Comentando um artigo Liberal ( é antigo mas torna-se atual pela proximidade das eleições americanas)
nota do blog: O artigo em questão está no final da minha exposição. Ele circulou entre os melhores intelectuais do País. Um deles compara a turma de Bush aos jihadistas e outro concorda com o blog.
Meu caro,
Bem, trata-se do ponto onde discordamos profundamente e já falamos bastante sobre isso. Acredito naquilo que você detesta, ou seja, que estamos vivendo um momento especial em que os scholars passaram a achar que 2+2=5, ou, que a realidade é mais sofisticada do que se apresenta, sendo que, para mim, tudo começou a partir da invasão russa por Hitler. Essa conclusão, sem maiores explicações, é , para um estranho, completamente surrealista, ou cômica, mas já conversamos a respeito e você deve se lembrar do porquê. Simplificando, e para seu desagrado: é melhor uma Sarah Palin bombardeando o Iran, a Síria, o Afeganistão, e não se importanto com as baixas civis porque sua mente é vazia do “processo sofisticado” e enxerga que estamos com uma espada de Dâmocles sob nossas cabeças ( e essa espada vai ser baixada se não agirmos), do que um luminar de Harvard que está cheio de intelectualismos que impedem que veja as coisas como elas são.
Eu não quero bombas atômicas de bolso e bombas bacteriológicas explodindo nos Estados Unidos e na Europa. Considere que eu não sou louco, que tenho uma razoável formação acadêmica para os niveis brasileiros, que conheço metade do mundo, inclusive países problemáticos, ou em estado de guerra (Coreia do Norte, Paquistão, Afeganistão, China, Cambodja, Vietnam, Haiti e Cuba.) e que prefiro essa moça – sem dúvida não é a pessoa mais culta que conhecemos – mas que é muito mais confiável para o drama que estamos vivendo do que Obama, que intelectualmente nem é lá essas coisas perto de outros Democratas do passado. nota do blog em 17/02/2012: Em 2009 fui para o Iraque, e estive há poucas semanas no Líbano, Síria e Iran
Sarah desconhece mecanismos importantes dentro do próprio Estado americano, mas seria monitorada, e acho sobretudo e principalmente , que ela sabe mais do que os liberais, daquilo que realmente conta. Aliás, perorar sobre a ignorância de Sarah Palin é bobagem, não se trata disso. O importante é comparar as ignorâncias: a dela e a dos liberais.Ela não sabe que a Moldávia existe, mas vai reagir se o país for atacado. Os liberais sabem até que língua eles falam, mas não sabem o que fazer se a Russia entrar pelo país adentro, ou não consideram importante perde-la, o que para mim é ignorância geo-política. Esse é o nosso ponto de discordância: O que é mais importante para cada um de nós. Você poderia deixar a Moldávia de lado a troco da paz, o que estaria mais próximo de uma política dos liberais. Para mim seria a paz de Munich. Não quero dizer que os liberais não vão reagir, eles podem até entrar em guerra, mas estou jogando com as probabilidades que a história mais recente mostrou. A tendência liberal é a da incrivel capitulação no Vietnam, covardia do Clinton nas duas oportunidades que teve para matar o Osama, etc. É o contrário do Reagan, quase tão imbecil no julgamento liberal quanto a Sarah.
Outro ponto que é muito desprezado porque parece raciocínio simplório-simplista. Quem os terroristas preferem para a presidência dos USA ? Obama-Biden, ou McCain-Palin? Não parece a você que esse é um ponto sério a ser considerado ? Um ponto que envolve muita coisa? Os liberais precisam se decidir: ou, como eles dizem, os terroristas são muito mais sofisticados do que o Bush pensa, e merecem um outro tratamento (Bush pensou que fosse muito fácil, eles são complexos, xiitas x sunitas, realidades que uma política truculenta, inconsequente desconheceu, blá,blá, blá, conseguiram ressurgir no Afeganistão, etc.), e NESSE CASO é importante, a escolha óbvia que eles (terroristas) ja fizeram entre os candidatos, ou, pelo contrário, são mesmo uns pés-rapados e decidirem-se por Obama-Biden não tem importância. Não se pode ter duas realidades. São excludentes, é claro. Quem o Putin prefere ? Isso não tem importância para ajudar a definir situações ? Ele vai ficar mais inibido no seu ímpeto guerreiro com McCain-Palin ou com os reis da “razão”, os reis do diálogo ?
