In a comment on a recent post, dermokrat posted a link to a sermonette by Tim Wise (shown above).
Tim is following a well-trodden career path -- a self-described lefty who spends much of his time berating the left, with the battered but evergreen old tropes of purism, negativity, humorlessness, and of course ineffectiveness.
So far, so hum. Couldn't even read the whole thing. What did catch my eye was the subtitle:
We don't need the "everything sucks" analysis; Obama has mobilized millions of activists and that energy is looking for an outlet.Tim's line of argument is nicely summed up in this formulation; he might have spared us the almost 2,000 words of clumsy vituperation that follow. Obama. Tim, thinks, has got people all juiced up and ready for action, and all "we" have to do -- "we" being Tim's non-purist, all-positive, laugh-a-minute, and highly effective section of the "Left" -- is show these newly energized and hopeful folks the way forward.
Alas, Tim has got it backwards. Obamaphiles aren't "looking for an outlet." They've found their outlet. They're not looking for more worlds to conquer; they figure they've conquered the only world there is. They've put a hip, cool, well-spoken, intelligent and highly-credentialled scion of the merit class in the White House.
Mission accomplished!
Comments (3)
When things are this rotten, you know the disease goes all the way down. Sure enough, the Great Necromancer Tim is an "anti-racism" trainer. His idea of social change is to inculcate guilt ("white privilege" consciousness) among the university set.
I don't care to dig much deeper into this familiar tail-chase, but Timmy is also a rather accomplished egomanaic. Check out his Wikipedia page, where, among other inflations, he takes wiki-worthy credit for this rare individual accomplishment:
"While a student he was a leader in the campus anti-apartheid movement, which sought to force Tulane to divest from companies still doing business with the white supremacist government of South Africa.!"
Posted by Michael Dawson | November 28, 2008 4:24 PM
Posted on November 28, 2008 16:24
I will admit many Obamists are people who one stage probably were genuinely left, but now are doing alright enough not to want to take any risks but who want to pretend there are doing the world a service whether the world agrees-of course with the usual admixture of snobbery-classicism in disguise-about good education and so forth.
Posted by Peter Ward | November 28, 2008 5:55 PM
Posted on November 28, 2008 17:55
exactly
Posted by op | November 29, 2008 8:04 AM
Posted on November 29, 2008 08:04