Posted by
ClearCommentary.com on Friday, July 11, 2008 3:07:14 PM
For reasons that can only be parsed by psychiatrists or anthropologists, Americans sit up and listen when an artist, in particular, an actor, speaks. Or, in the case of Alec Baldwin, one who writes, in this instance, on the Huffingtonpost web site. It's curious that a man who earns money pretending he's someone else, regardless of how convincing he might be, should command our attention, much less our respect in areas so obviously outside his scope of expertise.
Yet here is Baldwin, in a quote that mangles and abuses the English language, making the case that Senator McCain just isn't up to the job of president:
The problem with John McCain is not his age, it's his condition. McCain's true lack of the abundant energy required to function as president, even performing the job on the most basic level, is what must be questioned.
If it weren't nonsensical, this would absurd, because there's simply no evidence that McCain lacks the energy required to perform as president. Moreover, it reflects the intellectually effete arguments that emanate from the left, which seem frozen in a kind of adolescent level of sophistication. Baldwin takes it to the next level of self-embarrassment:
McCain's ideas are too old, not the Senator himself. McCain's view of this country, his view of the world, are too old.
Whether it's Baldwin or Penn or any number of other actors who strut and fret their hour upon the stage, when they venture into politics, we're treated to the full gamut of their acting skills, which are long on emotional appeal and short on evidence. McCain is a man whose values are traditional, which is to say, they're instinctively conservative. His many ventures down the maverick path notwithstanding, he is a fiscal conservative and is pro-military. If those are 'old ideas,' we wish they could be cloned to his ninety-nine colleagues in the senate.
What Bladwin is referring to, of course, is that McCain isn't hip, he lacks that upper-West-side cultural panache, that cutting edge smartness that the academics and artists share. It's just not hip to be against the destruction of innocent life in the womb, to believe, as have millions of Americans over the past two centuries, that we have the right to bear arms, and that the best way to provide economic opportunity is through lower taxes and regulation. For Baldwin, Obama, and their liberal legions, those are 'old ideas' that reflect an 'old' view of the world.
That takes us to the American exceptionalism that is the bane of the left, which, in their view, is most obnoxiously expressed by our redoubtable ability to project power, economically and militarily. In their post-modern world, where Castro is on the same moral and political plane as Reagan, where America's alleged foibles far outweigh the good it has done, McCain's ideas and world view are out-of-step. It's Obama who is hip when he says he'll sit down with the leaders of Syria, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, without conditions--now that's the chaos theory level of diplomacy that's way ahead of the curve.
What's disturbing is that because so many Americans are so deeply embedded in a culture that rewards ignorance and punishes wisdom, and, that is convinced that everything vital to life exists in the cultural petri dish they inhabit, they enthusiastically soak up this palaver from Baldwin and other leftists.
Arguing against it makes you seem, in the eyes of the cognoscenti, well, 'old,'
and that's just not cool.