Private Mike McNaughton running with President Bush.

Who is Today’s Hero?

I had occasion, this weekend, to rent the DVD of the movie Grizzly Man.

This was a documentary produced by German director Werner Herzog in 2005, a movie that won the 2006 Chicago Film Critics Association award for best documentary, along with best documentary awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Circle, Online Film Critics Society, San Francisco Film Critics Circle, 2005 Sundance Film Festival awards for best director, and Toronto Film Critics Association for best documentary.

I’m a bit behind the times. I just now rented the DVD from my local store. And at the conclusion I was astounded, dumbfounded, impressed and yet, satisfied. It was as it should have been. It’s simply the way the world works.

It was unfortunate that he was killed; it was sadder still that he brought another human (37-year-old girlfriend Amie Huguenard) into the mix and she was killed as well — evidence indicating that, though she was afraid of the bears, she stayed behind during the attack to do what she could — despite Treadwell shouting that she should run — and was torn apart for her efforts.

At the DVD’s conclusion I thought: this is a most appropriate political allegory for our times. I wonder how many people can see it or even interpret this meaning? Allow me to define the situation and I’m certain the clouds will part for you, if they haven’t already.

Timothy Treadwell was the consummate actor, showman, liar, provocateur, alcoholic, drug addict, and an excellent representative of my generation — the Baby Boomers. Life was All About Him. Just ask him. As his parents said in the film: when he failed to get the bartender’s part on Cheers that Woody Harrelson acquired, Timothy’s life went downhill. And oh: Treadwell wasn’t his real name either.

Somehow, somewhere he made the transition to self-styled naturalist, videographer and protector of an environment that many said, essentially, needed no protection because — are you sitting down? — it was already protected.

“Treadwell” saw himself as a modern day eco-warrior. This is evident in his numerous setup monologues at tripod’s end. Essentially he brought two digital videocams and a tripod into the environment of Alaska’s Katmai National Park — an area that has the world’s highest concentration of brown bears and Grizzlies in the world. He managed to do so for 13 years until he met the right — or the wrong — bear at the wrong time, on October 5th, 2003.

As Roger Ebert said in his review of the film:

“My life is on the precipice of death,” Treadwell tells the camera. Yet he sentimentalizes the bears, and is moved to ecstasy by a large steaming pile of “Wendy’s poop,” which is still warm, he exults, and was “inside of her” just minutes earlier. He names all the bears, and provides a play-by-play commentary as two of the big males fight for the right to court “Satin.”

A bear analyst, John Rogers, observed on the Katmai National Park website:

It is well known that Timothy Treadwell was an aspiring actor who worked as a waiter and bartender with problems of drug addiction and alcoholism in California. However, during the summer of 1989, he underwent a transformation so sudden and remarkable that it allowed him to survive thirteen summers of camping with brown bears before being killed and consumed by them. During this time, the world got to know Treadwell as the bear-man, the educator of children about bears, the author and film-maker, the actor and con-artist . . .

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This is not to say that Treadwell did not find or engrave some very anthropomorphized images of Alaska into video. Hell, I have a Sony VX-2000 myself — a very nice camera — but I never thought to push the envelope as he did.

Clearly my own personal favorite scenes were not with the bears; they were with the foxes that shadowed many of his movements in the Katmai wilderness. And yet these animals were cognizant of their place in the Great Scheme of it all. They were playful, yes; but they inherently knew just where they could go and where and when.

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As Treadwell did not.

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An Inuit native proffered an insightful comment when he said, in essence: we respect the bears and they respect us, at a distance. Treadwell did not respect the bears and paid the ultimate price.

Treadwell and Huguenard died in this fashion: the attack came with little warning. Somehow, someone managed to activate the digital video camera but the lens cap was still present; the camera recorded a black screen but all the audio. The attack ran for some six minutes. Werner Herzog listened to the audio and recommended to the final holder of the video, former girlfriend

Wikipedia notes:

In the end, it was a single surly bear that did him in at a point later in the year than Treadwell was traditionally still living in the park. The bear that killed Treadwell and his girlfriend was not one of the bears Treadwell usually encountered. This too seems to have been confirmed by the manner of his demise. Rangers had warned Treadwell before his death that they did not want to have to harm bears to come to his rescue. In the end, two bears were killed in the effort to retrieve his remains and those of his companion. A video camera, with the lens cap in place, was recovered at the site. The video camera had been turned on at some point during the attack, presumably by Huguenard, but the camera only recorded six minutes of audio before running out of tape. Troopers who were at the scene describe the audio as chilling. There are no plans to ever make the recording public.

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I really, really hope I don’t have to do what I’ve nominally called the “logical extension” in terms of understanding how this situation plays out now.

But if explain it I must. . .

A finer allegory couldn’t exist.

