In 2009 this country will inaugurate as president a man whose election represents a major alteration in our society.
This president will be a representative of a minority group which has too long been banished to the periphery of society, subjected to ridicule and discrimination, and denied equal rights under the law.
I refer, of course, to smokers. Continue reading Free at last!
Andrew Klavan has a first-hand account of his visit to Afghanistan in City Journal. He contrasts what he found there with current Hollywood movies, and imagines the movie he’d make.
Tonight, a snippet from a scene I’ve had in my mind for a long time. It’s basically my memory of a conversation I listened to while working in a shipping and mailing room, years ago. Someday I may work it into a book, if I find a place where it will be of some use.
“People think I don’t know nothin’, but I know a few things,” said Ray as he used the slide to cut a length of corrugated cardboard from a roll at the left of his workbench. He quickly cut the length into short sections, then piled them on top of one another to fill space at the top of the box he was packing. His motions were sure and practiced, though his hands trembled a little.
“They didn’t believe you?” asked Bill, a thinner, younger man. Bill was working at the bench behind Ray, unfolding a fresh carton as he reached for the sealing tape.
“They said it was nothin’. They wouldn’t listen to me. These young snots, they think I’m all old war stories, don’t know what’s goin’ on around me. So what if I like to have a few drinks now and then, fall down sometimes? It don’t mean I’m ignorant.”
“That’s sure enough,” said Bill.
“The apartment was right next to mine. I noticed it before anybody else, but pretty soon everybody could smell it. I went to the manager and told him. He said, no, you’re wrong. He said the guy’d gone on vacation, left some garbage in there.”
“Huh,” said Bill.
Their workbenches were gray. The box conveyer to the left of the benches was gray, too. So were the steel supply shelves, and some genius from the Facilities Office had recently brought in painters to give the walls two tones of fresh gray.
“I told him, I said, ‘I was in the war. I’ve smelled dead bodies before. You listen to me. There’s a dead body in there.’”
This makes me furious.
This is ghastly. If you are a parent with elementary schoolchildren, you will hit the roof. A teacher in Cumberland County, N.C. near Fort Bragg (NOTE: she is no longer in Asheville) was caught on tape by Finnish documentarians making a film about Barack Obama’s supporters. The teacher, Diantha Harris, uses the classroom as a propaganda vehicle to shove her politics down the children’s throats.
I haven’t watched the video. I can’t. It would raise feelings in me that I’m not prepared to deal with.
This is what can happen when you’re absolutely convinced that you’re morally right, and that your opponents are contemptible. Treating them (or their children) in vile ways not only becomes permissible, but becomes a positive moral good. Because you’re saving them from themselves, you see?
And yes, Christians do this too, all the time. (This teacher is probably a Christian, if it comes to that.)
That’s why Jesus spent so much time trying to drill into our heads how we ought to treat our enemies.
Tip: Michelle Malkin
And that’s the end of that.
No, I don’t mean the election season (though good riddance), but the fall leaf season.
Up till now it’s been unseasonably mild, and most of the leaves still clung to the trees.
Today, after a warm dawn, the barometer dropped like a bowling ball, and rains and clouds rolled in on Harleys. At the center of the front was a nasty wind that lasted only long enough to strip the trees clean.
This weekend, raking. Except that it might rain again.
Since I did such a crackerjack job predicting the election, I’ll go right ahead and tell you what I think the Obama presidency will be like.
Franklin D. Roosevelt II. Continue reading History in advance
First of all, to any Democrats who happen by, congratulations on a successful campaign. May your candidate be as wonderful as you think he is.
You’ve probably heard about the near-tie between my senator, Norm Coleman, and an Anime character named Al Franken. Coleman ended up with just a few hundred more votes. A recount is mandated by law.
This is one of those situations where a voter can say to himself, “Good thing I got out and voted. My vote really does count.”
Except it really doesn’t follow. If somehow my vote gets disqualified, it won’t lose the election for Coleman by itself.
I guess it’s one of those “universalization” exercises you do in Ethics class. “If I break the rule, nothing will probably happen. But if everybody breaks the rule, bad consequences will follow. So I’d better follow the rule, even when I recognize that my own influence is negligible.”
