Title : "The Deep Rot Exposed By the Biden Flap."
link : "The Deep Rot Exposed By the Biden Flap."
"The Deep Rot Exposed By the Biden Flap."
A funny headline in the Wall Street Journal. It makes me picture Joe Biden in drop-seat pajamas:I hope you appreciate my stunningly non-creepy illustration of drop-seat pajamas (from Disney's "Peter Pan"). Now, just picture Joe Biden, with the flap open, and the deep rot exposed.
The opinion column in the WSJ is by its editor at large Gerard Baker.
What troubles me isn't simply this particular obsession with the former vice president's odd olfactory habits or what he does with his hands. It is what this baffling discussion says about the quality of what passes for debate now, the issues that seem to dominate that debate and the way that debate is conducted....What also lies? Oh, the malaise!
This obsessive puritanism is merely one symptom of the malaise in our public discourse, which runs deep and wide. It also lies...
... in the trivialization of serious political issues; the willful mischaracterization of one another's views; the seething mutual contempt for an opposing voice; the rancor that suffuses discussion of even the least consequential of topics; the wild conspiracy-theorizing on both left and right as they seek to characterize each other's positions in the most poisonous way imaginable....Baker has a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Corpus Christi College, Oxford University. That prose made me look up his background. Especially "the rancor that suffuses discussion." This is civility bullshit, but oh, what bullshit! Is it properly called passive when the abstractions that replace the human subject are so active? "Rancor" isn't just there, it's suffusing. "Contempt" is seething. "Malaise" is running and lying.
All of this speaks to the triumph today not of reason -- the defining characteristic of the Enlightenment values that made America great -- but of emotion.The old reason/emotion distinction. A favorite of blog commenters everywhere, so get on it.
Pundits, media companies and politicians have discovered that it is emotion, not reason, that wins votes and pulls in eyeballs. It's fun and lucrative while it lasts, but the Greeks and Romans can tell you precisely what it does to a civilization in the long run.Make America Great Again. This obsession with greatness is as emotional as everything else. There's a gesture at erudition with a mere mention of the Enlightenment, the Greeks, and the Romans. But what has that got to do with thinking Joe Biden, because of his ample displays of sexless physical affection, should not be President? The reason/emotion distinction isn't too helpful, since what we're trying to "reason" about is how voters will feel about the super-feely Biden. Oh! But Rome fell!!!
Because this, in the end, is what undoes great civilizations.
Defeat on the battlefield overseas or destructive revolution at home only comes when the rot within is so advanced that the seemingly robust institutional structures have been fatally undermined. The condition of public discourse today is absolutely the kind of rot with that sort of potential.Those are the last 2 sentences — conclusory and absolutely unsupported. I used the word "absolutely" because he did. I think it's a very silly word. So is "rot." Baker never demonstrated that the effort to take down Biden is "rot." And he didn't show that it was "malaise" or "obsessive puritanism."
If you want to write about elevating the discourse, elevate the discourse.
For now, my tag remains, as ever, "civility bullshit."
Thus articles "The Deep Rot Exposed By the Biden Flap."
that is all articles "The Deep Rot Exposed By the Biden Flap." This time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting.
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