Colin Powell

Colin Powell made the news a few days  ago by endorsing Obama for re-election . This was neither a surprise nor news. Obama’s cheerleaders in the  traditional media  did not even try to make it a big deal, as they had done with his double crossing McCain in 2008. Powell, a man who perhaps could have become president in 1996, is fading from the scene and from the public’s awareness.

History, I think, should see him as America’s  most over rated  general since Douglas MacArthur, and a man whose overall impact on the nation was harmful. It was Powell the general who helped persuade the first President Bush to stop action in the first war in Iraq in the midst of a rout that would have removed Hussein from power and eliminated any pretext for a second war. Later, it was Powell the politician who made the case to the public for an unnecessary second war in Iraq on the basis of claims the Iraqi government had dangerous weapons no one ever found. It was Powell who supported and perhaps helped sell the administration of George W. Bush on nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan (“you break it, you fix it”),  leading to years of futile effort, bloodshed,  and cost with no legitimate  purpose. Then after things went obviously bad in those efforts, he turned on his benefactors and recast himself as an opponent of the wars and occupations he had supported, helped start, and urged prolonging.

His career calls to mind, not Eisenhower or Grant, but rather MacArthur and George McClellan, two other political generals who for a time enjoyed fame and reputation far beyond their accomplishments and who also had their trouble with loyalty.  

George McGovern

George McGovern died this week at age 90. Barry Goldwater died a few years ago at age 89. I often think of the two together. Both men were westerners. Both were flyers who served in World  War II. Each spent a number of years in the U.S. Senate. Both were serious and important critics of the political establishment and conventional wisdom of their day. Both gave the impression of being fairly decent and interesting human beings with lives and interests apart from power and politics.  In 1964 Goldwater ran a campaign for president based on strong principles and ideals, directly and unapologetically stated, against an unprincipled scoundrel and lost in a landslide. In 1972 McGovern ran  a campaign for president based on strong principles and ideals, directly and unapologetically stated,  against an unprincipled scoundrel and lost in a landslide. Goldwater ran as an unconventional conservative with a number of libertarian overtones who disdained much of his party’s  Eastern establishment. McGovern ran as an unconventional leftist who disdained much of his party’s union and big city political machine establishment. Of course the two men’s  beliefs were quite different and generally opposed to each other.  (I agree with a good number of Goldwater’s ideas and policies and disagree with almost all of McGovern’s except his opposition to the war in Vietnam.) But their two failed campaigns, together with the flagitious administrations of the two men who defeated them,  helped teach many in my generation a healthy skepticism about  government,  the political establishment (including its media arm), and the wisdom of voters that has served them well. That may not be a legacy either would have preferred, but it is not bad. It is a lesson that members of younger generations are having  to learn the hard way courtesy of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. 

Hokum and Taboo

There is a small political stink going on in my town over a  couple of the pro-Obama  political signs that were defaced recently. It is not known whether the work was done by opponents or pro-Obama agents  provocateur, but the local Democrats are up in arms with one of their perennial candidates calling for an investigation by the hate crime police.  The reason for their and the local newspaper’s going into such a tizzy is of course that the vandalism took the form of writing the word “nigger” on the signs.

It is indicative of a strange  cultural phenomenon, where a word is held in such dread that it is rarely printed or spoken (except by black people, oddly enough), but rather referred  to fearfully and  surreptitiously as the “N-word”.  The term is after all  only a vulgarism, one of many offensive words in the language that polite people avoid using. Yet many people these days treat it as some sort of dread tribal taboo, almost in the manner of the superstitious savages in an old movie fearing  some  forbidden utterance will cause the gods to make the volcano erupt. It reaches a point where the silliness of it  all can make one wonder whether a lot of one’s fellow Americans are thinking  all that much more clearly than the savages with the volcanoes.

It is also interesting to consider trends of  fashion with respect to taboo words. A few decades ago, “fuck” was a word that may not be spoken, while the usage of “nigger”, though considered vulgar and low class,  was not taboo in the same sense. Now that is reversed. This may reflect the fact that while the sanctimony and  hypocrisy of the former time were often  centered on sex, the sanctimony and  hypocrisy of our time are  often focused on race.