But that doesn’t really satisfy me. Probably because I have low self-esteem, and should just avoid that kind of thought entirely.
I’m a little bothered by all the talk that says, “It’s a great day because America has elected its first African-American president.”
I can understand that black people in this country probably feel pretty good today, and I respect that. They’ve got it coming. It’s been a long time.
But it seems to me that framing it in those “significant because he’s black” terms is kind of… creepy. Like saying the man’s a credit to his race.
It seems to me, race is either something or nothing.
If it’s nothing, then it’s as meaningless when it’s seen positively as when it’s seen negatively.
If it’s something, then it matters as much when it’s seen negatively as when it’s seen positively.
And I don’t think we really want to have this discussion as a nation.
As you can tell, I didn’t get much sleep last night.
(CBS) Best-selling author and filmaker Michael Crichton died unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, after a courageous and private battle against cancer, according to a statement released by his family. He was 66.
More here.
Tip: Five Feet of Fury.
I hate presidential election days.
I don’t want to follow the results on Fox News’ interactive map, but I can’t seem to keep away from it. And since we’re informed every year that it’s a shoo-in for the party I don’t subscribe to, I watch the map changes with a sense of dread. That dread hasn’t been justified for the last few cycles, but this year… I think it’s gonna be a squeaker. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it ended up in the courts again. Obama may win, but I’m convinced it won’t be any blow-out. Call on me to eat crow tomorrow, if I’m wrong.
I voted bright and early this morning, in a crowded church vestibule with about a hundred other people, all winding around each other in six distinct but sinuous lines. The people in charge did a remarkable job, I think, in keeping some kind of order. We vote on paper ballots with those little Iowa Basic Skills ovals in this state. When it got to my turn in line, the volunteer told me the electronic ballot marker machine was available, “But it takes a little longer.” I figured that way I’d free up a booth for somebody else, and I planned to skip most of the judge races anyway (it only encourages them), so I used it. I think I figured it out.
I preferred that to standing and marking my ballot on a clip board, or sitting on a folding chair at a folding table, which a lot of people were doing rather than wait for a booth. I have this quaint idea that voting ought to be private.
If my guy doesn’t win, I promise to pray for wisdom for the other guy. I trust you will too.
But if you live in the west and haven’t voted, get out there and make that unnecessary!
Unless you’re voting for somebody I don’t like, of course.
Update: You know, with the proper blend of herbs and spices, crow might taste OK.
Update to Update: No. No, it doesn’t.
Liberals just go ahead and write my fiction for me.
Heard about that St. Olaf College professor who bragged on the Huffington Post about stealing people’s McCain/Palin signs?
He’s “resigned” from the college now. Some things go over the line, even for mainline Lutheran colleges.
Busse provided the Northfield News with a statement expressing some remorse for his criminal acts, but said “I’m disappointed that most readers [of his Huffpo piece] seem to have focused on the thefts, and not on the larger thoughts” of civil disobedience.
“Laws? Laws are more important than ‘larger thoughts’ in the real world? Who knew?” (Hat tip: Townhall.com)
I feel the need to say something political on this last evening before the election.
But I can’t think of anything that hasn’t already been said. And since I know for a fact that our readers are a smart, erudite segment of the population, I’m pretty sure you’ve already made up your own minds.
So I’ll do a book review. It must be days since I’ve reviewed a Dean Koontz novel.
Koontz’ latest in paperback is The Darkest Evening of the Year. On a purely technical level I can make a lot of criticisms.
Since the death of his beloved Golden Retriever, Trixie, Koontz seems to be writing out his grief, with occasionally uneven results. The dogs in his books have gotten wiser and more mystical. In this book he cries havoc and lets slip the dogs of transcendence completely, coming close to caninolatry (if there is such a word. Of course there is! I just made it up!). That “Dog is God spelled backwards” palindrome that so impressed Annie Hall is almost (almost) at work here. Continue reading The Darkest Evening of the Year, by Dean Koontz