And So The Luster Fades

In a few short months, my opinion of Senator Barack Obama has degraded considerably, to say the least. At the start, when I knew nothing of him but what he chose to present of himself, I was suitably impressed. I never thought much of his policies (or lack thereof), but I at least believed in his idealism. When his church was shown to be a hotbed of racial contempt and grievance-mongering I at least admired his willingness to stand by his associates, even while he artlessly dodged the implications of those associations. I lost the last of my personal respect for him when, so soon after defending his pastor of 20 years, he publicly sacrificed the Rev. Wright on the altar of political expedience. Call me old-fashioned, but loyalty still means something to this soldier.

Then came Mr. Obama's autohagiographic commencement speech this past Memorial Day weekend, with its strangely limited conception of service. For Obama, improving the lives of others apparently only counts as "service" when you're an underpaid left-wing rabble-rouser or organ of a maternalistic government bureaucracy. Referencing the economic challenge of India and China, Obama calls for graduates to become not engineers, scientists and tradesmen, but teachers and administrators. He quotes a young man who joined the Peace Corps “because it was the first time someone asked me to do something for my country.” This young man has seemingly never seen an Armed Forces recruitment ad anywhere, ever. And those men and women many of us think of first when we think of "service" -- firefighters, policemen, armed servicemen -- who daily protect Americans from those people and forces that would do them harm? Ironically for a speech on service, "the Service" earned not even a mention from Mr. Obama.

After all that, however, it was Senator Obama's victory speech last night in St. Paul that turned my ambivalence to disgust. There are a lot of things in this speech I could write pages about: Obama's disingenuous mischaracterizations of John McCain; his arrogant naivety in thinking that handing out international legitimacy like party favors counts as "tough, direct diplomacy"; his Obamessianic promise to retrochronically create the fields of health care and employment while channeling King Canute's promise to command the tides (and without the good King's pious intent); his fascistic sanctification of "change", as if we live in the worst of all possible worlds and any change must be for the better; or his adolescent whinging that McCain hasn't given him an attaboy for his (unsuccessful) campaign to get asbestos removed from some Chicago tenements at the same age McCain was having his bones broken in a North Vietnamese prison camp. But I'll leave all that aside for the one unforgivable quote of the speech:

[I]t's not change when [John McCain] promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians.

Mr. Obama, before now I was thinking that you really need to visit Iraq, to understand the imminent victory from whose jaws you are so intent on snatching defeat. But after that remark, I truly wish you wouldn't visit Iraq -- though I know political expedience will force you to -- because you have no right to stand alongside the Iraqi politicians you sneer at. If you must go, however, I wish their examples might teach you what hope means when it's not just a pleasant buzzword. These men risk their lives daily to build a future for their country; many have had family members kidnapped and killed. We ask nothing?! They risk everything! They risk everything because they. have. hope. Hope for the future and faith in their countrymen. You would present yourself as an expert on hope, but your denial of the courage and determination of these brave men -- and your cynical reliance on the ignorance and indifference of your supporters to the undeniable political progress being made in Iraq -- has made me realize that whatever you mean by that word, it's something I don't even recognize.