JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Question her tactics?

What about her intelligence, to say nothing of her sanity?
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“i’m curious to know how many of the commentin’ folk actually watched palins video from start to finish …. i’m gonna guess ….not many”

And why would they, Ian of Chicago?

We have been exposed to Sarah Palin excessively over the last couple of years.

There is simply nothing she could say on any subject worth reading or hearing.

The woman is poorly educated and marginally retarded.

And her low effective intelligence is dangerously combined with an ambition she doesn’t even understand herself.

Why keep putting yourself forward when you’ve so miserably failed at everything you’ve ever tried?

Everything, that is, with the exception of making millions of dollars from those who have more money than they know what to do with, buying tickets to rubber-chicken dinners.

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

“Mr Chuckman, why are Canadians are so obsessed with America and Americans, studying American history to glean anything and everything that can be used to bolster long formed opinions of ‘America the Evil’ then spewing it ad naseum. If only Canadians spent 1/10 as much time worrying about what’s wrong with Canada.”

Constance P, that is a truly fatuous comment, and I note that is in the very spirit of American politics being discussed.

Did your words possess any validity, there would be no reason to analyze or criticize anything.

I do not claim to be an expert on America, but it is a subject I know rather well, having been born and having spent close to half my life in the place.

In my effort to understand the world in which I live, America is a subject about which I have read a great many books, and I have written one and am in the process of writing a second.

I do think myself qualified to make comments on the subject, quite likely somewhat more than yourself.

At any rate, ad hominem argument – yours – has been recognized for centuries as invalid logic, indeed as no argument at all.

America’s people constitute about five percent of the world’s population, and its active voters a far smaller fraction, perhaps on the order of one percent.

So when America swings its economic and military weight around in world affairs, which it does certainly day and night, it is in effect acting as an aristocracy. After all, the Communist Party of China represents about the same fraction of the Chinese population, and it is in for constant carping and criticism, especially from America.

When a small group of people so affects the lives of others, I take it to be your view that those affected aren’t supposed to say anything.

A limited view, to say the least.

That last of yours is embarrassingly revealing. What do you know about Canada and Canadians to qualify you to make such a specific comment as you do?

Your saying that only reveals the same thinking pattern of which you accuse me.

I would roughly assay the quality of your comment as coming pretty close to twenty-four karat Sarah Palin.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CLIVE CROOK IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES

I’m not sure what else anyone could expect, Mr. Crook.

The cast of characters on the national political scene, especially those on the right, makes mighty poor material out of which to shape a civil political life.

Winning is everything, sophomoric arguments are common, and insults are basic building blocks of American politics, not to mention election fraud.

This political phenomenon is not new to America.

Perhaps many abroad have no real feeling for the history of America’s national politics.

Abraham Lincoln, now the nation’s most beloved president, was commonly called an “obscene ape” during his campaigning. Grotesque cartoons and vicious commentary played regularly on the theme.

There was an undercurrent in all that hatred of Lincoln’s having been believed to be an abolitionist. He most decidedly was not, but that mere fact didn’t stop the hate and excess of opponents just as facts do not stop the hate and excess of today.

Hatred was so intense, Lincoln went to Washington for his inauguration hiding his identity.

Andrew Jackson, as near a mad president as ever there was, fought duels, horse-whipped one politician, and threatened anyone who said anything he regarded as an insult.

Thomas Jefferson had a full-time paid hack to dig up dirt on his opponents, including the man he worked for as Secretary of State, George Washington. When the hack didn’t feel fairly treated by Jefferson, he sold his services to others, disseminating such dark facts he had discovered as Jefferson’s liaison with a teen-age slave girl, Sally Hemmings.

Look at the way the opposition treated Senator McGovern’s running mate, Senator Eggleton, a thoroughly decent man who had experienced some depression. Look at the way nasty graffiti artists treated Senator Muskie during his campaign, reducing him to public tears. Look at the words of Tom Delay – now a convicted felon – about Bill Clinton’s big trip to Africa, words dripping with hate and racism.

There are countless examples of this political insanity in America just during my lifetime. There was the idiot Republican Senator who accused the Clinton administration of running a concentration camp after the poor Cuban boy, Elian, was taken from his kidnappers and sent to a quiet place of refuge following months of being held to ransom and hearing his loving father regularly insulted by shouting voices.

And this stuff is not without real consequences, sometimes far greater than the recent shooting in Arizona. Richard Nixon made a career early on of defaming his opponents – his early election to Congress featured insults and lies toward the woman against whom he ran. Nixon accused her of being “pink down to her underwear.” His reputation as a gutter fighter was so established that President Johnson, in sending the beginnings of an army to Vietnam, was known to be motivated by political fear of being castigated for “losing Vietnam” the way “China was lost.”

The late Governor George Wallace and serious presidential candidate had a famous quote justifying his extreme actions towards desegregation: he famously said he would never be “outniggered” again after losing in an early political fight owing to his then moderation.

America is simply too young a society to have developed genuinely civilized political customs, and there is a raw quality to it that almost encourages the kind of behavior of a Sarah Palin having a cross-hair sight over a politician’s face on her web site.

The effects of this rawness are reinforced by America’s wealth because wealth enables people to publish and disseminate filth and stupidity in vast quantities. They are also reinforced by the totally dominant ethos of, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”

I see little hope for any change, except after the passage of a century or so.

America’s now-certain relative decline in the world should help a bit along the way: nothing is unhealthier for manic behavior than quasi-religious faith in being number one.