There are two premises at work in the special reservoir of emotion that McEwan and others reserve for Islamism: the first is that the fundamental cause of Islamic terrorism is actually Islamism -- a certain kind of fundamentalist, politicized Islam. The second is that Islamic terrorism is a powerful and dangerous force in the modern world, and the preeminent national security concern of liberal Western societies. Both will seem like obvious truths to many Westerners. But both are false.

http://ketchupandcaviar.com/...

I recently wrote about the Viability of Obama, despite the problem of race. Sometimes I'm not so sure. This Post article about racist incidents encountered by Obama campaigners isn't encouraging. Frankly, I didn't know that the types of voters fueling the WV landslide existed -- "Bush Democrats," I've heard them called. You know, those "hard working white Americans." In this more pessimistic mood I'm almost surprised by how well Obama polls so well against McCain nationally, especially in the swing states like Pennsylvania that are supposed to be so difficult for him.

I'm not a fan of Hillary Clinton. I was a staunch supporter of Bill, I voted for Hillary in NYC, but I was disgusted by her campaign against Obama. And I was impressed by Obama's sincerity, honesty, and decency.

On the other hand, Hillary-the-politician is not Hillary-the-person. She's well-educated, experienced, and accomplished. Her toughness may smack of fakeness and opportunism, but perhaps that's what politics takes.

My question is whether or not you think that's what it takes. Let me know how you feel about these or other issues.

UPDATE: "I'm an Obama supporter and while I don't like Obama" should read "I'm a Clinton supporter and while ...."

[Excerpt:] So insofar experience is meant to convey "toughness," it really is just another conformist rejection of real strength: independent judgment, diplomacy, self-examination and even self-critique, and a willingness to change, negotiate, compromise. Real strength comes at an incredible psychic cost, which is why most of us don't often achieve it: it explodes the myth of one's invulnerability. At the national level, it threatens the idea of the United States as perfect and all-powerful. It threatens our imaginary, psychological security, which demagogues then transubstantiate into national security. Real strength is not in the rigidity of one's delusions of grandeur, but in the steadfastness of one's willingness to engage in self-examination -- as a means to well-considered decisions.

A year ago I wrote a post called The Viability of Obama, in response to to friends who thought that the United States was not ready to elect a black president (and long before Obama was thought of as anything but a foil for Clinton). So yes, I'm here to congratulate myself. In part. For what I thought might form the counter-currents of Clinton's weaknesses--anger and eliteness--were effectively turned on Obama.

Clinton: I, but not Barack Obama, have the support of

working, hard-working Americans, White Americans

Some ... call you swing voters, I call you Americans

(Where "hard-working" means uneducated enough to have voted for Bush twice).

The common interpretation among pundits is that it is an unwise but innocent statement of fact. But it is neither factual nor innocent.

First, there is the transition from hard-working to Americans to whites, with the implication that being white and American and hard-working are all the same thing. It is a testament to the collective tolerance for Clinton's delusions that she is not barraged with charges of racism, but rather given heat for just another indelicate gaffe.

Second, there is the idea that Obama automatically wins the black vote because he is black. In fact, Clinton once had a significant lead among African Americans--in January of 2007, by 40 points. She and Bill Clinton had to work very hard to shed that advantage.

Finally, if Obama has a demographic problem is with older white women, not white voters per se.

Dear Hillary,

I remember when I first saw you across the bar. You seduced me those experienced eyes and that raucous, sarcastic laugh. One thing led to another — too many cosmopolitans, a long conversation about solutions for America, then the uneven walk, arm-in-arm, back to my place. I vetted your credentials all night long. Good times.

Please Sign the Petition

"I’m human," Clinton tells us, and it’s "news to some people." We’re not told why this is so, but apparently its common knowledge that more is expected of her. What exactly the double standard here is we are not told. But if we connect all of the dots in her campaign’s narrative of victim-hood, we’re meant to interpret it in the following way: She is a woman, and Obama is black; but she is where she is because of experience, and he is where he is "because he is black"; while Obama’s blackness is working for him, her womanhood is working against her. And that’s unfair.

http://ketchupandcaviar.com/...

I've been told I expect too much of TV pundits, but these pundits are the sum of public discourse for many Americans. "Whether or not you agree" is the opening bell of every political discussion on the airwaves, as it waves off questions of substance. These questions are bracketed to avoid a peculiarly American instinct in public discourse. And it is the instinct to do the following: to lie, and to lie about everything in public life -- to lie about everything that if said truthfully might offend the various sensitivities of the manifold consumer-citizenship being purchased by advertising dollars. To be fair, this lying has roots in a kind of salesman's optimism with a long history in the United States--old enough to be noted by Tocqueville. Americans are bullshit artists of the highest order; it's not that other societies aren't subject to such conformities, it's just in the United States there are so many taboos as to make authentic public discourse virtually impossible. (Naturally, communications technologies such as television have only amplified these tendencies).

Let him tell them how, consequences be damned, he was right, because by his math a world minus a bad man is a better world, notwithstanding the insertion of a few hundred thousand missiles, soldiers, and machine guns — and the chaos they have wrought — to replace that man. Let him tell them that this is exactly what he means, as if one writer sticking to his virtual guns were itself such an act of fortitude that it redeems any amount of actual destruction.

... isolationism and paranoid meddling in the affairs of other countries are not inconsistent.

... not a wahr at all, not a war, not even a battle, but the kind of tale that idiots craft for themselves, full of shock and awe, accomplishing nothing.

And so Bush appoints a be-medaled, NSA domestic spy program-defending, active-duty officer to head the CIA. Appointing an officer is not unprecedented, but this one is not free of that banana republic feeling. An emblazoned, heavy yes-man.

In government, uniforms are a sign of weakness. Sadam Hussein decked out and firing a gun, or Mayday parades with flag-draped missiles, are images for ridicule rather than reverence; from the outside-in, these pretenses are easily seen for what they are. Strong societies do not take militarism seriously. Are we becoming acclimated to such weak-souled patriotism?