives who make a living by exacerbating differences. Give public funds directly to candidates and dis empower donors and cynical pols.
There is nastiness, yes, but there is also perceived nastiness.
Often, an unwelcome observation , true as it may be, is portrayed in commentary as a nasty attack, and then the 'nasty' tag becomes part of widely believed folklore.
A sentence is clipped out of a long conversation (the video clip genre), and shorn of context. Voila, nastiness.
When everything politically unsanitized is tagged as 'nasty', it shields true nastiness from exposure, because the instances truly deserving scathing rebuke no longer stand out as anything special. It all becomes 'just politics'.
When Bill Clinton remarked about what we all now know is true about the role of racism in elections, it was immediately tagged as racist. Clinton didn't say a black, man shouldn't be president. He expressed doubt that a black man COULD be elected, and there is history to support his doubts. Whether he should have said it in public, is another matter,. What his intentions were in saying it in public is open to debate among mind readers.
In the aftermath, though, this episode got thrown into yhe same barrel with evidence or overt, avowed, and rather proud expressions of racial bias.
The result is a blur, with the definitely worst on a par with the maybe.
runasim:
“There is nastiness, yes, but there is also perceived nastiness.
Often, an unwelcome observation , true as it may be, is portrayed in commentary as a nasty attack, and then the 'nasty' tag becomes part of widely believed folklore.”
Right on!! There was nothing nasty about Clarke's comments just facts and observations. Comparing them to the viscious lies against kerry by the Swiftboaters is absurd.
i'm with runasim. i think we need to make and effort to separate the true “nasty” from the truth-that-not-be-named. obvious examples 1) the assertion by Black that McCain would benefit from a terrorist act and 2) Clark's assertion that being an AF pilot shot-down does not qualify one to be president. Both are clearly true. i'm curious about why these fall into the “nasty” category. phraseology? does fighting ALL these battles increase the likelihood that weariness will will set in and responses to the the real nastiness will fall deaf ears?
I'm really bothered by the 'nothing more than politicians' cynicism so popular today.
We are all nothing more than human beings, but that doesn't mean that we are all equally without value.
Not all human beings contribute equally or in the sane way to society, and neither do politicians.
A mass murderer is a human being, but so are people like the Pope.
McCarthy was a politician, but so was Lincoln.
The candidates are human beings and politicans. They aren't worse for being so.
I agree with Peggy Daly about the difference between the nasty and the truth that isn't polite to name.
It's obvious that being shot down doesn't qualify anyone to be President.
But it's more complicated than just the words. Clark's tone of voice in talking about McCain's experience was, to my ears, more contemptuous than it should have been. I say that as someone with a positive impression of Clark–and a strong sense that McCain usually gets a free ride.
As for the “nothing more than politicans” complaint–sure, they're all politicans. But the general implication of that is they're all equally bad. Not true. And I think this complaint is used by people who favor the worse politican.
I didn't hear the interview, but from the transcript it's possible that Clark's tone was a product of the fact that the interviewer positively (if unconsciously) asserted that there was a connection between being shot down/taken prisoner and C in C credentials. At this point Clark interrupted to point out the fallacy of this assumption. It is certainly frustrating to constantly fight against the bias in the baseless narratives that pile up during this process.
(Of course, perception is everything and it was definitely a gaffe.)