Attack of the 50-foot Negro

Steve Benen at The Carpetbagger Report has a bit on how the narrative against Obama has devolved to it's ultimate Hollywood-Kryptonite form: He's a Commie-Socialist-Pinko. From Mars.

Benen rightfully observes a few things. ONE, how in fair cricket it just isn't done to suggest that avid uncritical melding of pro-military, pro-corporate views may accrue fascist-sounding and -appearing trappings and behaviours like, oh, monolithic definitions of "patriot" and flags on everything including the NYSE and big aircraft carriers named for still-living politicians related to the current boss. And TWO, how this accusation of soulless socialistic monsterdom is not supposed to rile the sensibilities of leftward leaning types, what with it being patently obvious like how women are just awful drivers and Polish people are really dumb.

Wait, those last things aren't true? Next, someone will tell me liberals don't cheer aborted babies and may, just may, actually love their own children. As if.

Yes, the Commie meme is especially dear to this blogger what with it being a perverse driver of so much of the last 50 years' triumphs and trainwrecks and an endlessly evolving project about Moonshots and (Red Menace-like) Tsunamis. The short exposition is the fact that thinking is damn boring, and that feeling, well, that's what some intelligent designer™ designed us for and here we are, feeling to the max. 21st C. American life is an orgy of sensation, the Friday the 13th franchise or the endless parade of bad 50s sci-fi all rolled up. Spooky stories enliven us, no matter how ridiculously stretched the telling has to get. And hey, I have slides to prove it...



So now, we have the main feature. Obama the alien being, a Muslim in reel one, a radical Christian in reel two, a liberal non-bowling elitist in reel three and, next, now, the ultimate culmination that only sputniks, UFOs, mushroom clouds and Rosa Parks could deliver. Attack of the 50 Foot Negro. There goes the galaxy.

Does it make sense? Hah. Sense would be Hillary Clinton realizing she's fragging one of her own and her legacy in her quixotic search for relevance and its last gasp cartoon of Boomer consultant-solution-speak, all the while making John McCain appear like a breath of fresh air to a GOP-fatigued electorate. Sense in this age of hyperreal, with adults displaying the appetites, patience and judgment of children is as rare as Iridium, something I hear scientists say we find on Earth mostly because asteroids deliver it from outerspace with big cataclysmic booms of their own.

I digress. Benen points out the odd idea that comparisons to Joe Stalin shouldn't trouble a sturdy liberal head but calling a conservative fascist is somehow akin to calling one a pedophile and just beyond the pale. There is nothing so complicated here as the "I'm rubber, you're glue" model of 7 year old debate. But Andrew Sullivan thinks he sees more.

[Kristol's] calling him a lying, Godless communist.

You could argue, as Kristol and others hilariously will, that Lou Dobbs has no base,
that fundamentalist Christianism has no problem with "the other" in a globalized world, that dozens of state constitutional amendments banning civil marriages that had never and would never have taken place were just spirited forms of civic engagement, rather than scapegoating or politicking on resentment. You could also argue, as others legitimately will, that spasms of economic distress and social discontent are unconnected. Hey: Weimar had nothing to do with Hitler. But Kristol is doing something much more pernicious: he is saying that Obama is faking faith, that his very profession of faith is a "mask" that is slipping, and that Kristol is the person to determine whose faith is genuine and who is a fraud.

A non-Christian manipulator of Christianity is calling a Christian a liar about his own faith. That's where they've gone to already. And it's only the middle of April. What are they so scared of?

What? Something so scary, so alien it makes them quake. Something William James would call a 'novel idea,' too novel and too discombobulating for comfort. They are scared of a black man who tilts their understanding of the machine, one whom many of their fellow Rs actually liked before he started getting the Michael Rennie treatment from Hillary and Mark Penn. They are scared of a 6-foot, 1.5 inch man, who is liked almost regardless AND because of his color. But it's his invocation of intrinsic goods, of the things we'd like to believe about ourselves collectively as Americans, that's what makes him seem 50-foot tall.

Leave be those small-town voters who may or may not be "bitter" about getting the shaft for the last 30 years. It's Hillary and Kristol who are apoplectic that their particular Boomer projects straddling two American centuries just haven't been the Moonshots they'd hoped for. They've got nukes. And Flag pins. And the 50-foot Commie-Alien with a real map to the moon must pay.

