Why Should a Donkey Be a Jackass?

The proof that there is no Democrat tide is that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are in hiding. You can't have a movement without leaders. No leaders no movement no tide. I hear Schumer at times: "The Bush administration has no plan, we will win." I hear Dean at times: "The Republicans have no ideas, we will win." And I hear pollsters and columnists and projections and criticisms. But no leaders. On the local scene I suppose each candidate is a "leader", and they do have to say at least something in their respective races, but this is a national election, and there's only one national leader.

I should read some of the lefty nut blogs and I will, but I already know what leaders it is they will discuss: Bush, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld. These are America's leaders, they are our only leaders.

Democrats are without a forward banner. The only banner both sides see is white. I just don't believe Americans in large numbers are going to follow a white flag, especially since the one leader we do have is actually quite confident, quite cheerful.

But there is one leader, one Democrat leader, who has recently resurfaced. It's interesting that both sides look at him about the same way. They don't like him. John Forbes Kerry. His joke of yesterday went something like this: "If you study hard you'll get a good job, if you don't you'll end up in Iraq." This was contempt, expressed as wit, or intended as wit. But just what was the target of his contempt is not easy to know. I think those who argue that it was aimed at the troops slightly miss the mark, and I think those who out of hand dismiss his explanation that it was aimed at Bush slightly miss the mark. This was John Kerry, expressing contempt, and with John Kerry, his mark is very broad. This is the way he lives, he is a Democrat. For those who annoy him he has contempt. And he is annoyed often.

This is the image of the moment that Americans have of a Democrat leader. It's true Democrats won't support him just now, they will bury him as well as they can. The last thing they want Americans to see is a true, living, breathing Democrat leader. When you've got an actual leader out there you're no longer living in the generic, and the Democrats know that a flesh and blood actual Democrat leader in a serious time is not astride a white horse. An actual Democrat, leading, is an embarrassment to a donkey.

Victory Soon

I've slipped into my habit of writing in my notebook and not making posts, but I'm gong to put down a couple of thoughts and maybe later expand.

--If George Bush wins this election we'll win in Iraq, because he'll have made clear to everyone that he's a lot smarter than those who say Iraq is a disaster.

--All the fundamentals are good for the Republicans. Gas prices, the Dow, the economy in general, and Iraq and the War on Terror. These last two because they're serious matters and George Bush is a serious man and the Democrats aren't.

--This may be the last hurrah for the MSM. They're Democrats and they may lose badly.

--A lot of close district-by-district analysis is out now. This is being done by people with expertise, experience, and information. They see the races tightening... I don't think they see the half of it. They don't because they pay attention to the polls and they've bought into the idea that these races are local. They're not. This is a national election. It's been made national for two years by MSM, and the people in politics' presuming yet that MSM has influence and so presuming they reflect national sentiment (reported or created), presume as well that this "national" attitude will reflect the vote. I think that they're wrong.

--And the polls are wrong because of this complex of presumptions. They presume, for example, that party ID has dropped for Republicans and somewhat risen for Democrats, because that's what their polls show. I think the polls merely reflect the generalized disgust that MSM has managed to create, I don't think they show that deeper individual judgment that will actually be exercised in the vote.

--I presume all these things simply because I don't think insanity can widely influence the American electorate, and the MSM is insane.

--Last note: George Bush has splendid approval ratings. He's been hammered for two years on every imaginable charge and fantasy, yet 38% of the public still approve of his job performance. Those people are gong to vote Republican! Having withstood this onslaught of nonsense they're certainly not going to not vote. Less than 50% of registered voters will vote. That means that of those voting the Republicans will receive at least 78% of votes cast. That is a Tsunami --It is true that in normal years low approval numbers for a President would indicate low approval numbers for his party. I claim something has changed now, and what has changed is MSM, and because they are so obviously partisan, and since their criticism has so obviously been disproportionate and nonsensical, I simply don't think they any longer have influence. I also think that in their bubble, and in the whole bubble of the political professional class, I don't think they see that.
That the MSM is nuts is objective fact. Absolutely the only question is what proportion of Americans will see that fact.

Reflections Following A Walk With A Democrat

Dear K,

Genius excepted (because nobody knows how genius happens) it's my opinion that intelligence equals effort. Given a certain native equality, that man who works hardest, over years, will emerge as the smartest. We all believe this, that's why we read and study. We know that if we do, in time we will develop understanding and something like wisdom.

And there is something beyond effort, I call it "the instinct for the true", or possibly it's just a passion to see things accurately. This is harder to illustrate, since good fortune might intervene as well.

The example I always use is the difference between Alchemy and Chemistry. If two young men of exactly equal talent and with an equal passion to control the physical world each start on a course of study, but one tends toward Alchemy and the other Chemistry, in twenty years which is going to have the most understanding of the real world, and which the most power over it?

So too it is with ideas. Not all ideas are equally true, and if you have the good fortune of beginning with an idea that is true, in years understanding will develop and with it the power to control the realm contained within that basic idea. If that basic idea references men deeply, then in say, something like politics, your ability to hold sway and to influence will be greater if you start with an idea that is true than if you start initially with one that is false or narrow.

(I will note, parenthetically, that I was the one who correctly understood why Patty didn't show up. I imagine that's because I'm a Republican.)

And a final word on verbal facility. This is something I learned when I was fifteen, maybe fourteen.

My dad was an exceptionally smart guy but virtually non-verbal. It wasn't that he didn't talk, he talked a lot, it's just that he never used the right name for anything, especially when excited. When I worked with him on the farm and he was giving me instructions on something the only way I could follow him was if I sort of understood his meaning at the outset. He would call a screwdriver a wrench and a hammer a pliar. All the while he would be moving his hands so that aided understanding, but I said to myself: "How can this guy clearly be so clever when his words make no sense at all?" I concluded it was because he didn't use words for thinking, but pictures. It's many years later and now I would say that I have no idea how it is that the mind thinks but I know it has nothing to do with words.

I'll state my idea now in this separate paragraph. This is an idea I've held consciously since I was twenty-six: While words normally accompany thought, thought has no necessary connection to words. Thought always is an attempt at communication, and it's for this reason --that words have everything to do with communication-- that they normally accompany thought. But communication can be about anything and for any purpose and at any level; thus it is that words, facility with words, has no necessary connection to thought, because thought simply isn't necessary to blabber. It's by this understanding that I'm not surprised to see that great and easeful verbal fluidity is often the expression of great stupidity. In fact a fluent delivery is aided by conceptual simplicity because the mind isn't burdened by effort. And in the opposite of this it doesn't surprise me that sometimes, though it is rare, a verbal clumsiness might accompany the effort of great insight.

In general I have immense contempt for the idea that verbal fluency equates with developed intelligence. But there's always a way to judge, and that's to listen to more than one sentence at a time. It means to listen to two sentences at a time. It means to listen to many sentences, each as it builds on the former. If this does happen, if you have a series of sentences, each contributing to the sense of those stated before, then you have an organized thought, and it's only by listening to this full organization that you do justice to judging intellect.

Three Notes

--I think as a blogger I have to develop a firmer habit not to gratuitously insult individuals just because I'm angered by their positions. I was a little rude last night to Professor Marge... just because I considered her a snot. But all I know about Professor Marge is that one quote. I should be more a gentleman.

I do know that modern "serious" art is very bad stuff, and that most of those who support this "art" do so because they revel in it's tastelessness. Tastelessness is superiority is new morality. An odd equation but true. Actually, inferiority is as old as man, as is that raging class of the inferior who turn values on their head and thus by definition end on the top of the heap rather than the bottom. It has always been so, but it's only in modern times that the class of the morally inferior has been so large and so firmly ensconced as "intellectual".

Oh well, doesn't matter. This is a democracy. People vote. People have the right to decide if they want to be represented by a pornographer.

