In the comments section of my last post, my friend Jim noted that a right wing blogger whom he and I have previously interacted with recently commented on the Blagojevich scandal and Obama's "proven" involvement in the selection process. Jim wrote:
"The interesting thing here is where our friend points out what he sees as the "proven" dishonesty of Obama in the matter, based on whether he was involved in the process of the selection of his predecessor.
It's fascinating, the two different universes of the conservative vs. the liberal blogs!"
I'm pretty sure that Jim is criticising our blogger friend for arriving at a conclusion that is unsubstantiated by (and even contrary to) the actual evidence that has emerged thus far. Our friend believes, mostly for ideological reasons, that Obama is a liar and/or a crooked Pol. He will, therefore, accept as true, without critique, any evidence he can find as grounds for maintaining (and propagating) his belief. The idea that the T.V. station retracted its stories because they were unsubstantiated or erroneous is a non-starter for him. A purge calculated to facilitate Obama's lie is the only possibility. And, as we all know, where there's corruption smoke - in the form of lies about meetings - there's corruption fire!
To the extent that this is Jim's message, I say "here here!"
However, Jim added that, "It's fascinating, the two different universes of the conservative vs. the liberal blogs!"
While I too find the "dual universes" phenomenon fascinating, Jim's point cries out for clarification. Jim's comment potentially suggests that left wing bloggers who have concluded that Obama is innocent of corruption, or who have suspended their judgment on the issue until more facts emerge, are evaluating the available evidence through an ideological prism, just like their conservative counterparts. But nothing could be further from the truth. To date, zero evidence has emerged implicating Obama in the Blagojevich scandal. Moreover, the evidence that has emerged (Blagojevich's taped commentary stating that the Obama camp "won't give us anything but appreciation") is highly exculpatory.
This does not conclusively prove that Obama is clean. But it does mean that a belief in his innocence, or a suspension of judgment on the matter until more is known, are rational responses to an objective review of the available evidence. Our friend's belief in Obama's fundamental dishonesty (and his implicit accusation that Obama is corrupt), to the contrary, are constructs of ideological fervor and conspiracy thinking.
Granted, our friend would undoubtedly make the same claim about my ("left wing?") conclusion. But unless we assume that human beings are so inherently biased that we are completely incapable of evaluating the evidence for, and the logic underlying, competing claims, objectively and accurately (in which case there is no point in talking to one another), I'm confident that reasonable people, unmoved by ideological fervor, will agree with me on this issue.
I say all of this because it is important for us to distinguish between those times when a person's opinions are purely products of their ideology and those times when a person's opinions are based on credible evidence and reasonable inferences drawn therefrom. It is also important to recognize that there are not two equally compelling sides to every disagreement. Sometimes one side has all the facts and logic and the other side has nothing but spin, misinformation, and conspiracy. We should never forget this.
I have no doubt that Jim agrees with me on these basic points. Also, I am well aware that left wing ideologues can be just as delusional and conspiratorial as right wing ideologues. In fact, I'm currently reading a fascinating book by Mathew Taibbi, contributing editor to Rolling Stone Magazine, called "The Great Derangement," that explores this very theme. Taibbi went undercover to explore evangelical/pentecostal derangement on the right and the 9/11 truth movement's derangement on the left. It is an absolutely fascinating read.
What I'm trying to say is that we should be careful not to suggest that ideological delusion exists on both sides of an issue when it clearly exists on only one side. Remarking on the "fascinating" fact that left wing bloggers and right wing bloggers occupy different conceptual universes suggests that both are equally ideological when, at least in this case, they clearly are not.
Joe H.
Posts
The Years Of Writing Dangerously
9 years ago
4 comments:
Hiya, Joe.
I'm the "rightwing blogger" in question, and unless I'm forgetting something I wrote, what I said about Obama has nothing whatsoever to do with ideological blindness.
I began my evaluation of Barack Obama with a clean slate; I simply did not know the man. My evidence for Obama's dishonesty was acquired from a series of similar incidents that occurred throughout the election season. I didn't think it required copious support in my recent post since we're all more or less familiar with the incidents, in which an astonishing parade of Obama's associates got "thrown under the bus" (Wright, Pfleger, Ayers, Khalidi, Powers, Malick, Al-Hadi, etc.) If you really need me to provide documentary support for the pattern I've seen, I can probably supply it for you, though it will take time. There's a lot of data.
