Time is short this morning, so I have to keep this brief. But I want to respond to a recent accusation from a friend of mine, which went a little something like this: I'm now a conservative who backs the McCain/Palin ticket but won't admit it openly so hides his true inclinations behind the Marxist veil. (I think that's the accusation. If I'm mistaken, please correct me.)
I assure you blog readers, I am not a conservative. In fact, I fear conservatives as that they are for the most part mentally challenged reductionists who are incapable of understanding the complexity inherent to our rich and dynamic world.
Moreover, if one decides that 1) since I do not back Obama I must be a conservative; or 2) because I have given reasons for why McCain would perpetuate the structural contradictions of capitalism and therefore should be given the opportunity to perpetuate said contradictions and hence, I am a conservative, then perhaps I have either 1) failed to clearly articulate my positions or 2) you have failed to understand what I've been arguing. In either case, the following crystal-clear pronouncement should set the record straight:
Know this: republicans, and conservatives in general, have become a disgusting breed of creature. Recent behavior by the McCain/Palin camp - especially regarding this race-baiting rhetoric and the refusal to disown hate-speech at their rallies - is clear evidence of the lack of moral integrity on the part of the republican brand. However, that does not mean that I must like Obama. I can still maintain my structuralist arguments for McCain, and perhaps even extend them to include these recent events (but I won't, because I'm getting rather tired of the whole topic).
But anyway, I thought the Frank Rich column in today's NYT was really groovy, so here is the link along with a nice little excerpt:
"No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”
This is the writer who found his way into a speech by a potential vice president at a national political convention. It’s astonishing there’s been no demand for a public accounting from the McCain campaign. Imagine if Obama had quoted a Black Panther or Louis Farrakhan — or William Ayers — in Denver."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/opinion/12rich.html?hp
enjoy
No comments:
Post a Comment