Population: One

Some further thoughts on assumptions; I continue to blame Mike. And of course Trent Lott, who has provoked a furor of discussion which could be useful but will no doubt turn to partisan bickering — oh wait, it already has.

Trent Lott is, in my eyes, most likely a racist. While his most recent statement could be construed as flattery to an old man and nothing more, we have other evidence. We have similar statements he’s made in the past, one of them off the record (if it’s confirmed) and thus unlikely to have been scripted to win over the crowd. We have his appearance at rallies to raise funds for all-white private schools. We have his voting record. We have a preponderance of evidence.

On the other hand, we have George Bush. Bush spoke at Bob Jones University. There’s no doubt that Bob Jones University has a racist administration; they forbid interracial dating. Does that make Bush racist? Nope. It means, at the worst, that he’s willing to seek the support of racists in order to get elected. You can decide for yourself how bad that is. I think it’s pretty bad, but it’s not as bad as /being/ a racist. There are, in this world, shades of grey.

Now, you can get two kinds of bad spin out of this, interestingly. One way to misrepresent this is to accuse Bush of being a racist. That’s unfair, I think. Another way to misrepresent this is to claim that I’m calling Bush a racist when I’m just saying he’s willing to associate with racist individuals to get votes. That’s also unfair.

Both pretty effective debate tactics, though.

Cold Fury clarifies his earlier statements, and I believe I thus owe him an apology. I can’t hold being closed-minded against him, either; I think that people on the left are just as likely to be closed-minded in exactly the same sort of a way. You think (say) Atrios believes a word Bush says without some sort of evidence? Nope.

Nor should he, any more than Cold Fury should believe Democratic politicos. Hidden agendas are the nature of the beast. The Republicans accused Max Cleland of being a pacifist! Pointing your finger at the left as the only people who do this is simply silly. “Did you know John McCain has an illegitimate black child?”

Now, I think Trent Lott’s comments were pretty clear, and I remembered his involvement with Bob Jones University, and so forth. Still, I can understand holding off a little. On the other hand, I would hope that people will remember this, and the next time a Democrat says “This guy’s support of Bob Jones makes him suspect,” they’ll listen. It’s not always crying wolf.

Nonetheless: my apologies for the mischaracterization.

Conventional wisdom in the blogosphere is that everyone’s up in arms about Trent Lott, with harmonious accord. At the worst, there’s some confusion about which bloggers broke the story first. Well… I gotta kick that one around a little, and shed some light on the warblogger world.

Mischa says, “Listen, folks: If you wanna get rid of Trent, it’s no skin off of my nose, I couldn’t care less. I never liked the guy to begin with. But would you please, please, PLEASE try to come up with a reason that’s even half-way intelligent?”

Cold Fury says, “I don’t really think the man is a raving racist; I think he was merely spouting a little half-baked fluff to pump up Sperm Thurmond at his party, that’s all. But the truth is, he simply has to know that he’s under a media microscope, and as the Republican standard-bearer in Congress, our useful-idiot mainstream journalists are just waiting for him to make any stupid move at all that they can pounce on. If he doesn’t know this, then it necessarily follows that he’s too damned stupid to be allowed to speak in public, much less speak for the Republican Party on anything more pivotal than whether to have the fries or the baked potato with lunch.” I.e., he needs to quit because he makes Republicans look bad. But he’s a nice guy at heart. Sure.

So do a few quotes mean anything about warbloggers as a whole? Nope, not even close. The vast majority of bloggers on all sides of this issue think Lott should resign because he’s an unrepentant racist. However, I’m trusting the rest of the warbloggers will remember that some of their comrades are on the side of the segregationists.

There are more reports that Bush has sanctioned assassinations. Except they’re not assassinations, because the targets are enemy combatants and thus legitimate targets for lethal force. Well, OK, but I really don’t want to see any complaints about atrocities if Colin Powell or Bush gets assassinated by Al Qaeda. If it’s OK to target leaders on the other side of a war, and we’re in a war, then it’s gotta be OK for both sides.

Saddam’s still not off the hook for his attempt to assassinate Bush Senior, though, since Bush wasn’t an enemy commander at that time. Even from Iraq’s perspective.

The January 2003 issue of Esquire contains an interesting article about Bush’s White House. I’m not entirely certain what to make of it, but it’s certainly good reading. The meat of the article is a fairly scathing portrayal of a White House where policy is set by Karl Rove, whose main concern is political advantage. As a sidebar, Esquire presents the primary source material: a letter from John DiIulio, detailing his concerns about the current administration.

You’ve got to wonder if this sort of thing is simply a trench war between branches of the Republican Party, in which one branch is using the press to good advantage. Actually, you don’t have to wonder that — it’s fairly obvious. The catch is that it’s not an ideological battle per se. It’s a battle between the concept of politics as a means towards advancing an ideology, and the concept of politics as an end in itself. In other words, are you trying to win so you can make the country better, or are you trying to win because winning is important?

To a certain degree, even that’s an oversimplification. I think that Bush does want to make the country a better place. I just think that he feels ideology is secondary to that effort. He believes in governance of the well-intentioned. This means that he can’t see the necessity for controls; since he would never abuse near-dictatorial powers, he should receive those powers so that he can do a better job.