"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason is like administering medicine to the dead." — Thomas Paine
On the homepage of today's Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader are two perplexing stories which speak volumes about the divisions we have in this country. First, there is further discussion of the great silliness revolving around whether the President of the United States should be allowed — allowed — to speak to school children. Second, there is a small tempest in the basketball-mad state over the decision of Kentucky's new coach, John Calapari, to send a copy of his new book and a Kentucky basketball jersey to the President.
Before quickly typing this, I went looking for a quotation from, I believe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, which says something like: You cannot use reason to remove from someone's head an idea which reason didn't put there." But the Thomas Paine will do. Even if one scrolls down and sees another, contradictory quotation from the old firebrand: "The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason." Such are the vagaries of epigraphs.
From Jerry Tipton's story on the jersey, first:
Calipari first told fans about the jersey gesture on Wednesday. On his CoachCal.com Web site, he held up the No. 44 jersey and asked fans to guess where he planned to send it. Later Calipari turned the jersey around to reveal the name "Obama" on the back.
Two hours after his apology, Calipari made another post explaining why critical fan comments had been removed from the Web site. David Scott, the editor of CoachCal.com, said fans used "bad language" in their postings.
On the Herald-Leader's home page is a poll asking, "Do you want your children to watch Obama's speech while at school?" to which, at typing, 530 people have responded, 52 percent in the negative.
That such an event is worthy of controversy says all we need to know about the state of our political process.
Here's the thing: We here in this community suffer the disadvantage of believing what we say, and seeking to convince others -- using logic and reason and evidence -- that we are right. We even admit, with varying levels of grace, that we might not always be right.
Our opponents would appear not to share these convictions.
Once upon a time I was a talking head, for about fifteen minutes, on CNN. My opponent was a local "talk warrior" for whom this appearance meant ratings points and a better quarterly review. We were placed in a dark remote TV studio with camera controlled from Atlanta and earplugs that didn't fit well. Alone with each other, two people who held dramatically different views. On camera he shouted and was vile and all that. Off camera, he shook my hand and said, "That was fun. Maybe we can do it again. Maybe we can take it on the road." Something like that.
See, for him, and, I fear, for the Glen Becks of the world, this rabble rousing is as much about ratings and performance art as it is about politics.
For much of their audience, the silly stories they're being told about birth certificates and death panels and all that...they simply give them an excuse to embrace their passionate and irrational opposition to the current president. Doubtless a good bit of it covers for racism, and some of it shrouds legitimate political disagreement.
MeteorBlades, I believe, had a front page piece some weeks back noting how different this political opposition is to our past (at least to our twentieth century past). It is violent, and violently opposed to our elected leadership. It holds firmly to ideas which the rest of the country can make no sense of, in part because they're not sensible ideas.
Here's my worry, hastily typed before I go cook my daughter breakfast: My worry is that, by chance or not, the right is training the same kind of violent partisans who took over Germany in the 1930s. That if we DO NOT succeed in this presidency, in this term, right now, we will swing hard and fast to the right, and that the Republican party will find itself in the thrall of these spittle-chewing monsters.
That's all I've got, folks. I wish it were more. I wish I had another hour to write this. But I don't, to borrow another quotation (from the songwriter Chris Knight).