ann's making a list

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It struck me as I was making my comment there that I ought to be making it here:

What made me stand up on my hind legs and start barking at my monitor was his gall to quote the Qur’an on truth, when he was clearly in the midst of doing what is called in the vernacular “dazzling ‘em with his bullshit”. Then, too, the bit about killing one being equal to killing all mankind was hard to bear from his lips, given the givens.

The one part of his speech I could not fault was the part about women’s equality. This is a weird position to find myself in because I’m pretty much of a jerk on feminism, hate whiners ruining my life and other women’s lives with their glorification of victimhood, hate male feminists making this worse, want to box heads when people speak as though women actually are somehow lesser while purporting to be speaking in favor of remedying that. If I didn’t know that there are so many women in Afghanistan who want education and freedom from the burqa, the power to determine their own lives, I might have found all kinds of fault with his assertions in that section of his speech, but I do know that. So that part trips me up.

I noted that he paid lipservice to every point the Iranians have laid down for conditions of engaging in diplomacy, without seeming to be doing that. The problem still is that he’s only said it. The problem still is that no matter what he says or how impeccably, every single time he gives a speech it is just another batch of mere words to make us waste our time analyzing in place of the action we ought to expect to be analyzing. And his action has, so far, been almost completely at variance with his words.

People go on about how much is on his plate, how much he is doing already, and it is true that he’s got his stamp now on an awful lot of stuff. Virtually indistinguishable from the last administration’s, too. I’m irked that I can’t rid myself of that last grain of hope that he’ll suddenly snap out of it, snap out of his lifelong capitulation to the politically astute moves while, clearly, staying dazzled by his own bullshit… ceding so reliably his own ideals and morals without even knowing that’s what he’s doing because he is SO good with the soaring oratory, even in his thoughts. This is called “hubris”.

People fail to recognize that hubris is not a consciously understood phenomenon in those who err with it. They are so convinced of the practical excuses for it that they completely obscure the brute fact of it from their own realization.

I wish to hell he’d just SHUT UP and start doing a good job. Islam would be won over THAT way. As long as he’s talking, NOBODY should waste their time listening.

I say this after wasting a few hours on this yesterday. I get the transcendental aspects after I’ve had a chance to sleep on it, let my REAL sense weigh in. I’m bugged that I have to be asleep to drop my own idiocy enough to get at the real, but, well, at least I do it at all….