America derailed?

The media are acting as though a week from tomorrow, Mrs. Clinton could be out of the campaign. It’s never happened before that a major party in this country nominated a demagogue for president, a man who had had a total of two years of high-level political experience before he ran for president,* and who seems beholden to nothing but his own vision of himself and his mission (whatever that may be); a man who comes from a left-wing, half non-Western background, and whose wife is a permanently angry, America-hating black; a man who speaks of himself as a messiah, and who has created a vast cult that expects him to transform the world.

In one sense, it is not surprising. The Democratic party has been consumed with floridly irrational hatred of the current president since 2000. During those years I’ve repeatedly made the obvious point that when half a country is floridly irrational, that is a very bad sign for that country’s future. And now the future has come; now the left’s irrationality, instead of being focused impotently on a hate object, has taken a politically effective form. It has found a love object—a love object who could become the next president of the United States. But it’s still the same irrationality. Could America be on the verge of becoming Argentina?

________

* Yes, Lincoln also had had only two years in high office before being elected as president, but he had been in politics his entire adult life and had been a national leader on the slavery issue for years. He was a known quantity, not a blank slate promising to transform humanity.

- end of initial entry -

By the way, while conservative columnists and commenters have talked endlessly about the left’s nuttiness during these last eight years, they have never taken it seriously. That is, they’ve treated it as something appalling, or as something ludicrous and laughable, or even, most irresponsibly, as something to be welcomed, since it would assure that the Democrats would not win an election; but they’ve never spoken about what it means for America that half its politically active population are driven by irrational hate, filled with conspiracy theories, and totally incapable of engaging in rational discussion.

However, even if the conservatives had faced the problem, what could they have done about it?

In my view, which I’ve been stating since late 2000, it all began when George W. Bush during the transition period or shortly after he became president failed to address the left’s crazy beliefs about the Florida vote crisis. Insane charges were spreading unimpeded and taking permanent root, and he did absolutely nothing to counteract them with the truth, as a real leader would have done. He should have given a national tv address on the question, addressing each and every false charge and showing its falseness and absurdity. All he cared about in Florida was winning, not clearing up the mess and rancor the contest had left in its wake. Right from the start, he signally failed to fulfill his pledge to unite the country. He let half the country stew in their own madness, instead of trying to lead them out of it.

Mark Jaws writes:

After eight years of the worst presidential administration in m lifetime, I do believe that Americans are willing to gamble on Obama. He may actually win. I heard Charles Krauthammer say something rather profound on Fox and Friends this evening. He said that since Obama has convinced Americans that he can transcend race, whites have subliminally leapt to the next conclusion that he can transcend the political divisions in this country as well. Of course that is baloney, but we are islands of sanity in a sea of fools. As a white nationalist, I still am pondering the best course of action. McCain will be a continuation of Bush, but perhaps he may select some decent federal judges which would enable the majoritarian take back. Obama, on the other hand, will attempt to take the country hard left and awaken the Right and perhaps produce a much more conservative Congress in 2010 and 2012. We know that open borders comes with a huge price tag of welfare benefits, and perhaps now is the time to convince those naive young whites that the Democrats are even more clueless. They need to see the Ghost of Democratic Future to bring them to reality.

Jack writes:

I have to say that this is it, America has met its match in Obama. Timing is truly everything. GOD has ceased to smile on America, and I back that up with wheat prices. What seemingly forever used to fetch 2-3 dollars a bushel now goes for 12 dollars, and on some exchanges (Minneapolis) $25 per bushel. I fear disaster looms, with a spectacularly horrible President sleepily stumbling away after smirking through years of betrayal (to the West) on a “ranch” with no animals (I’m to the Right of Most), leaving a War of Gigantic Violence in his wake, which a broke and hungry and emasculated Country will fall into under the Command of a White hating Black nationalist non (ANTI?)-Christian. I myself am stuck, but the Wise will buy gold and silver, and flee.

N. writes:

The Lincoln-Douglas debates must be recalled as part of Abraham Lincoln’s political experience. Nothing like those debates exists in the political sphere today, unfortunately. Certainly Obama has not participated in anything remotely resembling them.

LA replies:

We think mechanically. It’s true that Lincoln had the least previous experience in high office of any president. But at the time of his election, in 1860, he had been, since 1854 when the Kansas Nebraska Act was passed, one of the leading spokesman in the North on the most important issue facing the country. He rose to national prominence and became president because of his intellectual leadership on that issue, not because he was a charismatic “star” who told people he would fix all their ills.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 26, 2008 06:09 PM | Send