Thursday, July 09, 2009
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Some Things Need To End
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Posted by:
Jude at
12:23 PM
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Yesterday I had the chance to fly to the Hoover Institute for a free lunch and to see Victor Davis Hanson speak. I highly recommend the trip. It's funny, because as a recording artist, I've had my share of nervous and admiring fans approaching me in all sorts of strange and awkward ways, for an autograph, a handshake and a picture, or just a hug. As I recall (from those golden times of yore... ) there is a particular look and demeanor you take on when someone is barely stammering out kind words in your direction. You want them to know everything's cool, that you won't rush them off, and that you're genuinely flattered, and that maybe they're being a little silly, because we're all just people. Oh, and that you have to keep on moving, so you know, out with it, already. It's FUNNY because I recognized that exact look in Professor Hanson's eyes when I stopped him before his lecture to make a fool of myself attempting to lay out all the ways in which I knew his work and admired him. Total fan crash and burn. I felt myself going down and blurted out something about how I know Hugh. It was really really pathetic. He ended my suffering with a smile and a handshake, telling me to "say hi to Hugh." So yeah. Hi Hugh. Awesome. Now all I have to do is bump into Mark Steyn and start mis-quoting large portions of the American songbook.
That was yesterday. On Tuesday, I joined many of my worldwide friends in watching an amazingly dysfunctional family parade its grief across a stage only their brother could provide. There was beauty and sadness, there was pomposity and the uncomfortable. I especially liked the moment when they let his daughter break down in front of the world. Geez, looking back on it, the Kennedy funeral would have been much more memorable - better TV, really - if only a reporter had put a microphone in front of John John or Caroline and asked, 'Do you miss your Daddy right now? How do you feel, are you sad?'
The best take I've found on the whole event is by the satirical genius Iowahawk (whose "The Idiossey, Poem of Obamacles" I hope VDH has enjoyed) :
Sweet, golden California...what happened? How can it be that after Gray Davis the most frightening words we could here from Schwarzenegger are actually "I'll be back" ? Sometimes, things need to end, preferably bad things. I said on the air last week that this whole Michael Jackson madness and coverage would essentially end once they put him in the ground. Yet, now we understand that they're not burying him yet... People, sometimes you've got to know when to leave the stage! But no, it's going to drag it out for one reason or another, and we'll all keep feeling the effect in the media. Iran has a important protest going on today... unemployment heads toward 11%... an unread health care takeover bill threatens to end many kinds of freedoms over time, yet it looms at the end of this very month... all the while, many reporters will be dedicated to watching the 14k gold coffin of a former pop idol.
That may not be just what happened to California, but from other parts of the country it probably says enough.
Yesterday, Hanson spoke of war, its origins and the perceptions of it across time and today. Among much else, he mentioned that wars ended when the reasons for those wars were no longer. In other words, the argument was over because there was no lingering question, no angry defeated biding their time to return to battle, no "conflict resolution" by an international body to hold the pieces in place until they re-collide decades later. When one side wins and one loses definitively, it may not jibe with our post-modern sensibilities, but it surely stops the hand wringing and the talking in circles. For example, as the professor mentioned, there was no 4th Punic war because Carthage simply was no more after the 3rd. As in, it was gone, utterly destroyed. Rome decided to end Carthage, and that was the end of that. Today we call it being 'wiped off the map', and we seem to be very dedicated to keeping that from ever happening to anyone.
Fine, but if we're dedicated (well, many of us) to keeping all these nations intact, can we at least allow some ideas to end? Lately, it seems as though Obama and his fellow travelers are using his latest round of appeasements to put more flowers on the golden coffins of bad ideologies. With Russia, Iran, Honduras and elsewhere, whether in words or through actions, Obama seems to keep putting off the funeral of authoritarianism and the triumph of freedom. I know that sounds harsh and I don't want to believe it's true, but after reading sections of his speech in Moscow, I think at least his speechwriter could apply for a position writing WWII history for Japanese schoolbooks if he ever loses his first gig.
Here at home, it seems as though we need to walk our representatives up and past the coffin of nationalized health care, hold their sobbing shoulders as they let go of the chance to control more of everything so they can eventually mess that up, too, and put that damned coffin in the ground.
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