Friday, January 18, 2008

History is a load of bunk

I'm not of the opinion that Barack Obama saying he wants to be a liberal Ronald Reagan (roughly paraphrased) is anything about which Democrats should worry. But does the analogy really fit? Reagan was proudly conservative while Obama seems to want to blur things a little. Maybe it makes sense, since Reagan wasn't really a polarizer, and he wanted to unite the country--around him. As does Obama.

In some sense, I think that John Edwards is a better fit for this analogy, as he's more overtly ideological and more of a populist in terms of style. But whatever.

This just brings me to one of my great personal bugaboos: historical analogies. I think they ought to be outlawed. They have been made so many times in this campaign: Obama's JFK. No, wait, he's Gene McCarthy. No, he's Adlai Stevenson. But maybe he's Gary Hart? No, he's not any of them. He's Barack Obama. Hillary's fared somewhat better, getting comparisons to, among others, FDR, Hubert Humphrey, Howard Dean and Lyndon Johnson (the last was self-implied in that infamous Martin Luther King gaffe that nobody seemed to pick up on when it happened--few Democrats worship at the tomb of the Texan who started the Vietnam War). In the best case, historical analogies are loose-fitting, as no two times, no two events, are exactly alike. In the worst case they are quite damaging, as one sees President Bush comparing the Iraq War to everything from Korea (but not Vietnam) to, well, Vietnam. And these analogies are never, ever enlightening. History may be cyclical to some respect but it is not a tool to try to find and retool old solutions and paradigms onto the present. History is quite valuable only inasmuch as it allows us to better understand where we are by looking at how we got here--that is to say forensically. There is nothing valid about half-assedly tossing out a few random events or people and hoping they are illuminating in some way. But certain people find random facts to be far more impressive than knowledge or wisdom. They're called Sophists journalists.

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.