--And then it is possible that James Webb is not a pornographer. It is possible, indeed, that he might be a "serious novelist". Public Reading! Public Reading! If James Webb can write he can read. Read to the public! The public can then decide if such a man is morally suitable to be validated by their vote. Seems fair to me. I will note that it has not been unknown in human history that very fine writers have been very well esteemed by their countrymen. And will note further that it does strike me as odd that James Webb would cry he's the victim of a smear campaign when his own words are published.

--Finally, the polls. I think some of my conservative blogging brethren have got to buck up a bit. I have read innumerable comments that the press has never before been so partisan, never before so clearly political, never before so clearly merely an adjunct to the Democrat Party. And you think the polls are different!? My, what innocence among the brethren. Next thing you'll think these things are scientific. I would say this: The MSM is "objective", the polls are "scientific". This is not your father's oldsmobile.

Webb, Fox, & Fun

Webb: An author, always, fairly, can be asked to explain his words. He may not want to, he may not, but, always, the question is fair.

As aspirant to public office, always, fairly, can be asked to explain his words. If that aspirant has at one time been a novelist he can, always, fairly, be asked to explain any of the words he wrote in those novels. And anybody who complains that Webb has been hit with a low blow by being asked to explain his words can, always, fairly, be called really dumb.

This could bear some analysis.

First, Webb's response. He claimed he was a "serious novelist" and that all the passages cited were "illuminative" --no explication beyond that, just that they were "illuminative". I guess defining oneself a a "serious novelist" also defines "illuminative". He then went on to say it was all a "Rovian plot", indicating he's insane; and then went on to claim Lynn Cheney had done the same thing, indicating he's a liar. And so now we know what he meant by saying those passages were "illuminative"; they "illuminate" that mentally he's one sick puppy.

A word to the "artsy". Art is inferior to normal life... unless it happens to be superior. It all depends on the quality of the mind and the soul of the man writing. There is no sacred, special reserve for the artist. Great art is great, crap art is crap, and the way you know which is which is through discussion. This offended sensitivity toward discussion by those who fancy themselves versed within the Sanctum of Art indicates a mind not existent except by the agreement of those similarly of that fine and sensitive, sanctum protected persuasion; but I say: If you can't speak, your persuasion is false. Most art is crap. Most modern art is vile. If it has value, defend it.

I would await a response that's not a cliche.

Note: This is one response:

Margaret R. Soltan, an English professor at George Washington University, said voters should not regard Webb's novels as indicative of his views, any more than voters in England should have been deterred by some of Winston Churchill's more shocking writing.
"To think along those lines exposes you as a person who has no culture," she said.

Wow! Boy! That hurts!


Fox: Another jerk, willing to use his illness to manipulate public opinion to support the least promising most morally problematic area of stem cell research through an amendment that actually constitutionalizes cloning. Not much of a man.

Fun: Presuming that the polls always underrepresent Republicans; that 5% of those listed as Democrats aren't; and that the Republican GOTV is awesome, I would say that any Republican within 15 points in the polls now will win. Republican sweep.

...............
A little more on the silliness. Professor Marge, of George Wa U, saying that a man shouldn't be judged by his writing is a bit distant from the edge of bright because that is exactly how you judge a man. She might have said: You can't judge an author by the character, and since she learned that as a freshman she knows it's true. Or she might have meant that the author is not necessarily the same as the public man. And this is undoubtedly true. The author of the most recently publicized IMs, for example, was not the same as the public man. But when she says that to judge a man by what he has written, as if he were responsible for what he had written, is to show a lack of culture, what she means is that this is to show a lack of the kind of culture she has... and come to think of it by golly she's right again.

I will admit that to make a fair judgment of Webb as an author would take a fair immersion into his writing, say to read four or five consecutive pages. It does seem to me that if Webb thinks his work can withstand that kind of intense scrutiny he ought to hold a public reading. He could put the questionable passages into their brilliant context. I would love to see him establish himself as a "serious novelist". Then the voters could decide if they wanted to see this "serious novelist" represent them in the senate. One would expect that he, Webb, a "serious novelist", would want to share his work with his public. The voters are his public. Everyone knows that an author respects his public, a politician respects his voters. He could regal those who would judge him, and then they could send him on his way.

Know Thine Enemy, Know Thyself

Heard Nancy Pelosi, I believe interviewed by Diane Sawyer, say: "This is a referendum on Dick Cheney and George Bush." Can't get any better than that; and heard Howard Dean say that the top three priorities for Democrats if they take control of congress would be to raise the minimum wage, institute ethics reform, and work on universal health care. Can't get any better than that. In a serious time these people are vacant.

As I've said before, the polls measure dissatisfaction, but the vote is a judgment, and you can't make a judgment on vapor. The only people in this race are Republicans, at least as these races have a national component. The Democrats just don't exist. I just don't believe that a party that doesn't exist is going to draw many votes.

There is Bush hatred. That hatred has somewhat extended to the concept "Republicans", but not very much to specific candidates. It might hurt a little in open seats, where there isn't an incumbent with an established personality, but otherwise the only place Republicans are hurting is where there are local issues. Dewine in Ohio is a good example. Santorum in Pennsylvania (probably because of his powerful conservatism on social issues) is another. The local component. Menendez in New Jersy faces a similar problem on the side of the Democrats. But there is no national positive Democrat strength, and I would argue no national Republican negative.

I've in fact argued that all that's national for the Republicans is positive. Security. There is no national anti-Republican sentiment, I don't care how much the generic polls favor the Democrats. It's pure media creation, dissatisfaction, but utterly without substance. It's not even smoke it's vapor, and it will dissipate with the rising sun November 7th.

Strange year, I've never seen this before. Could just be me. It's been years since I've paid attention to the major media, I mean to their spin and attitude. I know they're my enemies. But it is 24/7. It's all propaganda, it's all Democrat. If they can't swing this election this year to the Democrats, big time, they're not major media anymore, whatever might be their numbers. And this isn't because they've been replaced. Alternative media is still small. It would be because they've so obviously become political. When it becomes so obvious, the "objectivity" in the news comes not from the tube, but from the judgment of the individual. Spin becomes noise.

This is my view. I can't presume this view, so obviously true to me, is shared by others, yet if Democrats don't win, that's a pretty good argument that my view is widespread, and it means that major media, as a political force, is nicely dead.

I presume they are nicely dead.

In two weeks, will major media start to smell, or will I be embarrassed?

Pretty Good Post Last Night

I'm pleased with the post I did last night. I think I clarified in my mind a seriousness of motivation that Republicans have and Democrats lack. This difference is a difference in response to the same vision, that of an insidious, sneaky, hideous, violent Islamic threat. Michael Barone sees that same threat and recognizes as do I that it's a threat felt by every American, but he speculates in an opposite direction. He fears that the balance of the American voter's response will be to deny the threat, to forces themselves to a pretense that it doesn't exist, and to vote Democrat and slip again into a holiday from history.

No one can ignore Michael Barone. But this is an open question, not to be settled finally for another two weeks. Which speculation is right?

There is no doubt that Republicans see this threat and are serious.

There is no doubt that the Democrat leadership does not see this threat, or perhaps more accurately, simply denies the threat, and as leadership is not serious.

Republicans will vote. The whole question now is how many who are not Republican will not be serious, will chose frivolity, and will follow Nancy and Jack? Nancy and Jack and Teddy and Harry all hold out a holiday. How many Americans want to buy a ticket? In my own mind I believe that in the private mind of each American, somewhere, is the recognition that that holiday would be a ticket to Bali.

........
Note: There is an ongoing referendum on these two competing views, and according to the polls it's now the more grim view that holds a double digit lead. Lieberman 50.5%, Lamont 38%. RCP Average.

.................
Just heard Karl Rove. Jolly confident pleasant fellow. He analyzes stat-by-state, distric-by-district. "All politics is local." He does admit national issues, primarily the war and the war on terror, will have some influence. That's been my only focus. I have a reason for that singularity: TURNOUT! It's the national atmosphere, the spirit of both seriousness and hope, that determines effort and turnout, and the advantage of this spirit is all to Republicans.
(4:12 PM)

A National Election

I might consider: What will happen to the Democrats when they lose? They don't believe they can lose, but then they have no rational reason to believe they can win. They've offered nothing but opposition, criticism, complaint. They're cowardly. So what will happen when they lose?

