The Dish

"The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows, not by clarity and substance but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything," – Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain.

A reader writes:

I respectfully disagree with your reader who spells out what they describe as the cynical and political thought process behind the argument in very honest fashion. But that's why I disagree. Palin's entire entree onto the political stage was cynical and poltical. John McCain was a cynical old politician – sure. (And should be drummed from office for risking the country to his jaded ambitions in my personal opinion.) But it was an easy move because Palin herself is a cynical and political stunt who thinks she's a real politician.

But the dangers now are the cynical and political powers that keep her narrative going. The neocon interests, the Armeys and Murdochs, the moneybags who control the MSM, who probably believe that McCain's mistake wasn't in fact his choosing this hackneyed hack – but in not using her effectively. I'd venture from comments she's made that Palin believes that herself. She and they long for a chance to really pull out the stops and get down to dirty business.

If the Democrats need a straw woman or an eejit for the Republicans to throw away their electoral capital on – let them get stuck with someone else. Because with their limitless ability to destroy the democratic process – we could get stuck. With her.

Another writes:

It seems to me that everything that the emailer highlights–Afghanistan, health care, gay rights, the financial crisis–would fall into the basic categories of complex, difficult realities with which the Obama administration is, I believe, trying very hard to grapple with a parallel degree of complexity and nuance. To my mind, the single biggest difference between the modern Democratic and Republican parties–and I'm not trying to make this into a difference between liberalism and conservatism more broadly, necessarily–is the difference between such an attempt to grapple with reality and, quite honestly, a willingness to over-simplify and distort and, yes, lie about it on a consistent basis. For me that's why Sarah Palin is (along with Fox News and esp. Glenn Beck therein) probably the best single representative of that party and movement, and why Obama is her opposite number (literally and figuratively) in every way in these terms.

Even when I disagree with his administration's decisions and policies–and that has, I'll admit, happened more than I would like, which I suppose puts me in that unhappy base that the emailer was referencing; although my unhappinesses have more been with the terrorism and detainee and secrecy/transparency policies than the ones highlighted in that email–I try to keep this basic distinction in mind. Not only because of how much more preferable the reality-grappling is to the over-simplifying and distorting and lying, but also and even more relevantly because the reality-grappling is, by its very nature, going to be messier and trickier and more give-and-take than the kinds of (untenable and destructive but often more attractive on the surface) policies and positions for which the other perspective allows.

Manzi weighs in on "Climategate." His sane point:

The root problem here is not the eternal perfidy of human nature, but the fact that we can’t run experiments on history to adjudicate disputes, which makes this less like chemistry or physics than like economics or political science.

In human terms, the scandal is obviously a PR disaster for those who believe that climate reconstruction is “science” in the sense we normally use the term, but what it does not change is the basic physics of how CO2 molecules interact with radiation. As I have always argued, this is the real basis for rational concern about greenhouse-gas emissions, and is a key reason that all the major national scientific academies agree that the greenhouse effect is a real risk. Recognizing this risk, however, does not entail accepting the political conclusion that we need laws to radically reduce emissions at enormous cost.

(Photo: Wind turbines spin near the cooling towers at the Jaenschwalde lignite coal-fired power station, which is owned by Vatenfall, on November 24, 2009 in Janschwalde, Germany. The CO2 emission will be one top of the agenda and will be discussed at the summit in December in Copenhagen. By Carsten Koall/Getty Images.)

Matt Welch takes aim:

Forget Palin; let's talk about The Weekly Standard. What kind of journalistic pathology yearns so nakedly to provide the brainpower to supplement politicians' animal magnetism? And when are we going to get the mother of all internal magazine stories, the one that describes just how the same lot who breathed ideology into an emptyish vessel called John McCain 10 years ago turned on their own creation when he finally neared the finish line and doubled-down instead on the unqualified veep candidate they helped foist upon him?

The answer is that they need someone to bring the populist plebs along for the neocon ride. Reagan did it for a while and so did Bush II (until the entire project crashed and burned under its own contradictions). But McCain never had that – so he was a place-holder for the forever war against the Arabs/Muslims. His acknowledgment of climate change, his comfort with Democratic party wonks, his support for campaign finance reform, his visceral discomfort with the holy-rollers: all this made him an imperfect tool.

But Palin? The perfect tool if you think Bush II was a rip-roaring success story. More controllable. Until, of course, she wasn't.

As for Continetti, he wouldn't be the first young man in a hurry in Washington. You'd be amazed at what ambition can get people to write, even in earnest.

Jason Zengerle on why Palin won't be going away:

The reason for Palin’s staying power will be the same thing that keeps a celebrity like Richie’s old running partner, Paris Hilton, in the spotlight. No, not a sex tape, thank God, but something related: shamelessness.

