Tag Archives: arrogance

Obama the Competitor

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Yes, it’s another post about politics, though I suppose it’s not surprising, given politics are rising to the fore what with the Republican National Convention last week, and the Democrat Convention beginning today. I’m not exactly a political junkie, but the majority of blogs I read are political in nature, and sometimes I come across things that blow me away.

Like this article in Forbes today, titled “New York Times Proves Eastwood Correct — Obama is a Lousy CEO.” In it Forbes staff writer  Rich Karlgaard references a piece  published in the New York Times by Jodi Kantor called “The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else”

Golf. Bowling. Billiards. Cards. Golf. Basketball. Reading to kids…  Golf…

As Karlgaard points out, both Kantor and the Times  are usually in the President’s camp, so he expresses surprise they’d write what he sees as essentially a hit piece. In fact, he calls it “devastating” and wonders if  “the NYT might just have killed President Obama’s re-election hopes.”

Having read the Times article, I agree that it certainly doesn’t portray the President in an attractive light. However, I’m not altogether sure the Times and Kantor see it that way.

The article’s tone seemed to me more like a paean to Obama’s constant striving to be perfect and to excel in everything, as if this were a good thing; a characteristic that made him a good president and would perhaps give him the edge over that idiot Romney (which is how he clearly perceives his opponent according to Kantor).

The trade-off in time and energy the President devotes to trivialities rather than the weighty issues his office demands were left to Forbes’s Karlgaard to remark upon. And his constant need to correct and teach others, his overweening opinion of his own excellence in every area of life seemed minor inconveniences, not major character flaws as Kantor presented it — that is, irrelevant defects and only to be expected from someone as great as The One.

Certainly she never expressed the sort of conclusions that Karlgaard did, but perhaps that was because she was merely “reporting,” while he was assessing.

In any case, he boiled  it down to the salient points and as I said, didn’t hesitate to draw the necessary conclusions and it’s … rather chilling, actually.

You can read Karlgaard’s Forbes piece HERE.  It’s shorter and links to the Times article if you want to go on from there.

Or if you’d rather go straight to the Times, click HERE.

Because of What Happened in Denver

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Well, clearly I have fallen short of my goal of 5 posts a week, this week. That’s due, in part to the fact that the post I intended to put up for this last Monday happens to be about the 1972 Munich Massacres. In light of what happened in Colorado last Thursday night/Friday morning, it didn’t seem appropriate just now so I’m saving it, and put up one of the two others I had ready to go.

What happened at The Dark Knight Rises premier was, of course, horrible but not exactly senseless, nor hard to figure out. It happened because people — all people — are fallen creatures and depraved. Yet, once again, I’m hearing and reading suggestions that demon possession/influence may have been the driving force behind the killer’s actions. I wouldn’t rule that out.

But at the same time I have to ask, again, why is it so hard to think that man might be capable in and of himself of these things? Isn’t one of the characteristics of sociopathic and psychopathic behavior a complete disconnect from any sense of wrongdoing or remorse or empathy for another? What is that but the ultimate of selfishness,  self-absorption and arrogance?

In fact, in many ways what Holmes did seems less personally vicious than many of the serial killers we’ve heard about —  dyeing one’s hair red, taking on an alternate identity from a comic book/movie, putting on body armor and a ballistics helmet and walking into a theatre with an automatic weapon to shoot the place up seems almost like a game. Holmes was play acting, removed from his victims as surely as many others are removed from the animated people they blow away on our vast and varied numbers of video games.

Was/is Holmes crazy? Clearly. Does that mean he shouldn’t get the death penalty if convicted of doing this? Not at all. Crazy or not, he wanted to do what he did and did it, which is why he should reap the consequences of his actions. But demon possessed or directed? Why go there?

We’ve all been selfish, self-absorbed, arrogant and even cruel at times, so why be  looking for supernatural causes when one of our kind happens to give the basic depravity that lurks in all our flesh a little more rein than most?  It just proves that we have sick heads and deceitful hearts, that there is no soundness in us from the tops of our heads to the soles of our feet. It just proves we all desperately need a Savior…

Sex and Violence in the Bible

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Last week I had a new comment on the the guest post I did over at Speculative Faith Blog called Sex, Violence and Dark Events. The commenter, Joanna Wilson, suggested we use the Bible as a model for portraying such things, pointing out how when it comes to sex and violence, the Bible is usually quite graphic when it comes to its descriptions of violence but not so much when it comes to sex.

