1  February 2009

I have long argued that emotionalism is the life blood of progressivism.  The emotionalist, and that includes most mediaists, focus on an individual case, milk it for its emotion, and expand it to the general case; if Mrs. Smith is unemployed, all are unemployed and the sky is falling.

Ok, so what is new?  What is new is the number of Americans who have succumbed to the emotional message: emotion is everywhere.  TV is all emotion; Hollywood is all emotion - that's their business.  Education apparently has also become all emotion - it must be fun for everyone - regardless of ability to absorb it.   Music has always elicited emotion, but now that emotion is supercharged - real EMOTION.  It truly has blown us away.

And politics?  We have now elected a president who is all emotion.  That is, no experience, little practical knowledge - but lots of  EMOTION.  Last time we had a president of emotion, with little experience, we ran into some naivite problems, much overlooked but real; but back then there was balance to emotion, and that president responded to it, after a fashion.  Will that happen again?  Not likely, for there is no longer much balance for it: WE ARE ALL EMOTION.  We want to FEEL GOOD.

Unfortunately that doesn't work, for it obscures reality, and reality is, well, reality.  We have had plenty of opinions offered concerning where this will end - or at least where it will lead - and I am not in a position to add mine, since mine would carry far less weight than those closer to the situation.  So I shall not expand on what some, many actually, have already said.  All I shall say is that all this unfounded (to me) emtionalism doesn't jibe well with my background, knowledge and feel of reality.  Frankly it just sounds like another fairy tale, and fairy tales just aren't, well, real.

For us to all live happily forever after someone has to pay the bill - to support the fairy tale.  Fairy tales never bother with that, and that appears to me to be precisely the problem.  And so you may rightfully say, what do I know?  Accepted.  But such emotionalism doesn't sit well with me - any of it.  May future history be my judge.