In all the wrathful outpourings from politicians, pundits, and ordinary people since FBI Director James Comey’s announcement yesterday July 5, 2016 (declining to prosecute Hillary Clinton) no one, to my knowledge, has noted that “moderation” is the quality most admired by advocates of the “neutral state,” conflict-resolution/peace studies, and other pacifiers who keep our all-too-independent polity on the “strait” and “narrow” (quoting Matthew 7.14 in the New Testament, King James version).
Here is a partial list of prior blogs on the barely concealed violence in the discourses of “moderation.”
https://clarespark.com/2011/12/10/before-saul-alinsky-rules-for-democratic-politicians/, https://clarespark.com/2015/04/07/who-are-the-moderate-men/, https://clarespark.com/2010/06/15/the-classics-as-antidote-to-science-education/, https://clarespark.com/2009/09/15/making-mobs-with-bad-words-and-concepts/.
But there is more to say about the indignant responses to Director Comey’s apparent exoneration of Hillary Clinton. Lawyers, trained to be rational (when it suits them), can’t dissect the term “moderate” because lawyers are supposed to be disinterested parties to “the rule of law”—a notion that has been constantly reiterated since yesterday’s “bombshell” announcement.
It is not too difficult to demonstrate that it is scattered Independents and Constitutional conservatives who respect the advanced notion that there is one set of rules for rich and poor alike, but all that changed with the Progressive movement (and perhaps before “the living Constitution” became the battle cry for the compassionate elect.
Historians agree that we live in an age of irrationalism, oblivious to “traditional” notions of law and order. How to account for Hillary’s devoted following among women and young people? Although conservatives have been vocal in denouncing the “hyper-sexualization” of our post-feminist culture, such glorification of perpetual adolescence aided and abetted by malicious mischief in the mass media, I haven’t heard anyone attribute Hillary’s following to the widespread desire for conflict-free sex with as many partners as feasible, and without the possible consequences of pregnancy and child-rearing.
Indeed, for many intellectuals, Hillary is the “moderate” alternative to Dastardly Donald—the “extremist” who (secretly) hates the “man on the street.”
Leave a Reply