"Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig." This is not to insult teachers, or pigs . . . or anyone. It is to say there's no point in pursuing a futile activity. Truer words were never spoken.
A woman I consider a friend recently told me "I'd vote for Mickey Mouse if he were on the Republican ticket." That's tantamount to admitting that she cares not for the facts--she's going to shoe-horn them into her preconceived notions of what's right and proper. [Or should I have said Right?--Ed.] It is no different from saying "Don't confuse me with the facts; I've made up my mind." She is intelligent, so her attitude shocked me. I thereupon undertook the fool's mission of trying to get her to open her mind a bit. Her only response has been to accuse me of being just as shallow, but from the opposite end of the American political spectrum. {Which is much narrower than the world's political spectrum, but that's a topic for another day.--Ed]
That's a problem, because I've related to her numerous specific incidents that show it's not true. I've never voted a totally straight ticket in my life; I doubt I ever will. No one political party has a monopoly on all the good people and ideas in this world. In 2000, I thought John McCain would be quite acceptable as the GOP presidential candidate. Barack Obama was not my first, nor even my second, favorite among this year's potential Democratic Party nominees.
But as I have watched the two men campaign this summer, and now especially after the events of the past 2 weeks, I just don't think McCain is up to the job. I won't recount all the outrages I've previously described. I'll just add a few of the most recent. McCain said he'd fire the Chairman of the SEC, when the President has no such authority; he called the president of the SEC the president of the Federal Elections Commission; he said the "fundamentals of the American economy are sound" at the very moment the stock market was dropping over 500 points. He then came up with the lame excuse that he was talking about American workers. No dictionary or thesaurus in the world says "workers" is a synonym for "fundamentals."
McCain attacked Obama because one of Obama's fundraisers was linked in the past to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Yet McCain's own campaign chief of staff was taking $15,000 a month till last month to lobby on Freddie Mac's and Fannie Mae's behalf. McCain claimed that his campaign chief of staff had cut ties to his lobbying business in 2006, but he's still listed as that business's treasurer and is a member of that business's board of directors. Talk about a pot calling a kettle black! [I shouldn't complain, I suppose. It is more evidence in support of my contention, expressed in previous my previous posts, that McCain's tactic is to run against himself by accusing Obama of all the things he, McCain, has done wrong.--Ed]
After Barack Obama called McCain this morning to suggest they issue a joint statement to address the economic crisis, McCain unilaterally announced he was suspending his campaign and returning to Washington until the crisis was solved, and that he wanted to postpone the debate already scheduled with Obama for tomorrow night (on the campus of Ole Miss). Yet McCain's TV ads attacking Obama are still running nationwide, his campaign offices are still open (many staffers of which didn't even know about McCain's "suspension"), and McCain's web site is still accepting donations. First, what about this constitutes "suspending the campaign"? Second, Obama has correctly observed that now is the very time the American people need to hear as much from the candidates as possible on this issue, and he also noted (again, correctly) that the president has to be able to do more than one thing at once. America's enemies are not going to stand in line and wait their turn while the president deals with the crisis du jour.
McCain is careening all over the place with no rhyme or reason. It's "shoot first an ask questions later." It's a fighter jock mentality, which figures, since McCain was in fact a Navy fighter jock. My mother, who spent the better part of her 40+ years in civil service working at SAC (now STRATCOM) headquarters, in the Plans and the Personnel sections (the two busiest places in wartime), in wars from Vietnam through Iraq, says fighter jocks make the worst bosses--they refuse to acknowledge that they could not do what they do without the support of the rest of the military and civilian teams who handle everything from arranging their pay to gassing their jets. Their perception of reality isn't, for lack of a better term, realistic.
She also says that after those 40+ years of 12-hour days, she knows at 71 that she'd not be up to handling the job of the presidency . . . and she further knows that (1) her job was not nearly as demanding as the presidency would be, and (2) that she never suffered the physical deprivations McCain suffered while a POW in Vietnam. She thus has legitimate reasons, based on facts and her experience, to question whether McCain is physically up to being president, given what being president entails.
Based on the things I've seen this summer, I doubt it.
But my acquaintance thinks I'm just a liberal who's blind to "facts" with which I disagree. I'm scratching my head here. I'm quite sure that if she and I were to sit down and go down a list of "The Issues" one by one, I'd predict her stand on each of them correctly more often than she'd pick mine. For just two examples, I am way out of step with most "liberals" on things like illegal immigration and making English the official language of the USA. I base my positions on what I experienced while living overseas, both in Europe and in Asia, and on my understanding of American history--which, I am not ashamed to admit, seems to be better than most Americans'.
I think things through first, and only THEN make my choices. Why she refuses to recognize that, I do not know. [I can guess that it has something to do with the implication that forcing the facts to fit one's preconceptions is not merely lazy and shallow--it's wrong-headed and unwise. If I am just like her, my opinions are no better or worse than hers. But I cannot say for sure that that's her reason.--Ed.] It was driving me crazy that I couldn't seem to make that clear to her . . . until I remembered my Twain. I hereby give up my attempt to encourage her to see a wider world.
Oh, well. She probably thinks my quoting Twain was meant as an insult. It was not. If I'd wanted to insult her, I'd have quoted Dorothy Parker: when asked to use the word "horticulture" in a sentence, Ms. Parker thought for a moment, then said, "You can lead a horticulture, but you cannot make her think."
Here endeth the lesson.
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