Well, I found the source of that offensive smell, itch and irritation. And it ain't the fridge that stinks.It isn’t so much the buffoonish way he approaches issues of such gravitas, although I do find that disrespectful and offensive on some level. It isn’t his reliance on cheap tricks, like show-boating in front of the camera when people refuse to talk to him, or shouting through a bull-horn off the coast of Cuba. It’s not even his smug, smart-ass attitude that pervades the far-left and right equally.
It’s his sloppiness. Not in dress, but in thought (although he really should rethink his wardrobe--God does make things besides sloppy T-shirts and khakis that obviously haven't seen a dry-cleaner in years).
I listened to a conversation this morning between Slate’s Dana Stevenson and Timothy Noah (listen here: http://www.slate.com/id/2169131/nav/tap1/) that clarified my own negative reaction to the man. They both pointed to what could be called the delineation of a set of problems or circumstances with no attempt to look at them intellectually. Ms. Stevenson even opined that the latest film’s logic would not have stood up in her high school debate club.
That’s when I had my epiphany: Moore does not come from a position of logic so much as belief. Like empty-headed extremists on both sides of both parties, he believes he is right and doesn’t feel the need to prove it.
To him it’s as self-evident the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were to Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams. He doesn’t feel the need to explicate or intellectually develop any argument for injustice the way that the framers of the Declaration of Independence so agonizingly did.
The whole issue has also helped me clarify my distaste for the so-called political intelligencia in Austin, TX, the city where I have chosen to make my home. I moved here in part because of its liberal reputation and have lived happily as an openly gay man for over 15 years. I enjoy the freedom of liberalism, but I cannot respect a large part of self-identified liberals here who, among other things, blindly hold corporate America responsible for all our country’s ills, from poverty to corruption in government to war.
There are many more causes for poverty, corruption and general governmental evil than they can fathom.
It’s their starting point for opinion, and not their conclusion. If you start any line of reasoning with “Given that corporations are responsible for the downfall of our nation”, just imagine where you can end up.
The end result of such shallow thinking: anywhere you want, and still be able to be smugly assured that your opinion is intelligent because the other side just didn’t know where to start.
They seem to think they have a special dispensation of knowledge that needn’t be questioned because, well, it’s self-evident. It makes it so much easier to condemn everyone who disagrees with them, because they are obviously ignorant.
I abhor the politics of condemnation, especially when it it so obviously insincere.
As a country, we have have more in common individuals that we have different. Most of our values are the same, even though they might vary slightly.
We want the same thing: the right to be left the hell alone and pursue our lives in a legal manner without having someone looking over our shoulder or telling us which consenting adult we can or cannot have sex with.
They're just fundamental rights. That should be self-evident in the greatest country the world has ever known.
My right to dissent is guaranteed by the constitution, but that is not as self-evident as it used to be.
I love my country, and always will.
It is the greatest country that God has ever put on the Earth. It's the end result of blood shed that I don't think any of us today could imagine. Hundreds of thousands dead in the South in the Civil War. That doesn't count the number of Union Army dead.
It's both staggering and humbling to thing that we're still a nation after all that.
There are still a few of us true intellectuals out there, trying our best to differentiate between liberal and intelligent and who condemn grand-standing and show-boating as a valid part of the political process. A list of facts and/or opinions isn’t an argument. Unless the glue of reason holds them together and connects them in a logical chain, they are just a list of facts and/or opinions that carry with them not a shred of credibility and are in no way whatsoever constructive.
As a people, we seem to be immune to the politics of destruction, regardless of which side is the destroyer, and they’re both equally guilty. We’ve replaced substance with slogans in an almost Orwellian way. We don’t think, because other people offer to do it for us. We simply follow like sheep whomever we think shares our beliefs, never once rising to the task of sorting things out in our own minds for ourselves.
That is why Michael Moore and Austin liberals annoy me so much: they want to make a lot of noise but not bother with the hard work of proving their points. They want to start with what they see as self-evident truths. But they have abdicated their responsibilities as citizens in many ways by not exposing their beliefs to the light of reason.
As I said earlier, extremists on both sides of both parties are guilty as sin on these counts.
Close your eyes and imagine the world we would live in if our founding fathers had not agonized over their argument for independence. They started with simple ideas that were self-evident and went on to explicate them in such a brilliant manner that they were hard to argue with. They framed their position tersely and elegantly, with no grand-standing or show-boating. They had a point to make, and they made it.
Then they went off to lead a revolution.
Now, those are some folks I could get behind.
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