Acceptable Narratives

HONESTY?
Don't kid yourself. The most important player in determining the nation's President is the all-encompassing media. It's why the race will once again be Harvard v. Harvard.

I was thinking that, along with the thought that the media is going to utterly destroy Rick Santorum. Utterly destroy him. It's already begun, courtesy of a diatribe in today's NY Times by Charles Blow, and the recent interview by media attack dog Charlie Rose. Did you see or hear the interview?

As Santorum tried to point out, none too well, there was something fundamentally dishonest about the Charlie Rose line of questioning. Santorum wanted to talk about the economy. Rose's job wasn't to talk about the economy! His job was to destroy Rick Santorum. He knew it, Santorum knew it, and we knew it. Whichever side you're on, you know it.

Why is Santorum a particular target? Because his ideas go beyond the acceptable narrative. If you don't hew closely enough to the media's own in-bred beliefs, you're beyond the pale. A "crackpot."

HONESTY
The one question asked by nobody is whether what Santorum's supporter said was true or not. The "aspirin between the legs" quote. Is it true?

Of course it's true. That there were way fewer out-of-wedlock births fifty years ago, and fewer social problems, is an easily documented fact.

We have to be honest enough to admit that.

MORE HONESTY
Let's be honest. We love liberal social ideas, myself included. (I don't say "liberal values," because that's an oxymoron.) We love them.

Why do we love them? Because they're easy. They ask of us nothing. NOTHING. They say, go have fun. Indulge yourself, with no consequences. If there are consequences, the government will pay for them. Pursue every appetite, bar none.

People hate Roman Catholic doctrine because it's not easy. It's in fact very difficult. Even the Church's hardest core advocates, its priests, have trouble living their own doctrine. Catholic philosophy is a difficult model to follow. It believes life was meant to be a challenge, a spiritual journey full of obstacles.

Then again, wisdom comes only from difficulty.

We don't ask the practical question-- no one wants to ask it-- of whether Santorum's social ideas will work. (Once, they more or less did work.) We don't ask if his ideas are true. The media won't ask that. Truth is irrelevant to them. "What is truth?" Their philosophical foundation is a convenient and expedient disbelief in truth. All they know is they have a job to do-- to get the candidate closest to their own viewpoint into office. To enforce, as they always enforce-- not just on Santorum's issue but other issues-- the acceptable narratives.

UPCOMING at this blog: "Lacan and Liberal Bias." Yes, an idea or two from a recent French philosopher that might have application to something in the real world. I'm surprised myself. Stay tuned.