I recently visited the Chatterbox Chronicles and left some comments regarding her post. In the process of my response I realized: there’s a reason for all this recent nonsense, and it’s very simple. The question is: why?

First, to what nonsense am I referring?

The continued (and thoroughly entertaining!) self-immolation of the Democrats via their self-destructive, based-in-emotion and logic-lacking pandering comments — see my previous post, for last Monday’s wonderful examples. Or Miss Chatterbox’s comments. Or Fetching Jen’s comments. Or Hugh Hewitt’s General Zod comments. Powerline had this comment. Revka’s Take posted this. Texas Fred made this salient note.

In my opinion, the rise of stupid, thoughtless comments from the Left has been stunningly geometric in, say, the past month — and even moreso the past week or two. It’s as though they’re building up to a purposeful crescendo. But it’s a crescendo that isn’t leading to an insightful epiphany — it’s leading to a political downfall and its backpressure and rain of fallout is hurting the country, plain and simple. One Democrat has recently written about this fallout: former New York Mayor (1978 to 1989) Edward Koch.

Politics are politics. I understand that — most everyone else does too. But what is the point of attempting to eviscerate one’s country with a suit by the ACLU on behalf (of all people) of Christopher Hitchens and James Bamford who both — get this — think the NSA tapped into their phone conversations. They say the US must — get this — prove it didn’t. Oh so easy, yes, to prove a negative?

What is the point of objecting to the protection of one’s country? What is the point of objecting to ensure another 9-11 does not occur on domestic US soil? What is the point of objecting to the US taking the fight to the enemy — an enemy whose stated goals are no less than the Islamization of the entire planet, the eradication of America, of “Zion,” and the suppression and/or outright deaths of those who would disagree with radical Islam.

And yes, sometimes things really are that basic.

That’s the self-destruction part. Here’s the hatred part:

It’s all about the hatred of George W. Bush.

First, the Left believes GWB “stole” two entire elections. They believe it with all their hearts. And therein lies the elemental rub and major difference between the two parties and philosophies. It is no surprise that the truism is this: Democrats and liberals are driven by emotions; Republicans and conservatives by facts, history and reality.

Jonathan Chait in the 09-29-2003 issue of The New Republic made some rather prescient, back then, observations, admitting that GWB was not his best friend:

I hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I’m tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so. His favorite answer to the question of nepotism–“I inherited half my father’s friends and all his enemies”– conveys the laughable implication that his birth bestowed more disadvantage than advantage. He reminds me of a certain type I knew in high school–the kid who was given a fancy sports car for his sixteenth birthday and believed that he had somehow earned it. I hate the way he walks–shoulders flexed, elbows splayed out from his sides like a teenage boy feigning machismo. I hate the way he talks–blustery self-assurance masked by a pseudo-populist twang. I even hate the things that everybody seems to like about him. I hate his lame nickname-bestowing– a way to establish one’s social superiority beneath a veneer of chumminess (does anybody give their boss a nickname without his consent?). And, while most people who meet Bush claim to like him, I suspect that, if I got to know him personally, I would hate him even more.

Mr. Chait continues:

Have Bush haters lost their minds? Certainly some have. Antipathy to Bush has, for example, led many liberals not only to believe the costs of the Iraq war outweigh the benefits but to refuse to acknowledge any benefits at all, even freeing the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror. And it has caused them to look for the presidential nominee who can best stoke their own anger, not the one who can win over a majority of voters–who, they forget, still like Bush. But, although Bush hatred can result in irrationality, it’s not the product of irrationality. Indeed, for those not ideologically or personally committed to Bush’s success, hatred for Bush is a logical response to the events of the last few years. It is not the slightest bit mystifying that liberals despise Bush. It would be mystifying if we did not.

Mr. Chait then gets down to the meat of his article:

But Bush is never called to task for the radical disconnect between how he got into office and what he has done since arriving. Reporters don’t ask if he has succeeded in “changing the tone.” Even the fact that Bush lost the popular vote is hardly ever mentioned. Liberals hate Bush not because he has succeeded but because his success is deeply unfair and could even be described as cheating.

Now if you enjoyed that, then you’ll enjoy this next bit:

But perhaps most infuriating of all is the fact that liberals do not see their view of Bush given public expression. It’s not that Bush has been spared from any criticism–far from it. It’s that certain kinds of criticism have been largely banished from mainstream discourse. After Bush assumed office, the political media pretty much decided that the health of U.S. democracy, having edged uncomfortably close to chaos in December 2000, required a cooling of overheated passions. Criticism of Bush’s policies–after a requisite honeymoon–was fine. But the media defined any attempt to question Bush’s legitimacy as out-of-bounds.

