Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Obama interviews Marilynne Robinson.


US News gives it to us straight. In a switch Obama does the interviewing of author Marilynn Robinson. The subjects of discussion are faith, democracy, education and writing. Of interest is he was anxious to have an unscripted discussion, that it's one of the things he doesn't get a chance to do often as he'd like, speaking with someone that he'd enjoy who he is interested in. She is first in a queue of people he wants to interview. He is a longtime fan. He read her book Gilead, set in Iowa, while he campaigned in the state. His connection to the book, he thinks, is appreciation for homespun virtues.

Right. 

This is opposite of culture today all about celebrity and being loud and bragging, says he.

With video. Who is he interviewing again? Marilynne Robinson.

Los Angeles Times open with a link to the interview on iTunes. The times summarizes the conversation on the author's Christian faith with emphasis on Christians not taking their faith seriously by "turning in on themselves" and arming themselves against "the imagined other." Faith is supposed to be difficult, supposed to be a challenge.

And apparently suicidal. 

Robinson speaks up for America's maligned school system. She considers "a great educational system that is a triumph of the civilization" and it has no defenders. She says most things we do have no defenders because people feel the worst thing you can say is the truest thing you can say.

It is the figures provided by government that are telling us our schools rank near the bottom of nearly every category. A propaganda machine for political Party is not the triumph of civilization it's cracked up to be. A simple street survey, say, on any random Columbus Day, any day actually, will reveal immediately the falseness of this statement. Further, it is a system being overtaken. 

LA times points out this isn't the fist time Obama recognized Robinson publicly. He also awarded her National Humanities Medal previously. Also quoted her at the funeral of the South Carolina state senator slain with eight others at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal in Charleston. Obama said then, what is called upon now is what Marilyn Robinson calls that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things.

How poetic. Yes, words to live by. I guess. Words. We'll recognize the behavior when we see it. Because it will stand out so starkly with observable Obama behavior. All Obama behavior. 


Time will have us know four things. 1) A favorite character is a pastor in Gilead. 

Most likely the only book of hers he had read to him. 

2) His outsider status during first campaign allowed him to connect with small town America. 

Usually a candidate comes with that connection built in but this candidate was exotic.

3) One of the biggest struggles of his political career has been bridging the gap between our common life and our political life.

He has no career other than political. 

Democrat success in making every breath taken a political breath, every morsel consumed a political morsel, every poo given a political poo is the single most serious vexation of my life. There is no gap to bridge. The position is ridiculous. 

4) He believes America's nagging dissatisfaction is simultaneously a great asset and a danger. 

Thanks Time. This is what, Obama interviewing author Marilynne Robinson? We expect to learn something about her, not more about Time's outgoing object of adoration. This is why serious people no longer bother with Time. 

And this survey of a man doing something that cannot be cared about is all so sweetly saccharine that it's cloying. Let's see what seriously politically bent crackpots say.

Alex Jones' Info Wars didn't hear anything about Marilynne Robinson. They heard Obama say in this interview by Obama that suspicion of government is paralyzing and that it is Christians holding back America from doing big things. 

Like climate change legislation, fossil fuel industry destruction, firearm confiscation, no questions asked open borders, were we to look at what big Obama things are paralyzed. 
“Whenever I hear people saying that our problems would be solved without government, I always want to tell them you need to go to some other countries where there really is no government.”
You're hearing things. This is not the ordinary tinnitus. This is hearing voices saying things that nobody says. In polemics and logic this affliction is called straw man. A scarecrow. Obama makes an argument against a ghost talking to his basal ganglia, he swings at phantoms. Scarecrow, phantom, same thing. He does this. 
"Where the roads are never…." 
Oh please. Pardon me, I must have a sip of my boxed juice and pop another NoDoz. It doesn't get more wearisome than this.
“If, in fact, you think that government is the enemy. And that, too, is a running strain in our democracy. That’s sort of in our DNA. We’re suspicious of government as a tool of oppression. And that skepticism is healthy, but it can also be paralyzing when we’re trying to do big things together.” 
Nobody said government is enemy, Asshole. We're so tired of you making shit up and arguing with it. However Party is. And Party has used government against half its political "enemies" and that is why government is deeply distrusted especially under Democrat governance when there is no real media in opposition, rather more political enmity expressed through government militancy and government mistakes ignored, huge mistakes ignored, gigantic mistakes that government makes with zero accountability. No, government is not the things we do together, rather United States government is what we do to each other. No mention of hyper regulation in Obama's paralysis analysis. No, that's the machinery behaving poorly to the sabots his agencies keep tossing into it.  
As evidenced by another such contemporary incident on Infowars, Texas Rancher Fights Back against BLM Land Grab. Another one, rancher Ken Aderholt this time. Saddle up, Cowboys. Grab the flags and the guns. Imagine all those Ford trucks and horses in trailers, people in cowboy boots and hats with rifles waving around converging as you read this on the area of Red River along the norther Texas border to face off again with BLM. 
Except this time BLM is not surprised and knows what to expect and is ready for them.
Infowars reads Obama as saying that anyone who questions or opposes the government is holding back America from doing big things. 
Like arming known terrorists in Iraq and Syria and opening the borders to them, and BLM land grabs in another article on their site.
They read Obama saying Christians who take their religion most seriously develop us vs them mentality.
“How do you reconcile the idea of faith being really important to you and you caring a lot about taking faith seriously with the fact that, at least in our democracy and our civic discourse, it seems as if folks who take religion the most seriously sometimes are also those who are suspicious of those not like them?”
He is speaking about Christians and only about Christians. In his world view it is only Christians and only conservatives who are intolerant and civic discourse means him speaking endlessly and us listening endlessly. His stinking ass Party has destroyed discourse civic and civil. Step into any town hall you like as evidence. Oh just fuck him already. I don't care to know anymore what he thinks or what he says and I resent writing about him.
Infowars is milder. They simply have their readers take note that exercising your 1st and 2nd Amendment rights and following the founders' advice to be skeptical of government means you're paralyzing Obama's agenda for big things. 
Oh Rehoboam, how great thou art. How expansively wide and growing. He enlarges the people. 
Obama's view is the same as DNC's video for children, We All Belong to the Government.
And what is Marilynne Robinson like other than the vapid dribble presidentially quoted at funeral attended for political purpose? You won't know by any of this.

