I support Obama, because he is smart. Obama is calm, cool, and collected.
I do not support McCain Palin because they are advocating for, and taking pride in dumbness. During the Presidential debate on October 15, 2008, John McCain plucked out of a mostly overlooked clip from Obama coverage this conversation between Barack Obama and a guy named Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher. McCain was obviously unsure of how to say the man's last name and so he started referring to this guy as Joe the Plumber.
What quickly followed was the McCain campaign using Joe the Plumber as a symbol of the "Average Joe," or "Joe Smo." Joe the Plumber is being used to represent average American's, regular folk, and to say that Obama is going to raise taxes and keep people like Joe the Plumber from advancing.
This is not something I agree with, but I do agree that it is not a bad strategy for Republican, as they attempt to fight back against the growing popularity of Obama. My objections to this strategy are as follows:
1. Joe the Plumber was not part of their strategy. Strategy exists because thinking people develop a plan, because campaign strategists select the issues they want to focus on, the strategists make a plan, and work their plan. That is how strategy works. Joe the Plumber is suppose to represent regular, blue collar working folk. He tends to represent regular white working folk. But Joe Wurzelbocher didn't show up until the third debate it is obvious that he was just seized upon at the last minute and this strategy is really an example of last minute grasping at straws. Joe the Plumber is just one more thing John McCain has thrown at the wall and this one sort of stuck.
2. Joe the Plumber, and, to a barely lesser degree, Sarah Palin, are representing a veering of the Republican Party base toward anti-intellectualism. There seems to be a glorying in believing with the gut and not the head. There is a certain pride taken in opinions over facts and rational thought. Evolution is rejected over creationism. Are we really suppose to elect people who reject a scientific theory accepted by virtually every educated person on earth? Are we really suppose to vote for leaders who believe Adam talked to a snake and the snake talked back?
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. ~Robert A. Heinlein
Sarah Palin recently made fun of money spent on the scientific research of fruit flies. This is a perfect example of anti-intellectualism. Scientists don't study fruit flies to learn more about fruit flies. Scientists study fruit flies to learn more about humans. Sarah, a sort of Joe the Plumber with breasts, made her snide remarks about "fruit fly research" during a speech she was giving on special-needs children. These remarks are similar to the attitude of early doctors who mocked hand washing before surgery. Surgery was, after a messy affair, and you would do your washing up after the surgery, he, he, he. The claims that there are germs, invisible to the naked eye, but dangerous to humans with open wounds, that was just laughable.
When we hear such things we are stunned by the ludicrous stupidity of those doctors so ignorant of scientific advances. Sarah Palin's statements were made with an arrogance that delights in the truth of her assumptions, and never considering that there might be some merit that was not immediately obvious to her.
Fruit flies are the foundation of modern genetics. The study of fruit fly genetics has enabled scientists to discover , much of what we now know about human heredity, and the human genome structure. It is through the fruit fly that scientists are able to study the congenital disorders in children, such as the very disorders Ms. Palin was giving her speech about. When Ms. Palin mocks "fruit fly research" and when Ms. Palin says that fruit fly research is a waste of money and contributes nothing to the public good, she is wrong, and she is wallowing in anti-intellectual hubris.
I'm going to Washington and I'm going to bring Joe the Plumber with me. ~John McCain
Joe the Plumber is not the symbol of the honest working man. Joe the Plumber is the symbol of an anti-intellectualism that dominates a fragment of the Republican Party. Would McCain really pluck this Joe the Plumber guy out of obscurity and make him some sort of adviser to him in Washington? Why? Does Joe the Plumber have some expertise lacking among other potential Presidential Advisers? I watched the media cover a Q&A with Joe the Plumber where he agreed that Obama was out to destroy the nation of Israel. Where did Joe the Plumber get his information? Was it based on anything, or was it just a thought he had while Rotto-Rootering a sewer pipe?
Obama is not merely a threat because he is black, Obama is a threat because he went to Harvard. The allegation that Obama is an elitist is another example of anti-intellectualism. What Ms. Palin wants is for our government to be lead by Joe-Six-Pack, and Hockey Moms, and Joe the Plumber, and the implication is that smart people would make bad leaders, and are not to be trusted. Smart people will use their smartness to get one over on the rest of us dumb ordinary folk.
This is a complicated world, and the issues are so complex that we need leaders who are intelligent. I can't recall a President who was less of a thinker than George Bush. The anti-intellectual acts of George W lead us to enter a war in Iraq, launched by the US on false premises. George W has used his office to obstruct efforts to curb climate change. What Bush, and Palin, advocate for is a type of below average populism that present intelligent people as being elitists, and tricksters out to use their high fluting learning to hoodwink the ordinary folk.
The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
No comments:
Post a Comment