In the same way as there is no rationality to their expectation they will win, there will be no rationality in their explication of their defeat. It will have been a plot. The same people who brought down the World Trade Towers will have stolen the vote, will have messed with the machines and taken from them the victory that was actually theirs.

I have heard it speculated that if the result is close, but the Dems not quite over the top, it will be weeks before we know who controls the house, because it will take that long for litigation to work its way through the courts. This for a certainty is true. But what if the Republicans actually gain?

I'm not certain that this is impossible. It's true that there's no particular reason to be excited by the Republicans, but how is it possible to be excited by Democrats? I've never seen a party stand for less, I've never seen a party more unpleasant, and I've never before seen a campaign where there was no counter vision offered at all.

But there is one vision in this campaign that is new, that is pervasive, that has not existed before, and it's one that every voter knows, and it's this, the one true, underlying, largely unspoken fear... of a bomb going off in our cities. That fear, only slightly acknowledged, underlies everything, because we know "those people" do that sort of thing, we see it all over the world, and that's what I think makes this a serious election, a national election. This changes the ordinary calculus, this makes this a very different election from any other.

And am I right in this, that the Democrat party of the last two years has been one different from the Democrat party in the two years before 2004? It seems to me that in those years of a presidential campaign there was argument, it seems I remember that the policy toward Iraq was to be "better and smarter". Since then I've not heard "better and smarter", I've heard Abu Ghraib, cut and run, detainee abuse, detainee rights, unlawful wiretaps, persecution of noble whistle blowers, and incompetence incompetence incompetence.

This is the platform of the Democrats, to bitch. "If elected: No terrorist ever again will have a panty draped over his head. This I promise. And the world will be a better place for all, and America will be safe."

And meanwhile the average America in odd moments wonders when the next bomb will go off in his city.

It's a matter of being serious. I believe that the party that can make Abu Ghraib a six month story is not serious.

That's why this is a different election. It's a national election because this is a national concern. "Throw the bums out" is not operative in this election. There is dissatisfaction, but there is no true anti-incumbency. Right now that would be a self-indulgence. This is a serious time, and I think people will vote not by trivial emotion but by reason as they see it.

Here of course is the uncertainty. The economy is splendid. To the American mind that means that things are as they should be, so no one will vote the economy one way or the other. On domestic issues Democrats will vote Democrat, Republicans Republican. No change. So that leaves the one thing and that's the war, and that doesn't mean Iraq it means the bomb going off down the street. This is everyone's subterranean thought, it could happen. And I don't know that the judgment on the war will be made on the basis of specifically stated policies, because in truth no one for sure knows what the best policy would be. But there is a difference in terms of who's putting in some effort, There is such a thing as being serious, and I think in our present climate that favors one party over the other.
..............
A note on the polls: I discount those that show approval ratings. With all the wailing in the press nobody's going to be much pleased with anything. Poll numbers on individual races are more problematic. I do think many of the disaffected, who are now placed in the Democrat column, simply won't vote. Because of the press they feel disgust, but disgust is not policy. They don't see an option and so will just stay home. Committed Democrats will vote, but since the entire point of their political philosophy is just to feel good about themselves they won't work very hard to get others to vote. Republicans though, are serious people, and they do care about their nation. They will vote, and they will work. I expect they'll do just fine.

.............. And I see I totally forgot my initial intent, which was to analyze the Democrat psyche, in all its gentleness and fragility. Oh well, another post.

....................
Note:Tom Dashle predicts the Dems will pick up 7 senate and 25 house seats. I bet I'm closer than he is.
Michael Barone notes the same underlying fear as do I, but fears we may be about to slip back into a holiday from history.

The Beautiful Girl

She really was a beautiful girl, an utterly lovely girl, and her folks were rich.

This was back in my high school years. Her folks sent to Italy for a specially designed gown she could wear as Home Coming Queen. This was quite some months before there was a Home Coming Queen. People found out about it and she ended up as just an attendant. She was truly a dark haired beauty, but there was a vote, and enough people were offended by her presumption that they went with the blond instead.

The parallels here may not be exact. Nancy Pelosi, for one thing, is not a dark haired beauty, but there certainly is the presumption.

Is it offensive? Will it change votes?

It certainly is offensive, at least to me, but then I'd vote for a dead dog if it were a Republican before I'd vote for a Democrat. So I don't count. But is there some segment of the population who might find this presumption offensive and so let that determine their vote? There is, the very tiny sliver of swing voter who actually does pay attention, who actually does vote, but who makes decisions on matters incidental and only sometimes political. I've heard this stated on one matter for certain, and I've seen it printed. It has to do with the Foley fallout.

I'm not speaking of Evangelicals, I'm speaking of the mid-line voter who found the Democrat's piling on to be offensive.

This is rather odd. The Democrat party is the home of the homosexual, in as much as they have a home at all. Yet Democrats were outraged by Foley, and it was the Democrats who were outraged that Republicans might be closeting other gays. It was the Democrats who would have righteousness: those gays would be outed.

This is really dumb politics, but the Democrats were righteous because those embarrassed were Republicans, and any charge against a Republican is a righteous charge and justified. But not everybody saw it that way. Some of the small sliver of swing-voters-who-vote saw it as disgusting; and some gays who vote Democrat saw it as frightening, and will stay home.

So within this small group Republicans have gained. I have no idea what those numbers would be. But will this excited presumption of victory, this vain self anointment to leadership, be offensive enough to change the vote?

It won't affect the Republicans vote. Republicans know this is an election of the base, the base will vote. But supposedly this will energize the Democrats, a triumphalism; it is fun to vote when you know you're gong to win. I can't argue with that. But how hard are you going to work in the days leading up to that vote when you know the vote is just pro forma before the celebration? Wouldn't it be natural to just wait for the cake and the drinks and the band? Contrast that anticipatory glee against grim, slogging determination. This is the Republican. They know this is a hard fight, they know they must slog on, they know they have to work every day... But it is very close. On election day the parties come home. America is 50-50. It's all in who votes. So how do you call: grim determination, the slog and the grind; or it's-a-party-let's-party...?

Advantage... Republicans. I don't see how I can be proven wrong, unless the middle-voter-swing-voter actually does vote. I do see the possibility for great bitterness in two weeks time. The dark haired beauty will rage.

The Swing Vote Won't

I simply don't see a Republican wipe out. There's simply no reason for it. You've got two parties. One party, the Democrats, doesn't like the other, the Republicans, and the Main Stream Media doesn't like them either, and so that seems the entire reason that the Democrats will win. They talk to each other, they're very loud, they believe each other, and so they're convinced they're going to win and meanwhile everybody else just sits and watches.

You have one party that has done something, let's just say it was only the border fence and denying amnesty. Let's say that's all they've done. To my mind that's enough. The other party has done nothing but bray and bitch. I don't think that leaves any option. There's only one party that has earned a vote and that's the Republican.

I ignore all other matters: judges, taxes, security, prisoner interrogation, the war, the economy, low gas prices. There is only one party that has attempted action, and one party that has done nothing but bitch.

There certainly is a difference in tone between these two parties, and I think that's something Republicans can recognize, and it's only Republicans who interest me because if they vote they will maintain incumbency and for this election that's all that's needed. And I can see no reason why Republicans should be disappointed with their party.

They certainly can be disappointed with all the braying and bitching and bashing. All that bitching would make anyone sour. But still, there's one party trying to do something, and one party that's just an unpleasant mouth, and I just don't think a mouth is much of a platform, so there's not much reason for Democrats to vote and good reasons for Republicans.

This is what I see as the dynamism of bitching: it depresses people. Depressed people don't bother to vote, they tune the whole thing out, they close their ears, they don't want to hear, don't want to be bothered. The people who are depressed by all this bitching don't pay much attention anyway. They say: "Damn Republicans", and turn on the ball game. There will be no swing vote in this election. Those people will stay home. The Democrats have gained the swing voter in the polls, they'll lose them at the poll. The swing voter won't vote. But the base will vote. They're peeved.

