Friday, September 7, 2012

On being under-led and knowing better


     
  A persistent characteristic
  of any perceived emergency
  is its tendency to bait and
  switch a fellow's focus, in-
  to absorption with pressing
  momentary details. There is
  no wonder, then, how celeb-
  rants of a status quo ante
  exploit an anxiety for the
  familiar, even maladjusted
  and unjust, conditions lately
  interrupted. The President
  has never been able to sus-
  tain his progressive obliga-
  tion while covering his ass.




The syndrome of being under-led 
and knowing better is familiar 
to the condition of awakening,
which is the natural state of
the free life. Even Ayn Rand
knew this, she just saw this
as a predatory posture. Now a
progressive encounters the pred-
ator in American political life
and needs to accept this oppor-
tunity as found consideration,
in the path of leadership he 
has chosen; for the logic of
anxiety has drawn the predator
out with the most generous can-
dour. And yet the President con-
tinues to embrace the predator's
pretense of meaning well, and
the condition of awakening is
thwarted thus by forfeit.




                     A sustainable critical dis- 
                     tance, that touchstone of
                     what is sometimes called,
                     the cultivated life, is
                     impossible without the em-
                     pathy of progressivism. It
                     is always timely for the
                     progressive to resist the
                     seductions of emergency,
                     which for him is nothing
                     other than the natural dis-
                     order of things.











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