É seu o comentário abaixo ? (nota do blog: ” O que diferencia essa gente dos proponentes islâmicos da Jihad?”) Você não pode se mostrar tão escandalizado. Sua reação faz supor que todos nós, a favor dos republicanos, somos uns idiotas natos. Acrescente também loucura. Você se incorporaria aos totalitários e auto-suficientes, o que não condiz com a sua viva inteligência e alto preparo. “O que diferencia essa gente dos proponentes islâmicos da Jihad?” Bom, isso é mesmo o cúmulo do passionalismo, se sobrepondo á razão (razão tão cara aos liberais) . O que diferencia é que os jihadistas tratam suas mulheres feito escravas, cortam os clíctoris das meninas com facas de cozinha (seis mil por dia), explodem carros bombas matando gente inocente na promessa de irem para o sétimo céu deflorar virgens, e degolam pessoas em frente á televisão, enquanto “essa gente” é apenas classe média americana que acredita em Arca de Noé. Uma diferença muito significativa.
Passei os olhos no artigo que destila ódio. Grita em protesto por uma ignorante patética haver chegado ao ponto em que chegou. O indignado, furioso dono do artigo, não aceita o fato de que isso pode acontecer em uma democracia. Fica pasmo com o fato de que uma elite tão bem preparada, tão ciosa de suas qualidades possa ser confrontada com uma maldita dona de casa que não sabe onde fica a Georgia, e ainda faça piadinhas de uma ingenuidade infantil. Que ignorância a do articulista! Que desastre de artigo. Eu poderia constestar frase por frase e acho que seria uma tarefa facílima. Cada linha é preconceituosa, arrogante, diz coisas como “o NYTimes considerou absurdo” como se esse jornal extravagante para dezenas de milhões de americanos , a bíblia dos liberais, estivesse acima do bem e do mal. Esse é um bom exemplo da tônica do artigo. Por coincidência eu assisti a parte da entrevista, a armadilha, quando foi perguntado o que a Sarah Palin achava da doutrina Bush. Sua resposta, realmente poderia ser: “O que a senhora quer dizer com doutrina Bush?” Sim, porque, de fato não existe uma doutrina Bush, existem ACUSAÇÕES contra Bush. nota do blog: passados alguns anos pode-se dizer que a doutrina Bush seria a intervenção preventiva, isto é combater os terroristas aonde estiverem, antes que possam atacar os EUA>
Pouca coisa se sustenta como razoável nesse poço de vaidade insana que é o artigo. Sua crítica á religião é inadequada, indelicada, arrogante, totalitária. Desconhece completamente o que está se passando no mundo da ciência do século XXI. Desconhece o fato de que a diferença de número entre cientistas ateus e religiosos é mínima( ateus 45%, acreditam em Deus 40% e 15% não sabem) e que o maior biólogo do mundo, o Diretor do Projeto Genoma, Francis Collins, é cristão, e acredita que Jesus é filho de Deus e veio ao mundo para nos salvar. Um marciano que lesse esse monte de desabafos raivosos ficaria imediatamente do lado contrário ao do artigo. Tudo é odioso, manipulado, repleto de insultos, parece um documento da Inquisição, mas a intenção é a de um hino de amor ao intelecto revoltado contra as trevas. No fundo, uma clara herança do totalitarismo esquerdista que ainda se estende entre os liberais. Que energia para mostrar o perigo que corremos com uma semi-analfabeta colocando os dedinhos nos botões atômicos!
De tão ofensivo, o artigo deveria ser apenas para circulação interna entre os liberais, e é páreo duro para o vazio intelectual da moça.
Abraço.
Outro amigo:
Mas isso se chama… “diversidade cultural”, Mafra.
Mais um :
Obrigado pelo e-mail, Mafra. Concordo inteiramente com você. Não sei se você teve oportunidade de ver os meus comentários para o Mr. X em resposta a este artigo: em resumo, apontei a diferença de tratamento dada pelo Sam Harris à igreja do Pastor Jeremiah Wright e à Assmbléia de Deus. Não pertenço a nenhuma delas, então me sinto à vontade para estranhar que nem uma palavra tenha sido usada para lembrar o caldo de cultura religioso que balizou – pelo menos, em tese – a vida do Obama até aqui. A julgar pelos respectivos prelados, não tenho a menor dúvida de quem seria o mais perigoso para a “paz” e a “razão”. Parece-me, também, que você tocou num ponto muito importante: os “ignorantes” americanos (em princípio, os Republicanos) têm uma perspectiva de mundo real muito mais afilada que os liberais, cevada aquela perspectiva em uma tradição de hard work. E, nesses tough times, aquilo de que mais se precisa é, justamente, uma visão pé-no-chão, sem desvarios academicistas, que leve em consideração o caráter bárbaro, anticivilzacional de algumas das contrapartes da política internacional. Muito boa, ainda, a sua intervenção sobre quem será a dupla preferida por Putin e seus companheiros.