So Democrats have destroyed the middle vote, the marginal vote, the swing vote. This will be an election between the base on either side. There are more good Americans than good Democrats. Advantage Republicans. This is especially true as in this election, as I've said, it's enough just to maintain incumbency. And yet the Democrats think they're gong to win...? --I should write about the beautiful girl...

Note: Pondo Woods

I wrote this in my pocket notebook out in the woods this afternoon:

I went for a walk today to "somewhere", where I thought there would be refuge but there was only my mind.

You can't walk away from your own mind. You can't walk away from what time and fate and genetics have made you. You might as well walk away from your own body.

It's quite lovely though, here in the Pondo Woods, along the river. The yellow leaves are fallen but there are yet leaves green and living; these woods are not yet the skeleton woods of winter.

I was one winter night, walking here once, shortly after one of my favorite mice had died, my last little passionately loved little mouse, when I had this odd thought: "This is the forest primeval, or oh how I wish it were, when Man could talk to Mouse" and so I said: "Pondo, this is your woods, the Pondo Woods, and some day we will speak," and even as I said it I laughed, that had Pondo ever been to this woods he would have been terrified. Adventure for him was delightedly climbing up and down in the sofa chair.

And yet this is to where I walked today hoping I might arrive somewhere and all I found was my mind and I knew that's what I would find yet this is to where I walked. I might as well have walked from out of my own body.

I do yet miss the little mouse. Standing in this woods, his woods, I miss the little mouse though I know he is buried miles from here in another woods though along the same river though on the opposite bank.

Things do seem wild.

To my mind, in my own way, this afternoon I touched on the elemental, and that has it's value.

And I think I'll include this...

Mom

"Honor thy father and thy mother that their days may be long upon the land which thy Lord thy God giveith thee."

I don't know the number of that commandment, I'm not that theologically up to speed, but my intent in the few words I speak now is to honor my mother. And I do know that to honor is sometimes just in the attempt and not in the achievement.

Ma had two remarkable capacities. One was that she was a good mother. She was good because she loved every one of her off-spring equally. Not in the same way --that would have been impossible, in that the personalities were so different-- and not with the same pleasure --some loves are more difficult than others-- but always with the same concern, the same consideration, the same force. Every sibling in this family knew that ma was their ma, that for them, specifically, ma had a special place in her heart.

This force, this fairness, this concern, extended beyond offspring; in the case of this family, to son's-in-law. Every husband brought into this family had a place in ma's heart. They belonged. It was because of this place in ma's heart, because of her centralizing maternal force, that our extended family, while ma yet was of sound mind, was a remarkable creation, a splendid pleasure.


I'd said that ma loved everyone equally... That's not true. She loved one guy especially. He was bald-headed.

I asked ma once how she had met dad. "At a barn dance." Apparently ma, cute as a bug though she was, was sitting alone along the wall somewhere and dad came up and asked her for a dance. No bells and whistles for ma, but she was interested. After the dance she went up into the balcony --since it was a barn that would have been the hayloft-- and looked down, watching dad on the dance floor. I asked her: "How could you do that, from above like that, with all those dancers on the floor?" She said: "I just followed the bald spot." --Ma was not put off by premature male pattern baldness, by that time she had already plucked from her head her first gray hair... She did think his nose was too big.

But if ma wasn't swept off her feet, dad was. He got some people to tell him where "that girl" lived, and followed her home. After that ma never had a chance. Dad knew he had a good one and he never let up. Soon they were married. Ma still thought his nose was too big.

Dad died April 15th. He had what could be called "a medical condition". Ma died June 8th . She did not have a medical condition, not anyway, one of any immediate concern. Her heart stopped. Judging by her naturally slow, solid rate of pulse, ma had the most powerful heart of anyone in the family. Yet it stopped.


So I've mentioned ma's two most remarkable qualities: That she loved her family, each equally, though not the same; and that she loved her husband. I assert that the one informed the other. That it was her love for her husband that empowered her love for her children. If that first love was to have power and meaning, its expression necessarily must be turned toward that which it had produced. Without the one there could not have been the other, and this, incidentally, was why the love was equal, because it was first of all merely an extension of that primary union. Putting it simply, we mattered because dad mattered... He never ceased to matter.


There was a third remarkable thing in ma's life, not anticipated, but I suppose not anticipated just because we all had sleeping intellects. Alzheimer's.

Alzheimer's is a heck of a disease. You slowly go from being the smartest person in the room, effortlessly in command of everything, to not being able to understand even the simplest conversation...simply because you can't remember. Ma could remember one sentence, if it wasn't too long. She couldn't remember two. Very few conversational entries are only one sentence long, so ma couldn't follow ordinary conversation and she seemed stupid.

I don't at all believe that was true.

Just because you've lost the memory capacity that makes possible accurate perception of the immediate, unfolding present doesn't mean that you've lost that deep base of understanding upon which you've structured your life. I put it this way. It's my conviction that ma's understanding was immensely beyond her communication. She couldn't put together a verbal coherence because a verbal coherence requires memory, which she didn't have, but it's my conviction that in deep things that truly mattered ma was as alert when she died as she had been years before when she was merely, and remarkably, just "Ma".

So what happened?

Ma knew dad was dead. We never told her. That may have been poor judgment on our part but we never told her because we thought she would just forget. She would experience shock, she would experience grief, and then the next day she would ask "Where's dad?" and we would have to go through it all over again. But I noticed that ma, once she came off of sedation, once she recovered from her tracheotomy and could ask "Where's dad?" only persisted for a short number of days, and then ceased. She had understood our evasions. She knew dad was dead. She never said a thing about that understanding. That was ma. She kept important things to herself.

And in her last week, in her last five days, she knew where she was, knew why she was there, knew she had cancer and knew she was there for no purpose but to die. And she never said a thing.

I'm told that in that last five days she was constantly loving, warm, and agitated. I'm told that in that last five days her sleep was monitored and that she couldn't have slept more than three hours in that entire time. Ma's mind, in a deep sense, was racing.


In Alzheimer's there's a question of how much soul remains once the body, the neural matter of the brain, has disintegrated and robbed the brain of mind. I've thought about this and my thoughts are not clear. I do know that for many years the disintegrating body did have the upper hand and robbed ma of mind, but I do think, that in the end, by some "magic" that science does not comprehend, the soul finally got the upper hand and controlled the body. And so ma, healthy heart notwithstanding, died. She was ready.

I'm told by Nance that the last day when she had finished visiting with a cheerful ma she said: "I'll see you tomorrow" and ma replied: "I'll be dead by then"; and I'm told by the care worker who found ma, less than an hour later, dying, that she lay somewhat on her side and her hands were clasped together as though in prayer.


I don't know how the soul does this, but I know this was not a death of despondency. Everybody who knew ma those last days speaks of what a joyful, warm woman she was. Ma, somehow, in a deep way, had made a decision, and the body obeyed the soul, and that decision was this: That she had lived a life...that was completed...and that could end.

Bad Dream Fallout

Had 3 1/2 hours of sudden, deep sleep, and then woke to a very bad dream. I've lost it entirely, except that I know it was political in its imagery, it had something of the oppressive feel of a John Lecare' novel, and I woke while viewing a coffin about to be lowered.

I've never in my life before had a dream about politics, and of course this wasn't about politics either because a dream is never about its image. But it is about those feelings that are associated with the images within the dream and I do think this dream was about myself in relation to my society in my isolation from that society and from friends.

Dreams are truth statements. Truth sometimes can be over stated, and usefully so, as it "highlights the issues".

I know that last night just before I went to bed I was thinking about North Korea and not in its political aspect vis-avis the US or other nations but just as a regime that indifferently will allow its people to starve when they're not presently necessary or useful.

