Being nice when they see the light
Bookworm on Mar 22 2009 at 1:06 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m getting more and more reports on my email list of liberals turning on Obama. (For example, this.) That their eyes are opening is a good thing.
When you hear a liberal make the dismaying discovery that Obama has feet of clay, rather than sneering “I told you so,” which will merely make them defensive, remember to praise that liberal for for his wisdom and insight. “Yes, you’re right. It is surprising that this great speaker, now that he’s president, is so attached to his teleprompter.” “Yes, you’re right. It is surprising that his picks for administration positions have so many ethical problems.”
Whatever you do, don’t say what you’re really thinking: “For God’s sake. Couldn’t you have figured out before the election that Obama was a complete yahoo when he went off script? And weren’t you a little concerned then that the people Obama picked to surround him were a bunch of criminals and anti-American ideologues?”
Let your liberal friends have their little discoveries, and praise them for being so smart. With that kind of feedback, they might actually grow in wisdom.
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12 Responses to “Being nice when they see the light”
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You are absolutely right, Book.
I must temper the “bad me” that wants to turn on them, snarling “how could you be such a spiteful doofus to elect such a Manchurian candidate and isn’t it just a bit bloody late for you to see the light, but I am sure that you feel much, much better for having wallowed in Bush-hatred for so many years?”.
I will instead exude an inner glow of serenic sympathy, bonhomie and socratic goodwill as I gently take their arm and explain to them why they should sin no more.
I will try. So far I have refrained from making rude gestures at cars sporting Obama bumper stickers. I confess, that I sometimes frown and growl a little.
I have yet to meet anyone who professes a conversion. That may be because I have generally avoided anything other than necessary casual contact with people who were likely to vote for him. (Daughters excepted and that is a minefield that I tread very carefully).
PS My wife has started asking whether we failed as parents. I try to reassure her.
Fifty years ago Leonard Wibberley wrote a book, “The Mouse That Roared,” in which the bankrupt Duchy of Grand Fenwick (separated from France by a small wooden picket fence) declares war on the United States in the hopes of quickly losing and then receiving foreign aid, since everybody knows how generous the Americans are in victory.
After sailing across the Atlantic third-class on a passenger liner, the Grand Fenwickian army—seven pike-bearing farmers wearing medieval armor–happens to land in New York Harbor during an air raid drill when the streets are totally empty. There is nobody to surrender to.
The Fenwickians stumble upon a Professor Kokintz and his “Q bomb,” a doomsday weapon whose possessor is by default the most powerful country in the world. The Fenwickian hopes for defeat are dashed as the grand duchy accidentally takes possession of the Q bomb and becomes itself the world’s sole superpower.
Wibberley later wrote “Beware of the Mouse,” about how Grand Fenwick came to be. The book had a marvelous cast of characters, including an insane knight errant whom it is said went crazy trying to keep each of his 12 daughters a virgin until she was married.
Another great character was a priest who decided to start killing people immediately after granting them absolution at confession, reasoning that since they were now in a state of grace, he might as well dispatch them straight to Heaven.
I would like to propose a similar service for our “progressive” (statist) friends who suddenly see the light about Obama. The chances are they will never again be so close to a state of “grace” (enlightenment) as that first doubt about The One.
I say smite them as humanely as possible, but dispatch them nonetheless.
Bookworm –
You are so, so right.
Yes, I want to scream and shake them and ask how they could have been so stupid but that will not help matters.
I will aim to do what Danny suggests: sympathize and take the opportunity to plant the seeds of appreciation for conservative principles.
Deana
>> When you hear a liberal make the dismaying discovery that Obama has feet of clay, rather than sneering “I told you so,” which will merely make them defensive, remember to praise that liberal for for his wisdom and insight. “Yes, you’re right. It is surprising that this great speaker, now that he’s president, is so attached to his teleprompter.” “Yes, you’re right. It is surprising that his picks for administration positions have so many ethical problems.”
I just wanted to repeat what Book wrote. How very wise.
I am often dismayed these days by what supposedly conservative Republicans in Congress do. I trust them and they appear to violate my trust, out of (I guess) some fear that they need to violate their own principles just to stay in office.
If I can have second thoughts about apparent conservatives whom I trusted, why could not liberals have second thoughts about Obama, in whom they placed such huge amounts of devotion and trust???