Um abraço,
Assustador. A primeira parte lida com uma realidade muito familiar nossa, a ignorância sábia do homem que veio de baixo e tem a intuição da coisa certa. O que acorda invocado e liga pru Buchi (ou será Buxi?). A segunda parte me faz perguntar o que diferencia essa gente dos proponentes islâmicos da Jihad. Mas ela não vai piscar ao tomar decisões…
Assunto: Excelente artigo sobre Sarah Palin (Oremos…)
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> When Atheists Attack
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> Sam Harris
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> NEWSWEEK
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> From the magazine issue dated Sep 29, 2008
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> http://www.newsweek.com/id/160080
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> Let me confess that I was genuinely unnerved by Sarah Palin’s performance at the Republican convention. Given her audience and the needs of the moment, I believe Governor Palin’s speech was the most effective political communication I have ever witnessed. Here, finally, was a performer who-being maternal, wounded, righteous and sexy-could stride past the frontal cortex of every American and plant a three-inch heel directly on that limbic circuit that ceaselessly intones “God and country.” If anyone could make Christian theocracy smell like apple pie, Sarah Palin could.
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> Then came Palin’s first television interview with Charles Gibson. I was relieved to discover, as many were, that Palin’s luster can be much diminished by the absence of a teleprompter. Still, the problem she poses to our political process is now much bigger than she is. Her fans seem inclined to forgive her any indiscretion short of cannibalism. However badly she may stumble during the remaining weeks of this campaign, her supporters will focus their outrage upon the journalist who caused her to break stride, upon the camera operator who happened to capture her fall, upon the television network that broadcast the good lady’s misfortune-and, above all, upon the “liberal elites” with their highfalutin assumption that, in the 21st century, only a reasonably well-educated person should be given command of our nuclear arsenal.
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> The point to be lamented is not that Sarah Palin comes from outside Washington, or that she has glimpsed so little of the earth’s surface (she didn’t have a passport until last year), or that she’s never met a foreign head of state. The point is that she comes to us, seeking the second most important job in the world, without any intellectual training relevant to the challenges and responsibilities that await her. There is nothing to suggest that she even sees a role for careful analysis or a deep understanding of world events when it comes to deciding the fate of a nation. In her interview with Gibson, Palin managed to turn a joke about seeing Russia from her window into a straight-faced claim that Alaska’s geographical proximity to Russia gave her some essential foreign-policy experience. Palin may be a perfectly wonderful person, a loving mother and a great American success story-but she is a beauty queen/sports reporter who stumbled into small-town politics, and who is now on the verge of stumbling into, or upon, world history.
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> The problem, as far as our political process is concerned, is that half the electorate revels in Palin’s lack of intellectual qualifications. When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. “They think they’re better than you!” is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. “Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!” Yes, all too ordinary.
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> We have all now witnessed apparently sentient human beings, once provoked by a reporter’s microphone, saying things like, “I’m voting for Sarah because she’s a mom. She knows what it’s like to be a mom.” Such sentiments suggest an uncanny (and, one fears, especially American) detachment from the real problems of today. The next administration must immediately confront issues like nuclear proliferation, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and covert wars elsewhere), global climate change, a convulsing economy, Russian belligerence, the rise of China, emerging epidemics, Islamism on a hundred fronts, a defunct United Nations, the deterioration of American schools, failures of energy, infrastructure and Internet security … the list is long, and Sarah Palin does not seem competent even to rank these items in order of importance, much less address any one of them.
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> Palin’s most conspicuous gaffe in her interview with Gibson has been widely discussed. The truth is, I didn’t much care that she did not know the meaning of the phrase “Bush doctrine.” And I am quite sure that her supporters didn’t care, either. Most people view such an ambush as a journalistic gimmick. What I do care about are all the other things Palin is guaranteed not to know-or will be glossing only under the frenzied tutelage of John McCain’s advisers. What doesn’t she know about financial markets, Islam, the history of the Middle East, the cold war, modern weapons systems, medical research, environmental science or emerging technology? Her relative ignorance is guaranteed on these fronts and most others, not because she was put on the spot, or got nervous, or just happened to miss the newspaper on any given morning. Sarah Palin’s ignorance is guaranteed because of how she has spent the past 44 years on earth.
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> I care even more about the many things Palin thinks she knows but doesn’t: like her conviction that the Biblical God consciously directs world events. Needless to say, she shares this belief with mil-lions of Americans-but we shouldn’t be eager to give these people our nuclear codes, either. There is no question that if President McCain chokes on a spare rib and Palin becomes the first woman president, she and her supporters will believe that God, in all his majesty and wisdom, has brought it to pass. Why would God give Sarah Palin a job she isn’t ready for? He wouldn’t. Everything happens for a reason. Palin seems perfectly willing to stake the welfare of our country-even the welfare of our species-as collateral in her own personal journey of faith. Of course, McCain has made the same unconscionable wager on his personal journey to the White House.