14 comments:

deborah said...

Disclosure, I'm an Independent. Would you mind giving concrete examples of how the Republicans are SO MUCH BETTER than the Dems?

I am not going to re-litigate the Iraq War, but it was instigated by us, because the UN would not play along. False, cherry-picked info was fed by Cheney to Bush II, and the NYT cheer-led us along.

Enron, the Savings and Loan scandal?

The entire system is corrupt.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

"homespun" as opposed to white house spun?

That Putin's unchecked aggression is a sign of weakness... home-spun.

That Hillary use of an unsecured server posed no harm to National Security... home-spun

Christy said...

Robinson has been vaguely on my must read list. Not so much now.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Deborah you sound like a generic far left librul to me. I am basing that on my cherry picking your comment above- and perhaps it does not accurately capture you and your beliefs.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Chip - love the way you vehemently & fully debunk the librul crap spewing from Obama's mouth.

deborah said...

Not a far-left liberal, AJ. I voted for McCain. I'm all over the map, more of a centrist.

edutcher said...

From the guy who had to go to Rev Wright to learn about Christianity.

Or, more accurately, Made It "Comfortable” For Obama to Accept Christianity Without Having to Renounce Islam.

Which makes him an apostate.

Watch your back, sweetie, one of those Moselms you're importing is gonna give you a neck length haircut.

deborah said...

Disclosure, I'm an Independent. Would you mind giving concrete examples of how the Republicans are SO MUCH BETTER than the Dems?

Which Republicans, the Whigs or the real ones?

The real ones love this country and will fight for it. They want to clean up government and make it responsive to the people.

They'd like to cut entitlements and get the government out of everybody's face.

They're for a more moral society.

Enough?

I'm Full of Soup said...

Deborah:

Most centrists would blame George Tenent, the CIA director, who was appointed by Clinton, for the bad intel on Iraq. Tenent guaranteed ["slam dunk"} Bush he'd find WMD.

And very few centrists think the NYT has the power or sway to convince America to go to war.

Just saying that's all.


deborah said...

AJ, google:

OSP Cheney stovepipe

Iraqi Liberation Act

Team B Cheney

These people have been around and manipulating things for a long time. The MSM cheerleaded as the tanks were speeding toward Baghdad. Remember the embedded reporters?

deborah said...

"The real ones love this country and will fight for it. They want to clean up government and make it responsive to the people."

Problem is these patriots are glued to reality tv and taking out their frustrations arguing on message boards. Enjoy the decline and stick a fork in us, because we are done.

edutcher said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
edutcher said...

deborah said...

The MSM cheerleaded as the tanks were speeding toward Baghdad. Remember the embedded reporters?

They love the bang-bang.

If it bleeds it leads, remember?

Problem is these patriots are glued to reality tv and taking out their frustrations arguing on message boards. Enjoy the decline and stick a fork in us, because we are done.

You give up too easy.

AJ Lynch said...

Most centrists would blame George Tenent, the CIA director, who was appointed by Clinton, for the bad intel on Iraq.

That guarantee did come true.

The CIA got it right when they said the Russkies trucked some to Syria. IS found a lot of them cached.

Remember the yellowcake Iraq sold to Canada?

They were there. As even WikiLeaks documented

deborah said...

Lucky guess. The ME is soooo effed up right now. Maybe it's kismet. Maybe it will lead to a more perfect world. That's the ONLY reason I could come up with for GWB blasting Iraq sky high, and then Obama following up with the Arab Spring.

edutcher said...

never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill