Friday, March 02, 2007

The Clintons - True Believers or Rotton Hypocrites?

Wait, why not both! I mean there's no reason they can't passionately fight for ideals while greedily grabbing every dollar they can grab right? Or such is the take in Linda Chavez's latest piece of crap.
Like some 16th-century Antinomians who believed that they were anointed by God and could therefore ignore the moral laws that applied to the rest of mankind, the Clintons seem to think that they can do whatever they want in pursuit of some greater good. But the more ambitious and greedy they become, the less likely they'll get away with it.
I'd like to make a point here - I'm very pissed off and depressed. My initial take on this was to just unload a stream of invectives and call it a day. IJt would make a nice change of pace from my normal way of reading these articles and then commenting on them in a rational frame of mind. It'd be funny - to me anyway (and when you are pissed off and depressed, who gives a crap about anybody else?) It'd be easy, fun, wouldn't require a lot of thought; it's win win win!

I say this because of another article today, by John Hawkins, which takes material from several Liberal blogs (including Firedoglake, The Smirking Chimp, and Wonkette (as well as James Cameron's biography on Jesus's bones)) to prove that Liberals despise Christians. Some of the posts quoted are full of venom and somewhat embarrassing, although the authors are careful to note that they are talking about fundamentalist or radical Christianity, not Christianity in general. I presume John Hawkins, like most Radical Christians, is unable to to see the distinction.

Bloggers have off days - and nobody edits us. When I say something stupid it stays. I'm tempted to go back and change stuff on occasion but I rarely do it, because that's not the point to Blogging. It's not like an article that you live with for a couple of weeks or a book that you live with for a couple of months / years. It's this moment in time.

What Hawkins wants to do, and others of his stripe, is take that one moment of weakness and make that the total summation of Firedoglake or Wonkette. It's a form of objectification, taking a person and making them nothing more than a single action (not even the sum of their actions). Making Firedoglake or Wonkette nothing more than those few paragraphs where they took a bit of a piss at Radical Christianity. As if now and forever that's all they will do - like a little dutch boy forever with his finger stuck in that damn dike, moving neither forward nor backward.

I'm probably over thinking this - Hawkins was just trying to make his Radical Christian Readers feel good about themselves.

I will point out the awful quotation from The Smirking Chimp isn't really that awful at all.
Religious fanaticism is simply institutionalized psychosis and if we ever needed all the help we could get from reality folk (mystics) and courageous scientists, it's now. Our planet cannot be pummeled much longer by these nut cases without passing infinitely tragic points of no return.
Certainly if you are religiously radical that's not a great quote. On the other hand, the religiously radical, including, presumably Hawkins, believe that God is waiting to torture people who disagree with them for all eternity, which seems just as hostile if not more so.

Back to Ms. Chavez and the Clintons. Since I'm not going to just give a string of invectives I guess I'd better say what's wrong with her formulation. First of all, if she is going to complain about an occupant of the White House believing that God has ordained all that he does to be correct, I'd think that there's another person on that list.

Secondly when we Liberals complain about Bush taking large fees for speeches to Conservatoids (assuming he does so), I have little doubt that she will defend him. In other words it's not the money the Clintons are getting, it's the fact that they are Liberals and, well, the Clintons.

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