These days, once someone has attained a certain level of celebrity (as Hilton and Palin have), if that person is willing to say or do anything (as Hilton and Palin are), then it’s pretty much impossible to lose it (which Hilton and Palin won’t). New technologies like Facebook and Twitter have made that even easier, rendering it impossible for the media to ignore these celebs even if it were inclined to. Now, celebs can circumvent the media filter and communicate directly with the public. It’s no coincidence that Palin has taken to issuing all of her big pronouncement over Facebook. Granted, the press would probably cover whatever she’s saying at the moment. But when the day comes that the press isn’t interested, that won’t stop Palin from getting out word of her doings.

Conor Friedersdorf recoils from a blogger who views gay unions as "a relationship based upon a sexual act which can never rise above entertainment." Rod Dreher agrees with Conor on this point. (It's a garbled version of Robert P. George's and Benedict's attempt to dehumanize and delegitimize sex without reproduction). But Rod's deeper point – and the point of his favored blogger – is not against gays but against Christianists. He finds the Christianist politicization of deep moral questions inconsistent. 

What Rod wants to recover, I think, is the pre-modern notion of obedience to religious authority and its interpretation of "nature" as a basis for modern civil society. It's a version of Alasdair Macintyre's hositility to modernity's philosophical incoherence. But Macintyre was smart enough to recognize that modernity was here to stay and to adopt a Benedictine option in response – of retreat from the world rather than an attempt to mold it in ways that simply will not work without coercion and cruelty and excessive government power.

And the difficulty of both embracing some parts of the modern world, while eschewing others, is evident in our current climate. That's why I favor a religious stance of distance from the world, rather than enmeshment in it and an attempt to control it. One critical thing Jesus taught was that controlling the world is not just impossible but inherently sinful. Our task as Christians is to control no one but ourselves and to love all. Our main weapon must always be example, not control.

Moreover, Christianists cannot both assert a fundamental right to economic and personal freedom and yet also oppose that freedom when it means that women can choose if and when to have children, when it means that gay couples can choose to form build strong and admirable relationships and have children, when it means that straight couples can buy and use contraception, etc. The Christianists are engaging in cafeteria theocracy here. Which is why their obsession with gays and avoidance of so much else does indeed bespeak a form of prejudice against a group of people they barely know or understand but nonetheless scapegoat for much broader social ills.

In other words, Christianists cannot both be pathological consumers of debt and materialism while condemning gay people as a class for the same thing. I see no real distinction between gays and straights on the consumerist, materialist front. And it remains true to my mind that until Christians start condemning the greed and debt and consumerism of the past two decades as morally wrong, they have no standing on other moral questions that are now in play.

On this, Benedict is more consistent than his Protestant and evangelical fellow-travelers in the culture war. But he too is deeply wrong about gay relationships. And he too has wrongly singled them out as emblems of something they are no guiltier of than many of those in Benedict's own ranks.

Dueling encounters:

Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind from Marc Bullard on Vimeo.

A reader writes:

Another viable comparison for Obama is with JFK, and not just for the obvious reasons of youth, attractiveness, charming young family, etc. I think a great reference for reviewing JFK’s performance in office is Robert Dallek’s book, “An Unfinished Life.” He showed that Kennedy had a great capacity for learning, for encouraging if not demanding honest and open debate and more than enough self-confidence to change his mind. Kennedy was also very pragmatic, which made him slow to act in areas such as civil rights. But once Kennedy moved, he moved with confidence and usually with an effective, coherent and convincing message.

Consider the Cuban missile crisis. Yet Kennedy was also somewhat cool and aloof, as I believe is Obama.

But Kennedy found a way to show his humor, often self-deprecating, usually in press conferences. He also presented himself as a father in a way that made him human and attractive to Americans (who, of course, had no clue as to his marital, erm, practices).

I think Obama is much closer to achieving that level of warmth and personable nature than for which he’s given credit. I think his problem is that he can’t find a tool in the mass media that he can use as effectively as Kennedy used press conferences (or FDR used his fireside chats). Things are too diverse and there are too many other avenues through which your opponents can continue to criticize you. I think this will delay his success in “warming up the country” to him but it won’t eliminate it.

I believe in the end, the country will appreciate his seriousness, thoughtfulness and decision making process. If he can show some signs of success (especially in the economy), I think he will easily win a second term and lead the Democratic Party in a successful direction.

Andrew Sprung notes a doctor's bloggy must-read assessment:

Overall, it's promising — as a start. I don't think this will be the end, not by a long shot. A large number of critics claim that the health reform bills do "nothing" to control costs. This is not nothing — not by a long shot. Whether it will work at all, or whether it will do enough are open questions. I also find it interesting that the providers who have been most concerned about the escalation of health care costs (I'm looking at you, Kevin) have not weighed in on this element of reform. As a provider, I have really mixed feelings about the potential for cost containment to (further) erode physician autonomy and to (further) reduce physician income. However, no sane person can look at the rate of medical inflation and not see the burning need for cost containment. I just worry that too much of it will fall on our shoulders, since reining in costs any other way is tricky and politically unpopular.