I can understand hatred. I can understand how one population might want to exterminate another. As long as there's hatred there --it maters not if it's just or unjust-- if there's hatred there I can understand it. And I can understand policy --one million here, five million there, starved-- just because it's necessary to fulfill "the plan". This kind of thinking is common. Infatuation with "the plan" obscures all sense and recognition of its consequence. The destruction of millions in Africa from malaria after the withdrawal of use of DDT is an example. I can understand these things. I can feel hatred, and I can be very enamored of my own nostrums to save the world, but last night before I slept I thought briefly about North Korea and saw a regime simply unmindful of the death of its citizens simply because at the moment they were neither necessary nor a problem and so weren't thought of at all.

I don't in fact know what is in the minds of those in the regime of the North, but this is the thought that was in my mind last night as I fell asleep and it did not make for a good dream. A regime that can simply "forget" its citizens --starving citizens, dying citizens-- can forget simply because those citizens are not at the moment either needed or a problem... This is unpleasant. It startles comprehension. It is my view of North Korea.

This was one thought among many hideous that passed through my mind in succession in just minutes as I moved to a waking state from that bad dream. I don't believe a man could withstand many such dreams, I know it's a dream that can't rest within the waking mind throughout the course of the day. It would be intolerable, and fortunately it is pretty much gone now and remains hardly as a vapor or even a wisp. -I do remember though the hatred that was expressed toward Foley. The hatred was the justification for the abhorrence with no concern that the charges even make sense and I was wondering if this is the mind-set that the anti-semite enters when he wants to destroy the Jew? I can understand why the Jews would be afraid.

Now That We Know He Don't Got Nukes

In '94, when I heard the details of The Agreed Framework put together by Carter/Clinton I said: "This is nonsense". Kim Jong-Il gets oil and reactors and we get the discreet pretense that he is not making weapons. It was clear he would be pretending because there was no Anytime/Anywhere inspection-and-varification language.

I was tremendously critical: "The time to deal with him is now," I said, "Not after he has Nukes." When it became clear Dole was going to lose in '96 I said: "Oh well, at least Clinton will have to deal with his own mess."

I was wrong, because the problem didn't surface again until "02(?) when The North declared they had the bomb (or were reprocessing). Speculation at that time, with various degrees of hedging, was that they had between 2 and 12. Now though, we know he doesn't have any. At least none he can make go boom, so in fact he has none. So the same criticism I made of Clinton I now make of Bush: "This is the time to deal with him, before he gets nukes, not after." Bush has two years. What's he going to do?

There is the problem of the million man army, the immense amount of armament along the DMZ, Seoul only 25 miles away, and a South Korean people seemingly unable to acknowledge the possibility of war. The positive is the North's extraordinarily weak economy. If there is a general agreement that the North needs to be brought to heel, economic pressure seems the way to do it. If there's not a general agreement --that means China--there's no way to bring a change anyway because presumably, with this nut regime, there's no such thing as a small war possible.

And that's my generally agreed upon statement of the general situation. The question is, what will be China's interest in the matter, and how can that interest be tweaked? It's thought that a defensively nuclearized Japan and Taiwan would not be in China's interest; and Asian nations in general moving toward a war footing would not be in their commercial interests. So this does seem like a diplomacy thing --without the United States!-- because the US talking to Korea would be the victory they need, and they could never make a meaningful agreement because that would be to lose the victory.

North Korea does seem to be a psycho regime. It's hard to see that they have any rational for existence other than ego, the attempt to gain international status by the threat to develop the bomb. --If that's the case they must be feeling very bad right now.

..........................
Is Foley finished? I don't find follow-up, and I know that personally it absolutely no longer enters my mind. I always presume that what's true for me is true for most Americans (plus 50%), at least in terms of what in the news excites my interest.
.........................
Hugh Hewitt has a post arguing that the Dems high water mark was a week ago. --This sudden drop off in interest and intensity does fit with my explanation as to why there was intensity in the first place. It never was a political scandal, it was pure gay bashing, and the bashing came out because the source of the homo-erotic expression was from such an unexpected source, a pretty decent appearing Republican; so caught offguard, people incautiously expressed what they really felt. Sobered now, by a week, and by a genuinely serious news event, they've moved back into their habitual social discretion. The great value of this experience was the demonstration of the instinctive aversion people do feel toward homosexuality --And I still argue that the one person most violated in this episode was Foley.

Big Bomb Boom Bust

No content yet, and the title is obvious, but it is good and somebody's gotta do it and I want to be ready.

I will link the Gertz article.

U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday.

As Drudge would say: developing....

.........................
Ace, at Ace of Spades, has a post (Oct 9, 6:38 PM) that simply and well explains the most probable supposition. Funny too.

The Boom Bomb

This is a matter for serious consideration at some point but there's no hurry.

Apparently my "ho hum" of yesterday may not have been entirely ignorant; it still hasn't been determined if it indeed was a successful nuclear explosion. Three possibilities:
--Low yield "concept test". Totally successful.
--Intended high yield test, but with much of the materiel not entering chain reaction, a fission fizzle.
--Or fraud. Just a bunch of conventional explosives going off to fool the world.

I pretty much dismiss this last. The only real benefit to them of this test is that it would allow them to feel good about themselves. --Or they could be trying to extort carrots, but that seems too sophisticated for me.

That it was intended as a low yield concept test I dismiss because I can't believe they're capable of subtlety.

So fizzle as fact fits. I presume physicists under ill Kim are flustered and frightened and so do bad work. --And I note the Russians have said the yield was 10 to 20 times greater than anybody else has been able to measure. Sounds to me like a cover for Kim; Kim kin cover.

.........Ha! A consideration that this might have been a sophisticated "lost" Russian suitcase bomb!? Exactly the right yeid! That would be scary. An advertisement to the purchaser that they've got them and they work. About a 100 of them out there and missing. --Think Wretchcard came up with this idea.

.......................
Man, that Drudge guy! He posts stuff before anybody else.

U.S. intelligence agencies say, based on preliminary indications, that North Korea did not produce its first nuclear blast yesterday, WASHINGTON TIMES star reporter Bill Gertz is set to report in Tuesday editions.
"There was a seismic event that registered about 4 on the Richter scale, but it still isn't clear if it was a nuclear test. You can get that kind of seismic reading from high explosives.'
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that seismic readings show that the conventional high explosives used to create a chain reaction in a plutonium-based device went off, but that the blast's readings were shy of a typical nuclear detonation.

I must say this uncertainty is kind of fun And it could be useful. Status is probably what's most important to ill Kim, and if he's embarrassed that's a handle that might be tweaked. I'm uncertain just how but it is a handle.

This is the link to Wretchcard's speculation regarding the suitcase nuke possibility.
(10:35 PM)

..........................
Thoreau

And in the interest simply of something different I'm now going to include two emails I just wrote to a friend in answer to a question:

"I guess Thoreau was very upset with the human destruction of nature even a hundred years ago. Is that true?"

The short answer is no, though any academic will say yes.

Thoreau had a great love of nature, the proof being the immense number of hours he spent out in the woods; and he was immensely criticalof "modern" society because it was so concerned with getting and acquiring; it was too busy, it was constantly concerned with work. To him the ideal life was wandering around in the woods during the day, and reading books at night. He was a great example for an individual, a terrible example for a society. And he never was specifically concerned about the destruction of nature.

However, he was a part of the Transcendentalist Movement. These were people who went out and appreciated nature for two hours on weekends and then came back to live lives just like everybody else around them but feeling very morally superior because those others were unenlightened and did not worship nature. And that's the exactly correct word. To Transcendentalists God was pantheistic, he existed in nature, and nowhere else. So they worshiped nature, but didn't much like it.

The ecco-enviornmentalists of today are the Transcendentalists of 150 years ago, merely more extreme. Unfortunately for Thoreau, nominally a part of that movement, he was the only great writer they produced, and so he's been taken up by the present day environmentalists and forced into their world view. He would have considered them of a very inferior moral order. --It is true though, that Thoreau was not theologically gifted. He could not well have explained why their ideas were wrong, he would have just recognized they were fakes.

.....................
A bit more on Thoreau.