Truly, until he got into office and had to face the necessity of making decisions every day, none of us really knew for sure what he was going to do, how he was going to react. To say “I told you so” is just a way of patting ourselves on the back for foresight. The reaction is rather low; best to keep such self-back-patting to yourself.
And remember, in a representative democracy such as ours, we lurch constantly to the left and to the right as the years pass. Every so often, we need the practical object lesson of actually placing blind faith and trust in someone who doesn’t deserve it… to re-learn the hard lessons that apparently we need to relearn by experience, rather than by wisdom in advance.
I have taken to nodding in a soft, graceful and consoling manner, as if someone had just told me a loved one has passed away when words cannot possible meet the moment of bereavement.
Inside, I have to swallow the nah, nah nah nah nah’s.
Charles: While you were thinking of the Mouse That Roared, I kept thinking of the
King of Hearts (synopsis below). It must have been the part about the inmates of an asylum that jogged my memory and visions of Obama on that ‘stage of pillars’ and the voter/inmates in some mad frenzy- oh so ready to crown him.
October 1918. With the allied forces sweeping across France, a German battalion is ordered to retreat from a rural French town. Before doing so, they lay charges that will blow the town to Kingdom Come at midnight. When he hears of this, a British general sends bird specialist Charles Plumpick to find the bomb and diffuse it. When he arrives in the town, Plumpick is surprised to find it deserted: the inhabitants have fled for their lives, along with the German soldiers. The only people he meets are the inmates of an asylum, who were left behind in the panic. They welcome Plumpick as one of their own and leave the asylum to populate the empty town. Dressing up in extravagant costumes, the mad folk celebrate their freedom and crown Plumpick their leader, the King of Hearts. They even find a queen for him: the beautiful young acrobat Coquelicot. Whilst all this is happening, Plumpick becomes increasingly anxious about the missing bomb and the impending explosion that threatens to atomise him and his new friends…
After I read the link at “Brutally Honest” blog, I was comforted to know that I’m not the only one that sees the “Jimmy Carter” Obama parallel. Carter was elected in a similar melee of disgust with politics: post Vietnam, post Watergate/Nixon, post Hippies-60′s.
In 1976, those were genuine issues in American society.
In 2008, the issues were, in my opinion, fabricated for the most part: Bush’s incompetency, fascism & elitism; injustice of the Iraq war; Rosie O’Donnellesque denial of Islamism after 9/11. Okay, the economic downturn is real. everyone who can read and think knows that wasn’t brought on by GWB. (He could have vetoed the bills for Fannie and Freddy, though.)
I’ve been muttering to myself over here that the Americans finally elected a talk show host but now I realize that if only they had! we wouldn’t have all these faux pas, Freudian slips, et al that Obama has been producing at an alarming rate.
Finally:
Why does Obama have time to be on Jay Leno, 60 Minutes but he doesn’t have time or energy for the PM of Britain?? That is after all his job, to represent the USA, not to hang out with the media.
I have to say that I’m inclined to go with Charles and dispatching the newly converted as humanly as possible. Conservatives rarely fight “the Chicago way”.
And there are times we should. GWB repeatedly played nice-nice with the Libs, and they repeatedly stabbed him in the back. Remember, most of Obama’s supporters
still want socialism with all it’s destructive features.
If any of our Liberal friends begin seeing the light about Obama’s corruption, we should increase the candle power for them and illuminate the inherant corruption of the ideas he stands for.
Al
I have to believe that the key to all this is the “old line”, bitter-clinger middle-American blue-collar Democrats who voted the party line. It is they that need to be shown that a good alternative exists. Now that the rich and evil bankers will soon gone (where will they go to get their loans? Sorry, off-topic), perhaps now they will begin to awaken to how they are about to lose their country.
Perhaps that’s just the Midwestern in me talking and hoping, though.
binadaat –
All good questions.
Out of curiosity, in what area of the world do you live? Britain? And what are people where you live saying about Obama?
I ask because before the election, all we heard was how in love everyone overseas was with Obama. We were encouraged to listen to the preferences of the world, particularly the Europeans, because they are so much more knowledgeable and experienced in international and government affairs.
I even recall reading a news article that PM Brown was working to tamp down the enthusiasm for Obama in his staff out of concern that it would have made things difficult between the White House and Downing Street had Obama NOT won.
Maybe the silver lining in this very dark cloud is that Americans and others around the world will be more sober in future elections.