Obama’s prose is flowery and facile. But I am told that this is what appeals to a vast number of Americans. “Healing,” having “national conversations,” hoping and dreaming, reaching for the sky and for the best of America: such meaningless meandering turns this writer’s stomach—at least as much as George Bush’s word salads did.
(By the way, Obama’s remarks in Tucson I read thanks to the New York Times’ civilized habit of providing transcripts. Not even the White House website offers text. So much for encouraging literacy. News sites are becoming a nightmare for those of us who still value the written word over the darting image. “Watch the President’s address” is what you get at Fox News’ website, where print is fast being phased out.)
In any event, the president went light on his base. He did not specifically berate the “blood libel” (a good and appropriate usage by Sarah Palin) perpetrated by the Left against the Right after the Tucson tragedy. I will, however, give him a Brownie point for citing my favorite book among the 39 Books of the Hebrew Bible: Job.
As I wrote in “Job: Jewish Individualist”: “The book of Job is still the quintessential theodicy, precisely because it entertains and reconciles the possibility of a fallible God. Then again, Jews have a tradition of arguing with God. Jacob wrestled physically with the angel of God. And Abraham haggled for the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah because he disapproved of the verdict God pronounced upon them. Job, in a manner, also argued with God and prevailed, a very unorthodox concept, considering the times.”
Obama invoked the righteous Job thus: “Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, ‘when I looked for light, then came darkness.’ Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.”
Palin pointed out that “acts like the shootings in Arizona begin and end with the criminals who commit them.” Unlike Palin, however, whose address earlier today rightly and precisely located the source of evil in the individual perpetrator, Obama here refuses to leave it at that, for this is a man who believes in the role of an interventionist central authority to shape society in politically pleasing ways. If you do not believe in free will, and fail to recognize evil in individuals—then you will be more likely to see a role for the State in the transformation of individuals before the fact:
OBAMA: “We must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.”
Look out.