He was my hero in highschool. I first read him in the summer of my 9th grade year and he certainly influenced the manner of life I chose more than any other writer. But he was primarily a philosopher as to the best kind of life for an individual. He felt utterly no impulse to transform society, and that's an additional reason why I find it offensive that ecco-environmentalist types try to make him one of them.

John Muir, on the other hand, does fit their mold, he was an activist. He founded the Sierra Club and was instrumental in establishing Yosemite as a national park. Both would have at times made similar sounding statements about "the great cathedral of nature", but their personalities were vastly different. John Muir did want to preserve primitive wilderness against the depredations of man. Thoreau, on the other hand, would have been quite comfortable with "dual use" (though the term didn't exist in those days). He probably would have been pleased that the spectacular expressions of forrest were preserved but to him nature was where you found it. He preferred woods to parks, but anything next to a farm was just fine.

Izaac Walton was another apostle of the joys of nature, and a sort of "dual-use" guy. The Izaac Walton leagues have historically been conservationists, but not environmentalists. That's perhaps because they yet follow Walton's philosophy. He was a conscious Christian and believed man, as a part of nature, yet had dominion over all things. Environmentalists don't like that because they consider man the scum of the earth, the one flaw in the design of nature.

And this is why poor Thoreau can be used. He was a Transcendentalist. God existed in nature but in nature only. It's not far to go from there to say man doesn't belong. But Thoreau never concerned himself with such thoughts. He was a philosopher preaching simplicity and self-reliance who just happened to have a very great love for the woods. I think he was born with that love. It didn't arise from philosophy, in fact never became philosophy. That love was just personality.
(12:29 AM)

........................
Developing Story?

I sent this as a part of the continuing flow of emails, and I am very curious as to whether or not it will bring the hoped for result.
...............

It's been going through my mind for hours now that maybe you ought to try reading Walden Pond. You speak of "Something calming and delightful in natural things even quite apart from any ventures to preserve them." In Thoreau you're under no pressures to take nature seriously. You're under no pressure of any sort. He sets himself the task of trying to lead a personally meaningful life and it just happens that as he does that he's involved in nature because that's just the way he is. If you read John Muir you either agree with him or don't but you get passionate. With Thoreau you don't even notice. Nature is just there, and if you respond to nature you'll probably respond to him.

As I've said, I discovered him when I was 14 and was immediately enthralled and he did shape my life more than any other man.

At any rate, one chapter is all you need to read. You'll either respond to the personality, or you won't. If you like him that's great, if you don't that's no criticism. Some do, some don't. He can be read in tiny bits over the course of months, or all at once, or be abandoned. But there's utterly nothing complex in him. He's straight forward. His power is that he precisely sees simple things that are important to some people.

By the way, he has written some famous essays. DO NOT READ THEM! They're significant, but from them you'll only understand an argument, you won't know the personality.

If you happen to like Thoreau it's like having a friend inside your head who sees the same things you do
...............
I'll keep this space open in case there's anything to follow. developing...
Oct 12, 2:47 AM)
.

Honesty Is the Best...Perceptive Faculty

Checked news again. Nothing big. North Korea is backing off its nuclear test. Ho hum. Some fighting in Iraq, such a surprise... something else... There was one story on Foley.

Then I went to Pajamas Media. Chock full of Foley. I didn't read any of it because I'm sick of it, but there is a reason it's being discussed and that's because it's huge. It's huge because it's sprung loose intense and hidden emotions, and everyone's surprised, so it has to be considered.

Without it's being anyone's intent, this has become a story not about Foley but about homosexuality, and what's been discovered is that nobody likes it.

It's interesting that, though by accidental indirection, this has become an "honest" debate. There's immense intellectual confusion, nothing that's argued is honest, but the emotions are honest: every charge against Foley is "true" because every statement is shaped by emotion and that emotion is repulsion at the homosexual act. What he did is wrong and abhorrent... because it's homosexual.

So the emotions are honest though the arguments aren't. This sort of snuck up on everybody. Republican... Closet... Homosexual. You can jump all over that. Had it been a Democrat, and a proud fellow, a gay, you couldn't have done that, it would have been gay-bashing. But a Republican? Let'er rip. Both sides... And what we discovered is that any kind of nastiness said about a homosexual is okay because that's actually the way everybody feels. Never mind if the charges are true, or that there might have been violations of privacy, that there might have been defamation. Just bash'em. Let everybody know "You're not going to stand for that."

This is honest. Honesty is good.

But I do think now that some are already moving to the more rational. Some are beginning to question the truth of the allegations, the meaning, the damage done, and some are beginning to recognize that this is not an attack on Foley but on a particular group sharing a particular orientation and they're beginning to recognize that perhaps this whole bashing bit needs a bit more thought.

The veil fell, homosexuality is despised, repellent to the right, contemptible to the left. Nobody likes queers. And again, honesty outbursts can be good. As things settle down possibly there will be good discussion. At the very least, nobody is again going to be able to argue that they think this sort of thing is normal, just-like-you-and-me.

On what I consider a related note: Some weeks ago I heard James Carville gloat: "If we can't win in this environment we have to examine what the party is all about." The "enviornment", if I properly understand his statement, he finds "favorable". And last night I read a Time article containing somewhere in the middle this comment (relative to Foley): "...and in the one area where the Republicans had yet held the moral high ground..." the point of the comment being two fold: that Republicans were now seen as harboring perverts, or something very bad anyway, and that in everything else Democrats did hold the moral high ground. This is stunning. No list was given as to specifics where Democrats held the high ground, and no argument was made as to how the disclosure of a Reublican gay could cause a loss of such heights. It was only an assertion, that Democrats held the moral high ground. The point here is that "moral high ground" is not specific but purely definitional: If you are a Democrat, you are moral, and that's it. They actually believe this, and they actually believe that whatever they see as Democrats is actually what's there.

The environment is favorable to Republicans. The economy is great, gas prices are down, there have been no hurricanes, the war on terror is going well, and while the war in Iraq is a slog it's stable. Everything is favorable for Republicans, except the yammering of the press.

This is a strange world we live in. The press is nuts. They live in an invented world, and they believe it.

So, the point of this post is to call the election... But how? Which will have the most effect, the real world accurately perceived, or the press percieved-and-created world of dissatisfaction and condemnation? I don't really know. It depends on what portion of Americans are truly nuts, and on how many additional of the merely marginal the nut filled press can pull with them. The polls right now show dissatisfaction. Yammer upon yammer creates dissatisfaction. But that's not the same as judgment. We won't see that judgment until the vote, and the question is, how many will judge with their own eyes and intellect, and how many will judge only through the eyes of the press?

Foley? Yammer and noise and in the end fairly unimportant in terms of votes. It will die in seven days more by mutual consent. Tomorrow already will be gay-bashing, and neither party is going to want to stick with that. Possibly something will come out yet in the dirty tricks department but that's it. The veil will be drawn back, the wild charges will cease... "I'm so sorry I said that." But everyone will know what everyone thinks, and that will be that you can't any longer say the word gay without thinking the word "creep".

..............................
Ho Hum????

North Korea actually did conduct a test!!!!? Been following it a couple of hours. I "ho hummed" it earlier because I thought it was all just bluster and angling to induce the US into two party talks. Last night if I'd had the time I would have done a short post: They Aren't Gonna Do it. But I didn't have time and didn't and they did, apparently.
(2:34 AM)

.............................
The U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected a 4.2 magnitude quake in North Korea at 10:35 local time (0135 GMT) on Monday, confirming a similar report from South Korea.

I'm very slow to believe this for some reason but a lot of people are taking it seriously.

BBC notes:
The seismic evidence is still being analyzed, but North Korea's announcement is already prompting shock waves around the region.

Apparently there's a general recognition that you gotta have your data down on this one.

Michelle Malkin is following it closely.

I guess my feeling was that they didn't really have the technical capacities to actually make one of those things explode.

Fox News has just reported that a "SeniorUS official" confirms it was indeed a nuclear explosion.