Her comment sent my thinking off in a number of different directions. First is that sometimes what appears as mild and bland in our English translations is that way because of the translators’ reluctance to render the evocative, earthy terms of the original languages into comparable English words. Eg. “seized violently” instead of “took” and “raped” instead of “lay with.” (“Lay with” as a euphemism has always cracked me up. Talk about bland and inaccurate!)

My first thought, which I stated in my response to Joanna’s comment was that often the story being told in the Bible is not concerned so much with the sexual activity as it is other — worse — sins. Here’s what I wrote in my response (with additions):

In the case of David and Bathsheba, for example, it seems to me that story had little to do with the relationship between the participants but was instead about the steps a mature believer — the man who faced down Goliath because of his faith in God — can take when he turns his back on God.

First is the fact that David was not supposed to even be there, lazing around the palace and sleeping through the day, but out on the battlefield leading his army as  2 Sam 11:1  says clearly:

 ‘Then it happened in the spring, at the time when KINGS (like David was) go out to battle [on a military campaign] that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem.

And in case that wasn’t enough to clue us in, Uriah reinforces it in vs 11 when he dismisses David’s suggestion that Uriah go to his own home and spend the night with his wife while he’s in Jerusalem (there, because David had sent for him)

“And Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in [tents], and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? By your life and the life of your soul, I will not do this thing.”

This is the officer’s code that David himself had developed. Having Uriah throw it back in his face, you’d think he might take note. Apparently not.

We can see right there in vs 1 that David was out of it. If he’d been where he was supposed to have been none of this would have happened.

Then there’s vs 2, just to drive the point home:

Now when evening came, David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof.

This is the man who, when in fellowship with God, rose early in the morning to pray and commune with God, as he himself wrote in Psalm 143 (Let me hear Thy lovingkindness in the morning; for I trust in Thee; Teach me the way I should walk; for to Thee I lift up my soul.) and Psalm 88:13 (But I, O Lord, have cried out to Thee for help, and in the morning my prayer comes before thee.) Now he’s sleeping the days away and making mischief at night.

So the story begins with David’s failures as a king and as a soldier and a commanding officer.  And he’s rising at sundown instead of the dawn: again, wrong place, wrong time.

Second, he apparently didn’t recognize Bathsheba since he had to “inquire about” her, so he must not have known her personally. Which tells me this wasn’t about a relationship, so much as an exercise of lust and an abuse of power, and came out of the sins that God called him on through Nathan in the next chapter: ingratitude and arrogance.

Nathan then said to David, “…Thus says the Lord God of Israel,

‘It is I who appointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul. I also gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these!

‘Why have you despised the word of the LORD  by doing evil in His sight? [That is] you have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon.  Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ ” 2 Sa 12:7-10

Here God’s provided everything for David, promoted him fabulously, and he was still dissatisfied, and arrogant, despising God’s word, (which is the same as despising God Himself, as this passage also makes clear). He was so full of himself, he actually thought he could get away with murdering one of his loyal men and taking his wife, because the seven wives and unnumbered concubines he already had weren’t enough. Gross.

Since the story is really about David’s failure to love and honor God’s word — and thus God Himself — and not being humble and grateful, it seems to me that the specifics of the adultery/rape incident are irrelevant and would only distract from the main point.

Even in the area of violence, there aren’t many specifics. We know little of the details of  Uriah’s death  beyond the letter David sent to Joab telling him how to do it — that is, put him “on the front line of the fiercest battle and withdraw from him that he be struck down and die.”

Which I guess supports the point I made in my original post that such specifics only go in if they really serve the point you’re trying to make with the story.

If one were writing this story as a novel,  however, I can see where you might put in a few more specifics. Fiction isn’t supposed to be an outline, or a Bible lesson, but an experience. Authors are supposed to try to assemble enough specific details of character and setting to make the scene come alive for the reader.

And therein lies the problem, I think. Some people would rather not “live” certain scenes. In fact, I suspect all people feel that way. It just depends on the scene.

More on this in another post…