Yes, you read it correctly — as I expressed in one of my recent comments on another blog — the Left think the MSM or DEM actually gives Bush a “pass” for excoriation. Can you possibly feature that? The Left-driven MSM “looking the other direction” with regard to any issues involving George W?

There really appears to be little remaining of their collective Left realities.

Victor Davis Hanson has a great article about the issue from 2004 and reflected:

Let’s start with the admission that much of the invective is irrational, fueled by emotion rather than reason. Thus the black leadership uses slurs such as “Taliban” and “Confederacy” against Bush, even though no other president has selected an African-American secretary of State and national-security adviser or pledged so many billions for AIDS relief in Africa. Liberals talk of social programs starved, but domestic spending under Bush increased at annual rates greater than during any Democratic administration in recent history. Just read howls of conservatives who worry about Bush’s Great Society-like programs.

Mr. Hanson distills it down further: Bush is a conservative southerner with a drawl. He is a “bible thumper.” Bush is a Manichaeist — he breaks life down into black and white, Good vs. Evil. And he is a renegade aristocrat — not a blueblood easterner.

Further, Michael Novak from National Review Online wrote in a July, 2004 article:

Nevertheless, George W. Bush has been re-conceived and re-wrought into everything that the sophisticated Leftist absolutely hates about Americana: Its innocence. Its boyishness. Its Christianity. Its unpretentiousness. Its heedlessness of all the shibboleths the Left most highly values.

And, in addition, the president exercises unsuspected political skills. The man has actually won most of the political fights he’s taken on. And he has turned the country in a far more Reaganite direction than anyone ever imagined under that anodyne term, “compassionate conservatism.”

Personalizing Social Security? Cutting the teachers’ unions out of total control of the schools? Supplanting the governmental plantation with private charitable initiatives, which actually show better success rates than the welfare state? The handwriting is on the wall, piercing through the dreams of the big-government Left, foretelling the end of the social-democratic illusion.

How did this hick have the nerve to be so radical in government — he who so barely won the election of 2000? (Stole it, the most bitter partisans still say, despite all the studies disproving it.) How did he have the nerve?

The Right tends to think that the Left is stupid — never learns, keeps repeating the same old errors. The Left is different. The Left tends to think that the Right is mean, narrow, selfish, evil (on top of being stupid). I once had a professor at Harvard who was trying to explain what it was like for Immanuel Kant, the greatest philosopher of his time, to have succeeded in winning a teaching position only in Konigsberg, far from the glittering list of leading universities in Germany. That would be, he said, like winning tenure at . . . at . . . at Ohio State. (So superior do Harvard professors feel toward Middle American universities.) In this spirit, the Left also thinks the congenitally evil, conservative Bush is also stupid and second-rate.

Who is Bush to drive the last nails into the coffin of social democracy, and all those big-government dreams? The Left can feel the demography slipping away from them, and the strong currents of the future, too, and the bilious taste of failed ideas rising in their throats. It is now or never for the Left. It is desperation time.

In an August 2004 issue of Newsmax, Youngstown Mayor George McKelvey was quoted as telling Ohio’s cheering Republican delegates at a breakfast that “the left wing hates George Bush the most because he believes in God, and you better believe that.”

You know, it could be that simple, too.

On Monday, two professional bloviaters, much more accomplished than myself, founded and set the proverbial Gold Standard for the new NPA or National Panderers Association.

Each targeting their specific audiences on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, they both bled, emoted, raised their arms to the sky and did their level best to pitch ridiculous themes that, unfortunately, their respective audiences thirsted to hear.

First, the nation’s most overpublicized and least thoughtful mayor, Ray Nagin:

Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it’s destroyed and put stress on this country.

Surely he doesn’t approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We’re not taking care of ourselves.

It’s time for us to come together. It’s time for us to rebuild New Orleans — the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans. This city will be a majority African American city. It’s the way God wants it to be. You can’t have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn’t be New Orleans.

Now imagine, if you will, the absolute hue and cry, not to say the state and federal lawsuits that would have erupted had, for example, the mayor of Minneapolis said “it is time for us to rebuild Minneapolis — the one that should be a vanilla cream Minneapolis. This city will be a majority caucasion and white American city. It’s the way God wants it to be. You can’t have Minneapolis any other way.”

Pandering, Ray. Pandering. Good job!

Let’s also consider the beatific Albert Gore who said yesterday, in Constitution Hall:

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

So, many of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.

It is appropriate that we make this appeal on the day our nation has set aside to honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who challenged America to breathe new life into our oldest values by extending its promise to all our people.

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

Let us do what I again call the “logical extension” — at its most base, Gore is calling the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a terrorist. A terrorist. The NSA has been tapping the phone conversations of terrorists. Not valid civil rights leaders. And this is 2006, not 1965. Gore received thunderous applause for his comments from — Democrats.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

A longtime believer in the basic tenets and mores of the NPA (but not an actual member), Hillary Rodham Clinton likewise became the late-day third founding member with her comments from yesterday’s Martin Luther King Day celebration at Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network:

We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism we have incompetence I predict to you that this administration will go down on history as one of the worst that has ever governed out country.

