StephenKMackSD's Blog

Cockeyed Platonist (CP) titles his latest political essay ‘The Quest for Dignity’. His penchant for the overarching abstraction, the form of his thought, his intellectual modus vivendi is again manifested. We are treated to this argumentative reductionism, again, in his idea of ‘the great mental tide’ that he postulates as occurring some fifty years ago. In sum a suspicion of ‘trusted authority’ and the belief in a ‘fixed place in the social order’ as no longer viable. That would, perhaps, place this notion outside the memory of most of his readership, making it attractively out of a manifest critical scrutiny that could be exercised by a historically sophisticated reader, or even an aging reader with recall.  He continually refers to a ‘people’ and a ‘they’ both remaining undefined, un-described and tantalizingly amorphous. This is speculating pseudo-philosophizing of the most trivializing kind, but the expression of an intellectual pragmatism bordering on the mythical, even the Hegelian: a happenstance of his style of argument?  These critical evaluations are fascinating in themselves, but we must move further into the essay, to plum its depths, if any. One primary idea is the ‘freedom recession’ defined as: ‘more governments retreating from democracy than advancing toward it’ ; this all being a mere introduction to critiques of Hillary Clinton and The Obama Administration for being confused and seemingly ineffective in the Egyptian Crisis.  CP links to a set of imperatives issued by the Working Group for Egypt and characterizes its recommendations as ‘smart and concrete’, again undefined, which upon reading , a two page report,  seems to be stating the absolutely obvious; garnished with the signatures of  the appropriately credentialed experts, an issue paramount in CP’s world view. A critic could safely say two thing of this essay: the abstractions are capacious enough to accommodate what passes for analysis and that the cliché is in the hands of a man wholly enamored of its seductive intellectual power.       

Civic Mechanic (CM) presents us here with a collection of random thoughts and intellectual cliches quickly stitched together into an ill fitting garment. It is misshapen, baggy and full of holes especially where the seams show. Bad construction with shoddy materials are the clues to its 'success'.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/02/AR2011020205042.html

The Great Will (TGW) adopts the rhetorical guise of reportage in his extended and seemingly unapologetic press release for candidate Rick Santorum: titled ‘Rick Santorum’s appeal to the GOP base’. The obvious question for a political cynic like me presents itself as: is TGW on the payroll? Given his history with Ronald Reagan as candidate and President that is a legitimate question. But here is the piece de resistance of this relentless hagiography:

‘Santorum does not ignore economic issues, but as a relentless ethicist, he recasts those as moral issues: "What is European socialism but modern-day monarchy that 'takes care' of the people?" He is, of course, correct that America's debt crisis is, at bottom, symptomatic of a failure of self-control, a fundamental moral failing.’

TGW, as one of the most prominent of America’s Fake Political Moralists, he cannot resist the political opportunity to lecture his vast audience on their ‘fallen state’, his perennial subject. Yet we cannot resist  pointing at the many failings of Political Conservatism and its economic corollary ‘Free Market Economics’ as demonstrably vacuous, in terms of anything but a corrupt, self- promoting burlesque of  the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer. 

The power of the American Hegemon is waning and the supporters of that old order cling to their illusions of moral/political supremacy, as if it were a generation ago. The American Lekudniks and their political allies cannot admit their fear of the collapse of a modus vivendi that has lasted for over two generations, in terms of ‘Middle East Policy’: it now seems to have become a subject for concern and debate, as the Egyptian People decide their own collective political fate, without the paternal guidance of American policy makers. Mr. Reed questions Mr. ElBaradei’s veracity, credibility and suitability for the leadership position of a new Egyptian government, by casting aspersions on his person and his work as the head of the IAEA. Mr. Reed seems consciously oblivious of the facts of the non-presence of WMD’s in Iraq, as a fact of history, not as a point of political propaganda employed as if it were actual.  And the ‘American Left’ plays a part here in the larger political melodrama, in Mr. Reed’s précis of a small bit of ‘History’ re-imagined without regard for any imperative except simple political opportunism.