Friday, September 19, 2008

A question I'd like to hear asked in the debates

"Senator McCain, do you believe Senator Obama is a patriot?" Make this weasel get on the record. Enough of this "Obama doesn't put his country first", "he'd rather win an election than win a war" shit. And I think that one could make a strong case at this point that the former is more true if one replaces the first word with McCain.

It is worth noting that these statements make explicit something that had been implicit for a long, long time: that Senator McCain sees himself as the embodiment of honor and goodness and high principle, and thus anyone who opposes him is an evil, dishonorable, unprincipled cretin. We see it in the issues he emphasizes, such as campaign finance reform. He likes being on the side of the holy. But after 8 years of this sort of messianic thinking I think we should not do this again.

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.