I need you to tell us what distinguishes Democrats from Republicans right now. When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation and you know what I’m talking about. . .

Perfect. The Race Card on MLK Day. You’ve certainly sussed your audience well, Senator.

Welcome, all, to the NPA!

Robosquirrel at People Covered In Fish had a very salient post on Sunday which pointed out a most unnerving linkage between Iran and Venezuela — countries helmed by unstable leaders; and I am being very kind here.

I would submit: the world will simply not tolerate Iran’s President Ahmadinejad possessing nuclear weapons. The United States will not, Israel will not, Britain will not.

On Tuesday, January 10th, Iran announced that it has resumed work on its uranium-enrichment program after two years. Seals placed on equipment at the enrichment plant at Natanz in 2003 by the International Atomic Energy Agency were removed, initiating a call by the British, French and German foreign ministers that Iran be referred to the UN Security Council for violating its nuclear treaty obligations.

Even Russia expressed “concern,” and the ministers also called for a special session of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Yet given the semi-ridiculous and, dare I say, useless nature of the Security Council, the world is unlikely to see anything more serious than sanctions — or perhaps harsh sarcasm. Maybe Kofi can initiate the “Neutrons for Food” program?

For his part, Kofi Annan said Iran is still “interested in serious and constructive negotiations.” For those with the faintest dust mote of common sense: what do you surmise the removal of those seals really means? Eh?

The Washington Post reported yesterday that many countries are actually supporting the US in its stance regarding Iran:

China and Russia agreed with the United States, Britain, Germany and France on Monday that Iran must completely suspend its nuclear program, the British Foreign Office said. Although the countries failed to agree on whether Iran’s case should be referred to the U.N. Security Council, the Europeans applied new pressure on the Iranian government by calling for an emergency meeting of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Feb. 2.

With all six nations declaring that they sought a diplomatic solution to the escalating confrontation with Iran, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered a glimmer of hope for a compromise. Putin said the Iranian government was considering a proposal from Moscow that Russia would produce enriched uranium for Iran, to ensure the material could be used only for peaceful purposes.

Iran has adamantly reserved the right to develop its nuclear program, stating that its intention is to produce peaceful nuclear energy. But many world leaders are increasingly alarmed by the attitude of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — who has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” — and fear he could be trying to build nuclear bombs. Intense deliberations began last week after the Iranian government ordered the removal of seals on equipment at an enrichment plant where it had ceased operations two years ago.

“The onus is on Iran to act to give the international community confidence that its nuclear program has exclusive peaceful purposes,” said British Foreign Minister Jack Straw. Straw added that confidence in Iran has been “sorely undermined by its history of concealment and deception.”

Allow me at this point, if I might, to ask the question that I have heard or read absolutely no one pose: why does Iran need a nuclear power program at all?

You might respond: to ensure power for its own people, its own needs, to allow it to grow, expand, prosper and power its growing industries.

Oh really? Were you aware that, as of the most recent 2004 statistics available, Iran is the 4th largest producer of oil in the world. The CIA World Factbook says “relatively high oil prices in recent years have enabled Iran to amass some $30 billion in foreign exchange reserves, but have not eased economic hardships such as high unemployment and inflation. The proportion of the economy devoted to the development of weapons of mass destruction remains a contentious issue with leading Western nations.”

Iran has so much oil that petroleum constitutes 80% of its gross exports. Iran expects to earn $44 billion from oil sales in the year to March 20, an Iranian oil official said.

So let’s do the extrapolation: Iran is almost awash in oil. It has a great amount of money coming in from these export sales. Iran could easily decide to build all the conventionally fuel-fired power plants it could possibly want — certainly more than the US could now build.

But that’s simply not sufficient. It needs to go with nuclear power.

Am I the only one to which this rings just a tad hollow?

We all know what this is about: a maniacal religious Islamic zealot seeking to become a nuclear weapons power, who already has a desire to wipe Israel completely off the map and any western nation not steeped in Islam.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, on 10-28-2005:

I must say that you have chosen a very valuable title for your gathering [World Without Zionism]. Many are sowing the seeds of defeat and despair in this all-out war between the Islamic world and the Infidel Front, hoping to dishearten the Islamic world.

Such people are using words like “it’s not possible”. They say how could we have a world without America and Zionism? But you know well that this slogan and goal can be achieved and can definitely be realised.”

Ahmadinejad is speaking not just about eliminating Israel, but America. Did you read that? America.

I say it’s about time we begin seriously taking Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric at stark face value.