My observation is that President-elect Obama seems to have a reflex that makes him say "I don't know anything" or "I wasn't there" as soon as any report about him surfaces, whether it's true or not (and in practice, it's usually not true,) something like the guilty 11-year-old's reaction whenever he hears a parent making a disapproving noise.
In this particular case, it's quite clear that his reaction was an ill-considered reflex, and it hurt him. There's no reason on God's green earth why he shouldn't have been talking to the governor about his successor, and no reason to think those conversations made him party to Blago's auction -- until he lied. Suddenly, just because he lied, critics and investigators have a reason to check him out more carefully.
I don't think I'm being uncharitable or even controversial by drawing inferences from the President-elect's pattern of behavior over time. He's got nobody to blame but himself for my assessment that his denial is a reflex, and not believable. The ideological blindness occurs in those who, after watching 10 or more instances of the same behavior, still insist that we have to treat each denial as though it were the first.
Hi Plumb Bob,
My first point was that you are inclined, by ideology, to interpret everything Obama does or says, or anything that happens in relation to Obama's actions (like the T.V. station pulling its stories), in a way that indicates corruption. I stand by that view. I've read statements on your blog, including statements in the post we're currently discussing, suggesting that you think our nation might not survive an Obama presidency. That's pretty hysterical, in my opinion.
Also, I'm still not clear regarding what lie Obama told regarding his conversations with Blagojevich. What did Obama say(specifically) and how do we know that it was a lie?
Second, your post suggests that Obama and all Democrats are corrupt by referencing them to Clinton. I'm not eager to defend Clinton, but that tactic (broad brush sliming by association) is unfair and logically unpersuasive.
Third, and most importantly, your suggestion that our culture is suffering from a lack of virtue because it tolerates corruption (I'm paraphrasing from memory and apologize now if I've misstated your view) is obviously correct, but that's the least of our problems. Our real problem is that we're more concerned about ordinary character flaws and pedestrian corruption than manifest evil.
Yesterday, Vice president Chenny bragged, in an interview aired on national T.V., that he supported and worked to implement the U.S. policy regarding interrogation of detainees in the "war on Terror," including waterboarding.
Waterboarding, like the rack, has been an archetype of torture since the Spanish Inquisition. I've also read credible sources (though I have not personally confirmed this) that the United States prosecuted Japanese commanders for waterboarding U.S. soldiers during WWII - prosecuted them as war criminals.
Vice President Chenny admits, on national T.V., that he committed war crimes and we all (and you in particular) ignore it and focus instead on truly momentous crimes like Blagojevich's influence peddling and whether it taints Obama (who may also have the character flaw of reflexively downplaying or denying associations with embarrassing political figures).
Plumb Bob, you're, in the words of Jesus, straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel. Ordinary character flaws and pedestrian corruption seem pretty unimportant when we're confronted with evil. And the fact that you're gravely concerned about the former and, to all appearances, unconcerned about the latter, confirms my belief about the role ideology and tribal loyalty play in your analysis.
All the best.
Joe. H.
Joe, great conversation with Phil there.
You said: "Jim's comment potentially suggests that left wing bloggers who have concluded that Obama is innocent of corruption, or who have suspended their judgment on the issue until more facts emerge, are evaluating the available evidence through an ideological prism, just like their conservative counterparts."
Make no mistake, Joe....some left wingers are doing this very thing. They just happen to be off the hook in this case because they are likely on the right side of the truth.
There are reasonable bloggers on both sides of the aisle who do NOT do that, and I commend them for it.
Jim
Joe,
The interesting thing about your complaint is that I was very, very circumspect in what I said about President-elect Obama, deliberately avoiding any outright accusation of corruption. I said he was involved in the decision-making; and in my comment here, I clarified that there's no reason why he should not be. My complaint was not that the Blago incident proves Obama is a crook (it does not,) but that it added to a heap of suggestions that he might be. I'll stand by that.
