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A Strange Generation

A Sullivan reader writes about “Gen-X Conservatives”: I’m a young, newly-minted assistant professor here at a large state school in Mississippi and I’ve got to say I’ve had just had an interesting conversation with one of my more conservative students. As far as I can tell he’s a pretty ‘die hard’ Republican. He’s really big […]

A Sullivan reader writes about “Gen-X Conservatives”:

I’m a young, newly-minted assistant professor here at a large state school in Mississippi and I’ve got to say I’ve had just had an interesting conversation with one of my more conservative students. As far as I can tell he’s a pretty ‘die hard’ Republican. He’s really big into state and local politics and is even participating in a big way in a statewide campaign – and not for the first time. He is bright, sophisticated, and probably a future power in state and local politics here in Mississippi.

What surprised me was both his anti-war attitude and, moreover, his positive view of Obama versus Hillary. Though I did not ask, as it was not my place, who he intended to vote for, it seemed clear to me that he recognizes that 2008 is going to be a disaster for the GOP outside of the deep south and that Obama was probably the best the Democrats had to offer in terms of leadership potential. What most impressed him, he said, was that Obama was against the war from the beginning – giving credence to the effectiveness of the ‘Obama has superior judgement’ meme that is being put out by Obama’s campaign.

The meme may be effective, but, like many memes, its ability to reproduce itself has nothing to do with its actual merit.  In memetics, as it’s called, the race is not to the good or the wise, but simply to the trendy and the catchy.  I heard Dennett lecture to this effect at a philosophy conference once.  The meme that Obama has superior judgement is catchy because the country is desperate to have somebody, anybody with good judgement in a position of power.  It has been so long since we’ve had such a thing that most of us have literally forgotten what it looks like, which is why it seems remotely plausible that Obama might just possess such good judgement.  The meme, however, does not contain that little something I like to call “truth.” 

As has been shown in his fantastical foreign policy speeches, his blunders on Pakistan policy, his appalling position on the war in Lebanon and his support for anti-Iranian policies, Obama’s judgement is hardly superior, if by superior we mean “likely to reach sensible and intelligent conclusions.”  It is certainly far from unconventional.  Antiwar conservatives, especially younger antiwar conservatives, should not be fooled by Obama’s rhetoric of “change” and his use of his Iraq war opposition.   

He opposed the Iraq war in a district and a state where it was exceedingly easy to oppose it.  No one will confuse Hyde Park and South Side Chicago with the jingo capital of the world, to put it mildly.  (Ours is a neighbourhood where you can readily find the fairly amusing bumper sticker, “I’d rather be smashing imperialism.”)  He happened to be right about Iraq, but there is little or no evidence that he has applied the same sober judgement to other foreign policy matters, and there is really not much evidence that he would retain his previously good judgement under intense political pressure.  There is no evidence because, until this campaign, he has never really been under intense political pressure.   

Goodness knows that I, too, look forward to a day when the clapped-out, wasteful politics of the Boomers disappears from the scene.  I believe that 2008 probably represents the last hurrah of that generation’s own preoccupations and their continual refighting of the same dreary fights, at least as far as foreign policy and cultural debates are concerned.  (Obviously, the inter-generational political fight that is brewing over entitlements and pensions is just getting started.)  I was born in 1979, so I believe this entitles me (not that I want the dubious honour) to some claim to belong to Generation X or the “13th Generation” as it has sometimes been called.  For my part I do not see the leadership potential in Obama that everyone keeps raving about.  Clinton and Obama are both quite dangerous and have terrible policy ideas, and it is not at all clear to me that Obama is necessarily the better of the two.  People of “my” generation should not buy into the Obama hype simply because they are tired of Boomers screwing things up.

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