...And just at the moment there doesn't seem to be a lot more being said. I'll remain unconvinced the explosion was actually nuclear until I hear statements that are official statements of government, but that's more of an instinctual intellectual caution than a real doubt.
(3:38 AM)

National Homophobic Frenzy

Hopefully my last post on the matter, though in my last post previous I said the same thing.

I am going to assert that it's all over, because Foley was a decent fellow and had "sex" only once in his life and that was cyber sex in a series of 52 IMs drawn out of him by the little sleaze bag Jordan Edwards and there's nothing much more that will come out.

And I'll assert that what congressional leaders told Foley about the first fellow who complained about the emails was this: "Stay away from the little guy, he's poison".

And I'll mention that I knew a man once who lost his profession because of a false charge of child molestation. He beat the charge, the girl and mother shown to be fabulists, but lost his profession. He lost all faith in his colleagues who had abandoned him. He couldn't endure.

I assert something of this nature has happened with Foley. A decent guy, a little odd, set upon by those who are viscous, and utterly too innocent to avoid the trap.

Evidence for all this? Am I dropping a lot of "facts" in order to make my assertions? This is my argument: "Wait, and we'll see." --It is my understanding that there is one person connected to those IMs; and one person connected to those emails. There were no "victims", there were no "children". And I would very much like to see those new pages who have come forward submit to a polygraph.

What I note is hysteria. A national hysteria. I've not seen this before. There are bloggers doing good work, though they too condemn: "No one is defending Foley" they say, "I too am righteous," and having insulated themselves from shrieks and howls, they continue on and concern themselves with the provenance of the messages; but then, they are cramped within the mob, if they're without the proper snarl their work would be dismissed.

National, homophobic frenzy. Quite something, that, I say.

.....................
Note:
After posting the above I made a note in my journal before going to bed. I've decided to include that:

6:13 --Got this off at 6:03. The rewriting did take quite a while. The tone in a couple of lines isn't quite right. Maybe I'm just tiered. But the point I'm making is simple: There's an awful lot of condemnation for so little evidence; the condemnation is clearly of homosexuality. It has nothing to do with "protecting the children" and very little to do with outrage at a violated trust. It's just plain flat-out detestation at seeing a verbal expression of intimate homosexual interest.

This is a congressman. A Republican congressman. This is not a Democrat, this is not a subculture. This is a national culture, and that's what conservatives can't face. We've made sexual orientation a protected status. We pretend they're "just like us", but then when we see intimacy verbalized we see that they're not, and we can't face it, and so the presumption has to be that Foley is somehow unique, uniquely "abhorrent", a pedophile, a pederast, a predator, a creep... He's a homosexual, that's all, that's it, and it's not much. Either make him illegal or get used to it.

It would be useful to recognize that sexual identity is not the entirety of identity. I'm a heterosexual. I note I don't lust after my mother. My identity as a son supersedes that of heterosexual. This separation is true within a thousand ways. It could be true too of any decent man, even a homosexual. Will Foley be shown in time to be so hideous as everyone now asserts? I just rather doubt it. --Of course my argument is based totally, and only, on my unrighteous and insensitive presumption that he's a decent man.
(2:54 PM)

Drudge!

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU OCT 5 2006 2:53:48 ET XXXXX

CLAIM: FILTHY FOLEY ONLINE MESSAGES WERE PAGE PRANK GONE AWRY
**World Exclusive**
**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**

According to two people close to former congressional page Jordan Edmund, the now famous lurid AOL Instant Message exchanges that led to the resignation of Mark Foley were part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

According to one Oklahoma source who knows the former page very well, Edmund, a conservative Republican, goaded Foley to type embarrassing comments that were then shared with a small group of young Hill politicos. The prank went awry when the saved IM sessions got into the hands of political operatives favorable to Democrats. This source, an ally of Edmund, also adamantly proclaims that the former page is not a homosexual. The prank scenario was confirmed by a second associate of Edmund.

The news come on the heels that former FBI Chief Louis Freeh has been named to investigate the mess.

........................
This now makes splendid and complete psychological sense. The only thing further necessary is that the page come forth and make that public statement. --And then it will be necessary to clarify the specifics of this as a Democarat dirty trick, who got what when, etcetera; and then it will be necessary to dump on Tony Blankley (and many others) as having been quick-to-judgment, unintelligent, and low life scum (appologies would help); and then just generally to follow the advantage to where ever it will lead. Kudos to Wild Bill of Passionate America for "outing" Jason Edmum, forcing those around him to come clean. The "victim", of course, who is of course, a "children", will have to be dismembered and publicly fed to rats. And it might not hurt to remember that one man is a true victim and has been hugely damaged, Rep. Mark Foley. I know he's suffering. He has honor and shame. --Blankely, do you have any honor?

(PM 2:34)

Last Musings (Unless It Bites Them)

Sick to death of the Foley scandal, but I do have a sense now that it's not going to be as big as I'd feared. There's no evidence Hastert knew anything about the IMs, and that distinction from the emails should now be clear to anybody who has an interest in the story.

The fury (I think unfair) is towards Foley, and he's no longer in congress and not available to fan the flames.

I think the publication of more IMs will do no further damage because nobody will read them.

The push to get Hastert is an over reach and looks political. (I presume the Washington Times was being political, some insider agenda thing and it makes them look cheap.)

The MSM can continue to push this but I don't know how long anyone will want to follow since it's so yucky. I can't bring myself to read the discussion anymore, beyond just touching on what's being said. There will be continuing discussion but the moral outrage will be forced and the discussion will be political, and so people will follow their political inclinations.

The interesting thing will be to discover who had these things and who leaked them and that means Democrats and they're going to come out looking sleazy.

If there are further revelations of a similar sort towards others it will point towards Democrats and they'll look sleazy.

Once the emotion dies down this could be a plus for Republicans. The Democrats will look sleazy... And what if it turns out Nancy Pelozi knew about these IMs months or years ago? Ha! Dems dead. Could happen.

A plus is that nobody has paid any attention to Bob Woodward's silly book.

And a real plus might be a cleansing of the mind of the body politic, and a "restart" of thinking. Something emotional knocks the momentum out of previous concerns. When there's a restart there's a refocus and that gives a chance for redefinition. And things aren't that bad.

I think all of this will be happening up and down the next week, and then something new will happen and then there will be a new concern.

This thing doesn't have legs without new revelations.

Resign, Now!

Let's see. 2 1/2 days since I first became aware of the Foley flap. First concern was that it would keep the Evangelicals away from the polls and hurt Republicans. Slept. Next day became enraged that Republicans were dumping on a man who was possibly a very good man who simply had the misfortune of having his private sexual conversation made public. Today I've only read on the matter possibly 20 minutes and am stunned by Republican stupidity. It seems wide spread but I refer specifically to the Washington Times editorial calling for Hastert's resignation. This is presumably Tony Blankley's work. I immensely admire Tony Blankley. He's been drinking stupid juice.

In this entire 2 1/2 days I have not spent 10 seconds being concerned about the "children". In fact "concern for the children" would never have entered my consciousness if I hadn't heard it mentioned so often. That's stupid juice talking.

I still argue that the only man wronged in this affair is Rep Mark Foley, who was merely being normal and private within his legally protected status.

The people arguing that his conduct was abhorrent and that he should therefore be somehow punished are themselves criminal, --or are at least arguing outside of the law.

What these Republicans find abhorrent is not Foley's action, which within his status are unremarkable, but homosexuality. If they were honest and non stupid they would recognize that and say that.

My side is stupid and dishonest. The immorality (and possible illegality) in this affair has been committed by those who made public what was meant to be private.

I'll repeat a third time: My side is being stupid, dishonest, and dishonorable. If you don't like queers for God's sake say so, and don't give me any of this nonsense that you think they're normal.

And it wouldn't hurt to remember that it hasn't even yet been authenticated that these things came in this form from Foley. To take disclosure at face value, whatever the probability, indicates infantile intellectual development.

My God does my side stink. The only decent thing they can do is resign.

I'll miss you Tony, you're a good writer.