Sullivan's Mythology: Obama needs more Cowboy

Andrew Sullivan has been dreaming and droning about Obama Republicans--and they are there. But he's taken the Reagan Democrat mythology and spackled it onto the man from Illinois without understanding, I think, how mythology works.

Let's have a look-see.

Peggy Noonan, semi-admiring Obama's Wright Speech here, channels Ronnie Reagan as is her custom, teeing it up for Sullivan. Andy then attempts a heroic bank shot off the gnome, the fiberglass rhino, and into the door of the windmill:

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan: That's why I think Pennsylvania is an opportunity for him. The most tired element, and the least refreshing aspect, of his message so far is a resort to left bromides about the grim facts of American life in the last twenty years or so. There are problems, real problems. Inequality, fostered by globalization, has left many Americans treading water at best. But the vitality of the economy, the astonishing creativity of American industry, especially in tech and pharmaceuticals, the miracle of the Internet, the relative cheapness of items like food and clothing that once consumed far more of the average American's expenses - these are also integral to the picture. Obama hasn't conveyed this complicated picture - perhaps because of the primary season. But he should. America needs hope. But it is not currently hopeless. And its recent past, despite the disasters of the past eight years, has had as many highs as lows.

Yes, the "left bromides about the grim facts of American life" are, well, grim, aren't they? But "if you can't say anything nice..." only goes so far here. A big part of slaying dragons and earning the hand of the fair maiden requires actually being in the company of, well, dragons. If dragon-breath, dragon-wreckage, and dragon-droppings make you queasy, maybe you've picked the wrong gig?

Andy is an unenviable position. Several really. He's actually trying to reconcile some of the metastatic misjudgments he's made in the last 8 or so years, most based on supremely magical thinking and mythic projection (Go to this Slate post of his look into the abyss.)

But, with his support of Obama, he's in a double bind. On the face of it, a vote for Obama offers psychic atonement and a public display of--what?--Hope? Practical open-mindedness? Atypical-white-personness? Probably some of each. But, and big but here, the Democrat's appeal to and via Kantian Intrinsic Goods such as Hope and Courage, Prudence and Charity have direct opposites in the concepts of Wrath and Fear, Sloth and Avarice. As Lakoff is noted for pointing out, orientational metaphors and concepts are meaningless without their opposites. Down needs an Up. Wrath demands Justice. Avarice evokes and revivifies Charity.

In a way, that's what this fight is about--Hillary versus Obama, I mean. He is tuned to Intrinsic and immutable concepts, she is aligned with the tired professional toolkit of "I'm about solutions™," otherwise known as Instrumental Goods. He compels others to consider self-sacrifice and Hope, she offers her time and energy and body as a Warrior, a sacrifice for our good - We Can versus I Will. Hers is truly a Martyr archetype versus his Sage or transforming Magician. Think about that for a moment. Hillary freaks over his ascendence because she, like certain others, can't hear the frequency of Obama's tune; can't understand how "words, just words" deserve any respect in a world of Men and Women of Action--in a world framed and formed by "Leaders" like her, each proud of their formulae and instruments. "Leaders" who misunderstand their job and turn it instead into "management," forgetting or never learning that actual leaders don't so much inspire others as they seek to catalyze those others to self-inspire. The reason this latter, truer definition makes sense is supremely practical -- you can't really do it alone, despite your admiration for Die Hard's John McClane or GE's Jack Welch. Leadership is a sort of 50 State Strategy for the heart and mind where everybody gets to fill their own big chair in ways large and small.

So, Andy, like a surprising (to some) cross-section of Americans are responding viscerally and behaviorally to their idealised self being reflected back at them by Obama. Andy likes liking Andy and believing the best of himself, as do we all. But, as guys like Jung and Boree tell us, the "Self"we're talking about here is the transcendence of opposites--the accommodation of higher and base elements within our psyches--not the banishment of the less savory bits. And there's the problem. Okay, the problems...

There are problems, real problems. Inequality, fostered by globalization, has left many Americans treading water at best.

