Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Here's a bit of burble from a fresh-faced young Obamaphile, Sara Haile-Miriam, in the do-it-yourself section of the Huffington Post:

I don't agree with Senator Obama's vote on the FISA Bill, and yet, I'm thankful. A year ago I wouldn't have understood the ramifications and so his ability to draw me into the process, empowering me to have an opinion, is something to be celebrated. I think it's extraordinary that thousands of others felt empowered enough to confront him on it, on his website no less.

Americans are starting to see the power of organizing on behalf of causes that we believe in. We've been empowered by his words, and that power has enabled us to insist on better.

Still, the debacle over the Fisa controversy frustrated me.... [But] before we stalk off yard signs in hand and insist upon keeping our donations and our time hostage, remember that.... [h]e will be a President who will enlist the American people into a mission to change our country for the better. He will be a President who compels us to ask more of our leadership....

Refining a policy is now seen as blasphemy, even if the intention of the original policy was to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. Evidently, consulting the Generals on the ground isn't seen as careful, it's seen as backtracking.

Lucus a non lucendo, as another man said: all the incantatory references to "power" clearly exhibit the utter powerlessness which Sara here has not only accepted but embraced.

She had to be "empowered" to have an opinion? And this divine afflatus was bestowed, somehow, by a senator from Illinois? Others have been "empowered" to post squeaks of protest on the Great Man's web site. Oh man, the Tennis Court Oath was nothing to this mighty popular upsurge. We now have the "power" to "insist on better" -- though where the power will come from to enforce our insistence does not clearly appear.

Obama appears to have fulfilled Isaiah's messianic promise:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.

Sara, who once was lost in insensate incognition, has had her eyes opened and her tongue unstopped, and now she's found -- in "the process". Hosanna!

Actually, she's right about this "process" thing. This is the reason why I loathe the Democratic Party. I'm sure Sara is a fine, good-hearted, well-meaning person. But Obama, like some sort of moral ju-jitsu master, has used her own strengths of character to lever her into the "process" -- where she rapidly descends to arguing for a "careful" withdrawal from Iraq. What does Sara think will be happening during this extended period of "carefulness"? We will be very carefully and judiciously killing more people, that's what. Don't kill hard -- kill smart.

He will be a President who compels us to ask more of our leadership....

Here again, Sara has said something that's very true, in a couple of senses she probably didn't intend. We will certainly end up wanting a great deal more from our "leadership"(*) than we will get.

And the only thing we'll be able to do about it is "ask". Please, Sir, may I have some more?

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(*) Sara means our rulers, of course, when she says "leaders". But this euphemism per contrariam is universal.

Small-boat sailors know that they should always stay well clear of large vessels. There's a very dangerous suction that a container ship, or a tanker, creates, as its enormous hull shoves through the water -- a suction that can draw a small craft right up against the behemoth's hull, with predictably unpleasant consequences.

There is a similar phenomenon in politics. It's one of the reasons I disapprove of voting -- much less working -- for Democrats. The well-meaning pwog, in his or her little coracle or catboat, ventures out into the harbor. He falls into the suction of a mighty steel-hulled commercial ship, like the SS Obama. He is drawn closer, and closer. He collides with its cold, unyielding adamantine sides. His fragile craft is smashed, and he is pulled under, and drowned -- drowned intellectually, and politically. Things that would have had him baying at the moon, if Bush had done them, he now finds excuses for -- when a Democrat does them.

I call it Fanship Undertow.

I've seen it time and time again. There's a lot of it going around just now. An occasional correspondent of mine -- let's call her Sadie -- recently wrote:

Rahm's an interesting choice- I know that there's some concern about him being a partisan figure but he's (in my view) not facilitating a partisan role. His main objective is to keep the ship in order and his experience in the Clinton administration would indicate that he knows how to navigate the waters (so to speak). Even more importantly he's ultimately pushing Obama's agenda....

Classic. This young woman would have been quite ready to agree that Rahm Emanuel was the Abomination of Desolation -- until Obama picked him.

But she has given her heart to Obama. And a heart once given is not easily taken back. So the Fanship Undertow has gripped her. Her good, well-meaning heart has been drawn under. Will she survive? I hope so. How long can she hold her breath?

Two things strike me about her ingenious, hopeful email:

1) She has become a Crackpot Realist. All of a sudden this youthful insurgent has come to value order -- experience -- knowing how to "navigate the waters."

2) She is still delirious with giddy, utterly unfounded hope. Rahm will "push Obama's agenda." From what we know about Rahm -- and we know a lot -- does he seem like the sort of guy who would push anybody's agenda but his own?

I happened to run into my old friend Annie today -- Annie, the old Lefty I've written about before, who can't get away from the Democratic Party even though she knows better. I couldn't resist teasing Annie about the number of raddled old Clintonites with whom Mr Hope And Change is surrounding himself. (Annie loathed Bill Clinton -- loathed him so much that she actually voted for Nader in 2000, though she has since repented, in sackcloth and ashes, for her sin.)

"Hey Annie. Looks like what's old is new again. Clinton's third term!"

She looked at me sourly. But she's game. "After eight years of Bush," she observed, "Clinton doesn't seem so bad."

Now there, if you like, is as beautiful an illustration of the ratchet effect as you could hope to find. The two parties' well-practiced collusive pas de deux has got her giving thanks now for things she despised eight years ago -- things that she correctly saw as deeply reactionary and detestable.

So it goes. By conceding the legitimacy of Reagan and Bush I's revanche, Clinton prepared the ground for a further revanche under Bush II, who took the ball and ran with it it so far that he makes Clintonism in retrospect -- well, in blurry, amnesiac retrospect, anyway -- look comparatively benign.

This phenomenon is at the heart of the American two-party system. The only thing that ever interrupts or arrests it -- much less reverses it -- is those blessed outbreaks of near-insurrection: the Populist upsurge, the Thirties, the Sixties.

Man, are we ever overdue for another one.