(And there I go myself. I don't actually know that Tony wrote the editorial (or even knew about it or agreed with it) in the paper of which he's the editor)

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Just read this:

From David Roth, Foley's attorney. (The "trauma" referenced is an asserted childhood molestation by a priest. The important sentence is the second one:)

"Mark sustained trauma as a young adolescent," Roth said. He "attributes this to his inappropriate IMs and text messages, but does not make any excuses for them."

This seems like authentication.

(7:56 PM)

Moral Offense

Moral stuff has entered the Foley mess. Pretty offensive. Nothing brings out the stupidity vapors more than public people taking a public position on homosexuality. Public figures fear homosexuals, they fear the homosexual lobby, they fear their own hypocrisy and hide as far as they can from honesty. They become their own internal islamofacists, scared to death that they're going to blow themselves up.

I'm not a public figure. For the record: I consider homosexuality to be a perversion of nature, and for the record: I can see absolutely nothing wrong with what Foley expressed in those emails and IMs. He's a homosexual for God's sake; within that context what he expressed is normal. If you accept that homosexuality is in anyway protected, then that expression is protected. It was not a public indecency, it was private.

And for the record: The truly and only moral man is the one who marries his highschool sweetheart, himself still a virgin, has six kids by that one wife, and never looks at another woman. That includes exactly zero of my friends. If I want to have friends, live with myself, and appreciate people in regard to their true worth I have to recognize that sexual imperfection is universal but that there are degrees of both excellence and failure and that there are other values as well.

It's said Foley wrote emails that are "creepy". You've got to be creepy to read "creepy" into those emails. It's true they might contain a cast of expression that is not strictly heterosexual but to me they sound very much like an older man struggling to find something to say in reply to a very young man who had written him first.

The IM's are disgusting. They are sexual. They're homosexual, of course they're disgusting. But I'll note that any verbalized intimate sexual expression is disgusting if it's not my intimate sexual expression because it's private! If you don't think there's some difference between private and public try doing your toilet business tomorrow in the middle of a stadium and tell me you don't feel embarrassed.

Foley is described as "warm and caring". Is that to count for nothing? Hey all you God awful Christians out there. Tell me, does being warm and caring count for nothing? I'm a Christian, and I tell you that it does, and I tell you that caring is something that should be honored. But you stuck your face in his private parts and you find it disgusting so now you want him destroyed. What vile Christians you are.

"But I didn't stick my face in there, he dropped his pants." He did...? Those were private communications. Who put those communications out in public? Who painted that portrait of Foley sitting on a toilet in the middle of a stadium? I tell you, it is natural to find homosexual sexual expression disgusting, but he's not the one who made himself a spectacle.

"But the boy was young." So? Boys are young, old men like boys. It's called being homosexual.

"But he was innocent." My God it is getting thick. He was answering those IMs.

"But he was being exploited by power." He was an ex page.

"He was damaged." He was a homosexual. Within his context he was being as natural as Foley.

So anyway, all this righteous outrage by Christians and other decent people who really ought not be such slime bags really turns my stomach. Either you condemn homosexuality per se as being unnatural, or you accept that in this instance there is only one man who has been truly wronged and that's Representative Foley.

And what a strange position for me to be in. I do condemn homosexuality as being a perversion of nature, and yet I end up defending what I find disgusting because within the context of what is now legally protected what he was doing was totally normal.

My own feeling is that homosexuality ought to be illegal but ignored. That's a continuation of a credo I developed when I was seventeen and first discovered this odd aspect of life: You leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. The only reason you make it illegal is so that in a situation like this you don't end up being a hypocrite, just vicious.

Go after the real people who need to be condemned, the people who set this thing up and leaked it.

Our Lost War

I did read on this Foley stuff a few hours last night and when I did get to bed at 7:15 I stayed awake quite awhile with it in my mind. I can't say I actually thought about it --it's too junky and yucky for it to attract the intellect. It is going to be bad and it is going to hurt Republicans. It could be very bad. It's one of those things that just creates distaste. That means emotion not reflection, so so much for my idea that this will be the smartest election ever. Just what's going to happen I don't know but this is the silly season so it's not going to go away and it's going to be a mess. The ramifications could be immense. Loss of the House, loss of the Senate, loss of the war.

I don't consider the moral infraction to be that great. I consider slight, occasional, private sexual weirdness to be probably nearly universal, but this particular stuff is particularly yucky. Politically, the worst thing a Republican could do is say: It's no big deal. (That's a Democrat position, though that's not the way they're going to play this.) There's no upside for the Republicans. Do the right thing, hope for the best, and hope the Democrats overplay their hand to the point of being offensive... Pretty weak. Looks bad.

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UPDATE UPBEAT

An exceptionally interesting piece in the American Thinker on the Foley matter. The author (Clarice Feldman) doesn't draw these inferences but from the material presented they're obvious: It's possible this whole thing may not only be a setup, it may be a fraud! Maybe. It's possible Foley didn't write those emails, not the sexually explicit Instant Messages that are the real problem. They may have been created by an anonymous blogger, utilizing Foley's known email handle, and the knowledge that Foley had previously been admonished to take care not to appear to be in inappropriate contact. Psychologically, this makes immensely more sense than that Foley was a secrete pederast. I can see viscousness and smear from a blogger, and I would be pleased to think that Foley was actually an upright man. I would vastly prefer this even apart from concerns with Republican fortunes.

This evening maybe I'll write out the logic, but right now I've got to go outside and make use of the little remaining daylight.

Read the article. The argument is obvious, which is perhaps why it's not stated. It's only a possibility but it's easily and creditably possible.

(5;38 PM)

To Take It From Another Angle

To take it from another angle. I'm a Democrat. It's 37 days from election time. The polls are good and Iraq is wrong and we can't win. These are the really big things; plus Bush is a dunce and evil and nobody could possibly vote for him, --unless they were dumb and evil as well. This fairly describes the Democrat base. They've got to be feeling pretty good. And good will triumph over evil.

There are annoying things. Bush's approval ratings have gone up to the low forties... That just means there are a lot of dumb evil people in the world. Gas prices have gone down. That's bad, but minor. There have been no hurricanes... Inexplicable, but hey, there's a month left yet. The economy isn't as bad as it could be, but it is bad (this is an article of faith). And some Democrats have caved on the Detainee Detention Bill and the Secure Fences Act, disrupting purity, but still, this is minor. The only really big thing is Iraq and it's wrong and it's George Bush's fault and so we're going to win in November.

This is my understanding of the mind-set of the left. That's a large group, maybe 20% of the voting public, but it will be 100% of the national message, in as much as there is such a message. There just isn't anything else that really matters. (Whether this pederast story will develop I don't know, I haven't at all followed it.)

I do find it striking that in a nation so large and complex as ours it all comes down to the perfidy of George Bush, that there is no other debate, that everything else just comes and goes...

(If it does turn out that Hastert knew about the pederast and did nothing that will hurt because that's leadership and that means Republicans in general. It could be a really big thing, throwing everything else topsy-turvy. It would be the Catholic Bishops all over again. It will be as big as Abu Ghraib, though justified this time because leadership knew and should have done something and didn't. If this is true Dennys got to go, bingo! or the whole party will go down with him. --It's only just now at this moment that I've had this thought, and that without reading a single article though I have read a half dozen headlines. I haven't read them simply because the whole topic is yucky. But if it is true that Hastert knew and did nothing I think Bush has to call for his resignation tomorrow... Man, I wonder if this is a real perception on my part or if it's just late and I'm not functioning very well...

This isn't what I initially meant when I started this post: To Take It From Another Angle.

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Looks like Rep. Thomas Reynolds, New York, is the one scheduled to take the hit. But that's one more down, two in this scandal, and a lot of bad press. Evangelicals don't like this sort of thing and if they don't vote we're screwed.

I think his seat is otherwise solid, at least I don't see him on the RCP list of threatened Republicans.

Will read more about this tomorrow. The House is in crisis mode. They know this could be big. I'm the only one slow to catch on.