Obama, flat-earthers and the new paradigm

Atrios, quoted in DailyKos:

Regret

As I've written before, Democrats will regret embracing the expansion of executive power because a President Obama will find his administration undone by an "abuse of power" scandal. All of those powers which were necessary to prevent the instant destruction of the country will instantly become impeachable offenses. If you can't imagine how such a pivot can take place then you haven't been paying attention.

First of all, I'm not really sure what he means. He writes such brief little bits, if you're not following along how the hell can you know what "before" is? He should at least cite himself so he makes sense.

Second, this is a great example of someone trapped somewhere between Bill Clinton's blow-jobs and Bush's ongoing crime spree. But guess what? We're not electing either Bill or Dubya as president. The name "Obama" actually does mean it's a different person, and the twenty-plus years of public service we have to examine tells us we are getting a different politician. But so many people have become vested in the current mode of doing business, including lefty bloggers, that when the paradigm actually does shift, they can't see it happen.

C'mon kids. Go read your Thomas Kuhn.

We live within paradigms: an accepted way of seeing the world, of interpreting facts, of declaring truth. The paradigm lets us get on with our lives so we don't have to stop every 5 minutes and wonder which way is up and why are we doing what we're doing. But over time, the world changes, new facts appears, new techniques are developed, and a few people start challenging the paradigm. It takes time, and a lot of work, and there are casualties along the way, but the paradigm eventually falls and is replaced by the new paradigm. The new interpretations become the accepted interpretations. Truth evolves into ... truth.

The world is no longer flat. The world is round. In the meantime, we've burned a few heretics at the stake because at the time we lit the fire, the world was flat. Sorry, guys.

Howard Dean was a victim of the paradigm shift, getting abused horribly in 2004 even though, as it turned out, he was right about almost everything. In 2008, Barack Obama is in the process of proving the world is round, but we still have people stuck on the flat earth. Unfortunately, not only does that include the Faux News machine, the nearly-as-noxious other cable news networks and the mainstream media, it includes a lot of liberals, almost-progressives and lefty bloggers.

Atrios is clearly locked in that old paradigm. All he can see is terrible things happening because Obama has not strode to the Senate well and demanded the impeachment of George W Bush. For the flat-earth bloggers of the left, insufficient demonstration of moral purity (ie, agreeing 100% with their view of things) means a failure that will fully undo the Republic.

Gosh, I remember when the nation was about to be destroyed by Nixon. And then Reagan. And now it's Bush's turn. But guess what? Our democracy may actually turn out to be stronger than the worse these fuckers can do to it. Nixon was responsible for literally millions of deaths (mostly Southeast Asians, so they don't count); Reagan unleashed AIDS through neglect and death squads through decree; Bush is currently trying to figure out how he can get away with bombing Iran into the Stone Age. And yet it's pretty clear this country, by an overwhelming margin, is about to elect a black man to the presidency. And we are quite likely to give him a Congress that will make his authority rock solid for at least the first two years of his presidency.

The black man we are electing is no ordinary politician. He is not someone from the ancient days of us-versus-them; i.e., the 90s or early 2000s. Obama will be the first president of the new millenium. He has demonstrated, repeatedly, that he's not from those old days. Millions of Americans see and understand, in various ways and to various degrees. We haven't drunk any koolaid or joined any cult. We've simply remained open in mind and spirit to be able to recognize the passage of the world from the old paradigm into the new. We see the way things are now, not the way things were.

Atrios' interpretation, like so many on the left, belongs to a time that is falling away from us. It's not a utopia of any kind in front of us, just a time and place that is new and different. And until the talking- and blogging-heads understand that we have moved into this new paradigm, they will sound alarms and make threats that make as much sense as warning Columbus he would fall of the edge of the earth.