He did lie, though, and I'll stand by that as well. Obama's immediate response to the announcement was, and I quote: "I had no contact with the governor or his office and so I was not aware of what was happening..." That's not even plausible on its face. We knew at the time that David Axelrod and KHQA both had said that Obama had spoken with the Governor about the appointments; the retractions from both fit the pattern of previous attempts by Obama to manage gaffes like this one, so were (and remain) suspect. We now know that Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's chief of staff, appears on the FBI's surveillance tapes speaking with Governor Blagojevich on many occasions, and that he delivered Obama's list of "preferred candidates" to Blagojevich. When a man says "I had no contact with the governor or his office," but in fact has sent his chief of staff with a list of preferred candidates, he has lied. Sorry, there's no other possible interpretation among honest men.
This is not the result of some ideological predisposition, but a sober assessment of the facts, an assessment made properly in the light of a year's worth of data concerning the candidate, his behaviors, his associations, and his political connections. Recounting even the highlights of that year will make this comment longer than anybody will want to read; suffice to say that the only thing about this scandal that surprises me is how soon it occurred. Barack Obama is a cynical, hard-ball-playing, Chicago machine politician, and manifestly a dishonest man; his political advisors throughout his career have been hatchet-men for the Daley machine. We've known this for at least a year.
There's something decent, even sweet, when a young man sees the object of his heart's affection as chaste and innocent, and thinks the fact that she's forced by circumstances to sleep in a brothel is just hard luck. When grown men who ought to know better continue to pretend that Barack Obama is the only virgin in the whorehouse, though, it's not so sweet, and it's not just naivette', either; it's blindness induced by partisanship.
To address very briefly other matters you mention in your comment:
1) My suggestion that the republic (not the nation) will not survive the Obama presidency is not related to his corruption, but rather to his policies. I've been saying this for at least 4 years about all the Democratic candidates for President (including John Kerry,) noting specifically that they openly favor policies that cede US sovereignty to the United Nations on several fronts. Your own call for "war crimes" prosecution of Vice President Cheney is among those. Other suggestions potentially ceding sovereignty include international carbon taxes, UN charity taxes, suspension of capital punishment, UN election oversight, and gender and race quotas. If the President and Congress make US law subject to international veto or amendment, American self-government ends at that moment. You may disagree, but that's not hysteria, it's an interpretation of a very real possibility.
I do have other concerns about the tenure of American economic liberty, the survival of the American economy, and about the government passing laws like that requiring doctors and nurses to perform abortions in violation of their consciences. Liberty of conscience is one of the foundational concepts of American self-government, and its abrogation would mark a disturbing return to tyranny that probably ought to be described as "the death of the Republic." The term "survival" is relative. I do think that at the end of the Obama years, there will exist a political entity called "The United States of America," and that it will still claim to be governed by the US Constitution; I just think the core meanings of those will be gone.
2) My broad-brush condemnation of the nation, and particularly of the Democratic party, also rests on observation rather than predisposition. Recounting the Clinton years, again, would take more space than anybody would welcome. In brief, I watched the bulk of the Democratic party (with notable exceptions) rise to defend what could only be described as a flood of apparently-criminal activity by a narcissistic sociopath, doing its very level best to ignore clear instances of graft, the use of austere organs of the law as weapons of partisan political vendetta, compulsive lying, deliberate and egregious side-stepping of constitutional boundaries, possible rapes and murders, and even astonishingly juvenile destructiveness; they just kept pretending there was nothing to see, and to this day some refer to the scandal-du-jour of the Clinton years as "nothing but a blow job." Then, I watched the same people spend the next 8 years attempting to invent criminal charges over ordinary governance by what frankly strikes me as the cleanest Presidential administration in my lifetime (although I think Ford's administration may have been similarly clean.) Now, with Obama, the deliberate whitewashing is starting all over again.
"He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the righteous, both of these alike are an abomination to the LORD." Prov 17:15. The biblical name for this 16-year pattern is "perverting justice." If you think the large-scale, wholesale perversion of justice in this manner, condemning the righteous and excusing the wicked, is just ordinary human weakness and not of concern to the Almighty, then I suspect it's time you reread the Hebrew prophets. This is the sort of wickedness that earns the destruction of nations.
I attribute your description of this pattern as "straining at a gnat," to the fact that you probably didn't know my thoughts on the matter. You probably disagree with my recitation of the facts, but if I'm correct, this is no small thing.
3) I address the question of Dick Cheney's "evil" on my blog today (http://www.plumbbobblog.com/?p=2387.) Feel free to come visit. Predictably, I don't regard my failure to mimic your hysterics about those three instances in 2004 on which US agents used the waterboard as "swallowing a camel," either.
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