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> In speaking before her church about her son going to war in Iraq, Palin urged the congregation to pray “that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God; that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.” When asked about these remarks in her interview with Gibson, Palin successfully dodged the issue of her religious beliefs by claiming that she had been merely echoing the words of Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times later dubbed her response “absurd.” It was worse than absurd; it was a lie calculated to conceal the true character of her religious infatuations. Every detail that has emerged about Palin’s life in Alaska suggests that she is as devout and literal-minded in her Christian dogmatism as any man or woman in the land. Given her long affiliation with the Assemblies of God church, Palin very likely believes that Biblical prophecy is an infallible guide to future events and that we are living in the “end times.” Which is to say she very likely thinks that human history will soon unravel in a foreordained cataclysm of war and bad weather. Undoubtedly Palin believes that this will be a good thing-as all true Christians will be lifted bodily into the sky to make merry with Jesus, while all nonbelievers, Jews, Methodists and other rabble will be punished for eternity in a lake of fire. Like many Pentecostals, Palin may even imagine that she and her fellow parishioners enjoy the power of prophecy themselves. Otherwise, what could she have meant when declaring to her congregation that “God’s going to tell you what is going on, and what is going to go on, and you guys are going to have that within you”?
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> You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps. In the churches where Palin has worshiped for decades, parishioners enjoy “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” “miraculous healings” and “the gift of tongues.” Invariably, they offer astonishingly irrational accounts of this behavior and of its significance for the entire cosmos. Palin’s spiritual colleagues describe themselves as part of “the final generation,” engaged in “spiritual warfare” to purge the earth of “demonic strongholds.” Palin has spent her entire adult life immersed in this apocalyptic hysteria. Ask yourself: Is it a good idea to place the most powerful military on earth at her disposal? Do we actually want our leaders thinking about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy when it comes time to say to the Iranians, or to the North Koreans, or to the Pakistanis, or to the Russians or to the Chinese: “All options remain on the table”?
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> It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin’s impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin’s daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who “intends” to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of “the dysfunction in the black community”?
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> Teen pregnancy is a misfortune, plain and simple. At best, it represents bad luck (both for the mother and for the child); at worst, as in the Palins’ case, it is a symptom of religious dogmatism. Governor Palin opposes sex education in schools on religious grounds. She has also fought vigorously for a “parental consent law” in the state of Alaska, seeking full parental dominion over the reproductive decisions of minors. We know, therefore, that Palin believes that she should be the one to decide whether her daughter carries her baby to term. Based on her stated position, we know that she would deny her daughter an abortion even if she had been raped. One can be forgiven for doubting whether Bristol Palin had all the advantages of 21st-century family planning-or, indeed, of the 21st century.
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> We have endured eight years of an administration that seemed touched by religious ideology. Bush’s claim to Bob Woodward that he consulted a “higher Father” before going to war in Iraq got many of us sitting upright, before our attention wandered again to less ethereal signs of his incompetence. For all my concern about Bush’s religious beliefs, and about his merely average grasp of terrestrial reality, I have never once thought that he was an over-the-brink, Rapture-ready extremist. Palin seems as though she might be the real McCoy. With the McCain team leading her around like a pet pony between now and Election Day, she can be expected to conceal her religious extremism until it is too late to do anything about it. Her supporters know that while she cannot afford to “talk the talk” between now and Nov. 4, if elected, she can be trusted to “walk the walk” until the Day of Judgment.
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> What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which she represents-and her supporters celebrate-the joyful marriage of confidence and ignorance. Watching her deny to Gibson that she had ever harbored the slightest doubt about her readiness to take command of the world’s only superpower, one got the feeling that Palin would gladly assume any responsibility on earth:
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> “Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child’s brain?”
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> “Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I’m an avid hunter.”
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> “But governor, this is neurosurgery, and you have no training as a surgeon of any kind.”
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> “That’s just the point, Charlie. The American people want change in how we make medical decisions in this country. And when faced with a challenge, you cannot blink.”
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> The prospects of a Palin administration are far more frightening, in fact, than those of a Palin Institute for Pediatric Neurosurgery. Ask yourself: how has “elitism” become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth-in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn’t seem too intelligent or well educated.
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> I believe that with the nomination of Sarah Palin for the vice presidency, the silliness of our politics has finally put our nation at risk. The world is growing more complex-and dangerous-with each passing hour, and our position within it growing more precarious. Should she become president, Palin seems capable of enacting policies so detached from the common interests of humanity, and from empirical reality, as to unite the entire world against us. When asked why she is qualified to shoulder more responsibility than any person has held in human history, Palin cites her refusal to hesitate. “You can’t blink,” she told Gibson repeatedly, as though this were a primordial truth of wise governance. Let us hope that a President Palin would blink, again and again, while more thoughtful people decide the fate of civilization.
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> Harris is a founder of The Reason Project and author of The New York Times best sellers “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.” His Web site is samharris.org.
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