Damn, "treading water" is what you do while waiting to be rescued, Andy. Or, while waiting for your asshole brother in law to come back around with the boat. It's hard to be charitable and philosophical when you're snorting in water every couple of breaths. Reports from the field suggest most are praying the lifeguard gets to them quick. But I digress. What advantages should diminish the impact of Sullivan's tiring cultural swim test?

the vitality of the economy, the astonishing creativity of American industry, especially in tech and pharmaceuticals, the miracle of the Internet, the relative cheapness of items like food and clothing that once consumed far more of the average American's expenses

Do you see it, or is it just me? A vital economy that has many treading water. A sleek American socio-economic clipper deserving of awe from its "many" citizens, who, while treading water should find the time to admire it's astonishingly creative form as it glides past them on its weekly jaunt to Asia. (Their dream jobs in it's cargo hold one way and returning with those "relatively cheap items" that they tread some extra-more to afford.)

Now, I'm just a stupid business consultant, so take this for what it's worth, but there aren't many middle managers I've met who can muster sustained interest, never mind bliss, when asked to contemplate the trails blazed by pharma science and process materials patentry. Most are consumed with their own variety of dog paddle.

I'll stop parsing with "recent disasters" equaling some imagined "highs" since my overworked prose doesn't do justice to such easy sport as Andy presents. He does deserve some credit for tiptoeing up to that abyss: Sullivan's trying where others remain soulless and unapologetic cowards, armchair dragon-slayers, pretend warriors. But Andy's not going to find his absolution, his clarity (and nor would others), until he lets go of the a la carte method of characterizing the dragons he's really trying to slay.

He's not going to succeed in his apparent mono-mythic journey if he insists on making its requirements conform to him rather than the necessary other way 'round.

The mythology here is really the truest way to explain Andy's temporal battle. Myths are gathered collections of meaning holding immutable lessons played out by people with funny names doing alarming things. They are fantasy or fabrications on the outside, true and sustaining in some way at their core. But it's easy to get them muxed. Noonan's and Andy's Reagan, as history shows, was less their beautiful Achilles and more the mythical three-part Chimera defined - A persona that said one thing, an ego that did another, and a self that believed there was no dissonance between the two.

REAGAN (3/4/87): A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true. But the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.

And so it goes; archetypes need not observe gravity and other laws if they feed some latent or damaged need in those who have the mass, the mouth or the money to sustain them.

Still, the Reagan Chimera, draped over the country as a whole, offends the sensibilities of people who are asked to agree that it is, in fact, a beautiful Pegasus-like steed at all times. It offends people whose mythology and reality are equally alarming: 20 year-old men hanging from trees and set afire is unbelievably horrible imagery fresh in the minds of now-70 year-old men who escaped alive that particular chapter of American White-Horse Exceptionalism. Likewise, 35 year-old workers told to get tech jobs to replace their disappearing factory ones now find, at 50, that the shiny economy they're to be so proud of rewards market sentiment and derivatives--a tea leaves-reading priesthood--not guilds of crafting or coding.

As a self-described clear-eyed man, Sullivan continues to take Myth to childish extremes. And to twist it's utility. He looks for the Perfect Hero, ignoring Achilles' heel, ignoring the flaws of the actor-president he adores; ignoring the necessary qualifications of "Hero." Andy wants Obama to heavy up on the Greek, and go easy on the Tragedy. He wants fantasy within the fantasy, a Gyro, not a Hero.

But, left to their own interpretive devices, grown-up Americans seem quite game to accept the truth within their ideal, to attempt an honest, unvarnished appraisal of at least one national dragon.

CBS/NYTimes National Poll: 70% Approved of Obama's Speech
by rashomon

And so, in order that Andy's cosmology can suffer least damage, Andy prescribes that Obama contort himself to the wrong kind of fantastical storytelling, falsifying the depth of lesson-learning and fact-acknowledging that underlies Obama's outward appeal. Andy wants Obama to make it all better by ignoring what made it "worse." But that is a recipe for another fabled tale, the continued Sisyphean boulder-pushing many sense of life in these 21st Century times that were supposed to be "better."

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Since we mention the Kant stuff above, an update for those following along: M&T has its legs and has had some rudimentary presentations to some hardcore political and finance types last week. The reaction was pretty good and our explanation of OODA, category/event, and the leverage of R-Complex was a hit; clarity achieved. More work to come, but great news.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Good question.

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

By Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney

...I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points—not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.

So, here's my C list: