Tuesday, May 4, 2010
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Max Boot: Nuclear Equivalence - '...I don't want to make too big a deal of what is a relatively small point in and of itself, but this seems to demonstrate an odd belief that U.S. military capacity is part of the problem, not the solution, to the world's problems. Implicit in Madam Secretary's statement is a sort of moral equivalence, which suggests that our nukes are, at some level, just as problematic as those of, say, North Korea, and that if we show the right path toward transparency and arms control, rogue states will follow our lead. In reality, American nukes are as different from those being built by Iran or North Korea as a cop's handgun is from a gun wielded by a serial killer...'
Likewise, and likewise as well in not wanting to make too much of another example, but it seems more and more apparent that a lack of a certain qualitative depth and gravity is evidenced here. The other example, the fact that Obama seemingly has little capacity for self-deferential humor and ironic distance in that vein, evidenced most recently at the "correspondents dinner," or whatever it's called. Everything, seemingly literally everything, has to be orchestrated to serve to superiority of his cult of personality. The degree to which that personality cult is manifest and put to political use can be debated - the degree, but not the fact of the matter. He could not admit he was wrong in the early professor Gates vs. the local police incident, he could not admit he was wrong in introducing his January 31, 2007 legislation that would have undermined Gen. David Petraeus's initiative in Iraq, etc. Nothing can be admitted, not even in terms of irony and self-deferential humor at the correspondents dinner. Nothing. Just a wee bit creepy in that regard, imo.
Is it in fact tell-tale? Well, who knows. But it serves as a marker, a certain indicator, bearing a corresponding awareness, mindfulness.