Sentiment should make us angry
After reading Laura Turner's fallacy-ridden sermon yesterday (in which she got fairly well pwned in the comments by many clear thinking people), I needed a palate cleanser.
In the wake of a grand jury’s divisive decision not to charge Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, a weary American populace told reporters Tuesday that they are not sure if they can take another bullshit speech about healing. “If I have to watch some politician, law enforcement official, or pretty much anyone regurgitate the same meaningless platitudes about setting aside our differences and coming together as a nation, I might just lose it,” said Atlanta resident Samantha Hubbard, echoing the sentiment of hundreds of millions of Americans who are uncertain if they can stomach even a single empty call for respect and civility. “I honestly don’t know if I’m physically capable of listening to another community leader recite the same unbearable garbage about how it’s time for an open and honest dialogue. I swear to God, if I hear even one goddamn person assert there’s more that unites us than divides us, I will immediately blow my brains out.” At press time, the nation was particularly apprehensive at the prospect of a bullshit speech that declared words were not enough.
Yes, I know. It's the Onion. But it proves Sid Caeser's statement about comedy and the truth. It's true that we shouldn't "set aside our differences" because what makes me different than a mindless, violent, unemployed low-life actually makes me a better person. It would be sinful to set aside that which makes me different from these people. The people in the angry lynch mob obviously don't want an open and honest dialogue since they are intent on shouting and burning and they tell and believe lies.
It's true that there should be more that unites us than divides us. But this is not the case, so let's not pretend it is. A close analogy would be a scenario where two people are walking along a high road together for miles, but then one leaves the path for no discernible reason and descends into a dark valley where he becomes lost. Soon the travelers are very far apart. The protestors believe that laws may be set aside on a whim, that the appetite is the master of the intellect and that their narrative trumps the inconvenient reality even when the latter is reinforced by mountains of evidence.
When what we need is the Truth, sentiment should make us angry. It's like being given a bag of Halloween candy when you need a good hot meal. Obama's impotent healing speech after the verdict was about 15 minutes too long at least, and most of his unnecessary rambling sounded like code for "Burn this bitch down".
I had the same reaction to Obama's horrid speech. Yeah, if you weren't listening real closely, I'm sure it conveyed the right sentiment, as you say. To me, it lacked two important things: it failed to back up the grand jury; and it did not tell people on the street to "go home -- nothing good can come from anything you do on the street tonight". Instead, it conveyed the code you indicated.
ReplyDeleteAnd another thing about sentiment: Yeah, I'm a white guy, so maybe I don't get it. But what drives me nuts are the middle-class black whiners who whine about having to give their sons "the talk" -- you know, the one where they instruct their sons to not look like gangstas, to be respectful to the police officer when one contacts you, to make sure your hands are visible, etc. They whine as tho it is some sort of insult to have to tell their sons such things -- as though the requirement to simply display civility and citizenship is insulting. Seems to me that it is more of an insult to insinuate that the instructions of "the talk" mean that they have to pretend that they are someone else.
I think Ted Nugent captures the "lessons of Ferguson" more usefully than Obama and the rest. (Language warning).
P.S. Another instance of sentiment is discussed here.
She's 29 years old. She's been immersed in the evangelical subculture since late adolescence at least (attending an evangelical college, working for Fuller Theological Seminary, writing for Christianity Today). And there's very little going on between those ears but static.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine calls Christianity Today "Protestantism Today", but that's probably unfair to many protestants. It's pretty much a center-left publication, at best.
DeleteIt was founded by Carl F.H. Henry as a non-academic publication of ideas. He never did like the 'popular turn' in its format after he left. As recently as 10 years ago, I would say it was generically evangelical, with no strong profile regarding secular matters (and only a laconic interest in them). I used to subscribe to Books & Culture. It was bland, but not 'center-left'.
DeleteSoft-head liberalism tarted up with protestant idiom was the stock in trade of The Christian Century (non-evangelical) and Sojourners (evangelical).
Yeah, you're right. Well, I think of Sojourners as 'far left'. Maybe I'm mainly thinking of the her.meneutics feature which Turner writes.
DeleteEvidently her father is a clergyman and prominent in some subculture with which I'm completely unfamiliar.
DeleteThe blog in question appears to be an occasional feature. She gives us wisdom like this:
Feminism is simply the belief that women are equally as human as men—equal in the eyes of God, equal in image-bearing, equal in ability.
Which are the words of a silly ingenue. Robert Stacy McCain offered that he'd gotten his start in journalism at age 27, assigned to cover local sports. He said no one would have paid him for his opinions and he's very pleased past 50 that what he had to say at 27 is not swirling around the internet.
It seems like if you put as many inaccuracies together as you see in that "Feminism is..." quote, people think you're picking on someone if you point them all out.
DeleteUsing her language, I would restate: "Modern feminism is the belief that women are equally human as men and yet somehow men are not as equally human as women."
Which are the words of a silly ingenue.
DeleteWith a huge megaphone, unfortunately.
Peter Wehner at Commentary:
ReplyDeleteThe evidence presented to the grand jury was voluminous and comprehensive, and the jury concluded Officer Wilson should not be tried. But the left, including much of the media, was determined to superimpose a racial narrative on this story. The facts of the case were not only secondary; they were irrelevant. Liberals had a tale to tell, a stern moral sermon to deliver. What we saw–not among everyone to be sure, but among too many–was post-modern journalism on display. All that matters are the “narrative identities” we create for ourselves. We can all create our own reality. Truth needs to be shaped and re-shaped in order to fit a storyline. So a shooting that was never about race suddenly became a story focused almost solely on race. Think of Anderson Cooper as Jacques Derrida.
It’s of course the case that our experiences shape how we perceive reality. We all interpret events in a somewhat different way and none of us perceives truth perfectly. But that is a world apart from a license to interpret events in a way that’s false.
The effort by the left broadly, and journalists more specifically, to turn the events in Ferguson into a morality play was a shame; and in the end, it probably helped fuel the violence we saw. (“A riot is the language of the unheard,” tweeted MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.) That violence won’t directly hurt you and it won’t directly hurt me. But it has hurt the residents of Ferguson. And rather than help race relations in America, it will set them back.
About 70% of the households in Ferguson are of the owner-occupier sort and most blacks in town own their property. And, as noted above, owned some of those torched businesses. One aspect of the gentry red haze has not changed in sixty-odd years. They're all for The People, but care nothing for actual people.
Delete