President Obama Nominates Potential 2012 GOP Opponent to be Ambassador to China

In the White House’s Diplomatic Room, this morning, President Obama announced that he would nominate one of his potential 2012 Republican opponents, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman to be Ambassador to China….

During the transition, then-President-elect Obama told his advisers to “think outside the box” when it came to pending appointments. A White House official says that Jeff Bader, senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council staff, told colleagues that he couldn’t think of a better candidate than Huntsman, who speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese from his time as a Mormon missionary, and has served in both the Commerce and State Departments.

Accusations of cynically sending potential opponents across the world aside, Huntsman is probably a good pick. Not a fan of him politically, but I do think that having a moderate-conservative as the Chinese ambassador will work out. There’s also the whole prog rock thing. Am I wrong in thinking that, if Huntsman can rock out with REO Speedwagon for a song or two, Wen Jiabao will be a pushover?

On the recording Reagan states the following about Medicare –

…one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.

Medicare is socialist, and takes away the freedom of men.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Advisers to President-elect Barack Obama say one of his first duties in office will be to order the closing of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

That executive order is expected during Obama’s first week on the job — and possibly on his first day, according to two transition team advisers. Both spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

So according to the AP, Obama is planning to order the closing of Guantánamo Bay within his first week in office. This is definitely good news, but therein lies the problem I’m having with the proto-administration.

For the last 8 years I’ve become exceedingly cynical regarding the government, and for good reason; some of the decisions made in Bush’s administration have been almost cartoonishly evil. Now that we’re faced with the prospect of an administration that doesn’t have its head up its ass, I find myself sort of… lost. What’s there to be cynical and sarcastic about? I don’t even know if I remember what a functioning government is like.

I think this is why Obama’s admittedly minor mistakes (e.g. Rick Warren at the inauguration) have gotten as much traction as they did. I need Obama to do something, anything, that can justify my cynical outer shell. Being able to shake my fist at the government had a nice constancy about it that I might not be ready to give up.

A friend sent me an e-card that sums things up quite nicely.

This is how I discovered Norris to be a fascist.

That may be a bit harsh but the list of his “campaign promises” has, alongside the expected jokes about “the real WMDs – his fists and feet,” a promise to “deport all liberals (then force them to listen to Bill O’ Reilly every day for five years, at which point they may return).” Patriotic, isn’t it? There’s nothing more American than deporting all political opponents, forcing them to listen to your own point of view exclusively for years on end before they can return home.

I’m probably overreacting but the unthinkingly loyal and blind patriotism of Norris’ writing leaves me more than a little uncomfortable, memetic darling though he may be. At least he doesn’t have any real political aspirations. The way celebrity worship is in this country, he’d get elected with terrifyingly little difficulty.

Wait.

I have no qualms about making fun of terrible people and situations both. Dark comedy and satire is a good way to deflate those who would try to assert undue privileges, but there’s a saturation point wherein it becomes counterproductive, and maybe even a little dangerous. I’m not talking about satire, which itself I believe to be necessary for a healthy society and government. Satire reflects and criticizes the world in a way which, while amusing, is also deadly serious. What I’m unnerved by is that joking about the current administration has become de rigeur, a thing done by reflex because it’s what must be done to fit in.

If the erosion of civil liberties and privacy is fit for a carelessly produced and bought greeting card, then it follows that society must be comfortable enough with the said issue to not care. Greeting cards are traditionally the blandest of the bland, reflecting the zeitgeist of a boringly bleak suburbia. Satire and comedy are still valuable tools for making sense of the world, for criticizing and understanding and changing it, all. When that comedic criticism has been boiled down to a pithy reference alongside a Garfield card and a belated birthday card with a turtle on it – that is when meaning has been lost, when the outrages legion are just accepted as part of the background cultural static and written off as just the way things are.

We’re inoculating ourselves. People are joking about the President in the same way they would about a mother-in-law, laughing about the situation and shrugging shoulders because hey, what can you do, you know?

WASHINGTON, March 13 — Under criticism from lawmakers of both parties for the dismissals of federal prosecutors, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales insisted Tuesday that he would not resign but said, “I acknowledge that mistakes were made here.“

The emphasis is mine. Do you see what Gonzales did there? The apparent admission was in the passive voice, shifting blame for the mistakes to an unnamed third party, shielding himself from incrimination. For comparison, here’s a quote from President Reagan’s 1987 State of the Union, addressing the Iran-Contra affair.

The goals were worthy. I do not believe it was wrong to try to establish contacts with a country of strategic importance or to try to save lives. And certainly it was not wrong to try to secure freedom for our citizens held in barbaric captivity. But we did not achieve what we wished, and serious mistakes were made in trying to do so.

In both cases, by whom were the mistakes made?

It’s an interesting trick of grammar. In both cases, use of the passive voice masks whomever it was who actually made the mistakes. The subject becomes the mistake in question and not those responsible, despite the appearance of an admission of guilt. Unobservant critics see an admission and are satisfied, though the official in question can semantically and maybe even legally argue that no such admission was ever made. It’s a clever use of language that can easily go undetected.

Accepting guilt without admitting it. That has to be healthy for a democratic government, right?