Doesn't She Mean "Wine Cellar"?

Wine cellar in Spain

Political junkie that I am, I did not watch the latest Democratic presidential candidates’ debate. These things have just become too tedious, everyone mouthing almost the same slogans, with the exception, in this grouping, of Andrew Yang. Who is never given any speaking time.

It seems there was one dramatic exchange. Elizabeth Warren accused Pete Buttigieg of holding fundraisers in a “wine cave full of crystals.” He responded, “this is the problem with setting purity tests you can’t pass yourself.”

Commentators on the right all seem to think that Buttigieg destroyed Warren in the exchange. Commentators on the left all think Warren destroyed Buttigieg. It is as though we experience separate realities.

A possible insight into the difference emerges from a focus group of California Democratic voters. They seemed to hold to the idea that anyone who is very rich is morally corrupt. Accordingly, holding a high-price fundraiser shows that you are in league with the devil.

Conservatives presumably do not think so, and believe that wealth can be acquired either honestly or dishonestly.

But I still think the position of the leftists is illogical. If this is the assumption, Buttigieg’s response should also have been effective: he pointed out that he was the only person on the stage who was not himself a millionaire or billionaire.

So why do the leftists think Warren won? Two possibilities:

1. It is the power of the image: “wine cave filled with crystal.” Never mind that it is simply prejudicial language used to describe something common in politics. In other words, they want pleasing fantasies, not truths.

2. While the rich are evil, present company is always excluded. These are not real people they are thinking of, but fat cartoon people who wear top hats, spats, monocles and pinstriped pants, and smoke cigars. So no problems for themselves and those they know—no matter how rich they are, they are the good guys.

The hidden enemy of us all.

The real rich must be invisible, snickering unseen in their “wine caves.”

Mrs. Warren's Impression

Elizabeth Warren’s support down in the Estados Unidos is visibly collapsing, and it seems to be because she rolled out the details of her health plan.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders’s support is steady and now stronger, with a more radical and expensive plan.

The problem seems to be that Warren’s plan now looks like a fudge. She’s delaying the costly part of it three years to mask the real expense. And, of course, she has resisted even saying that taxes would have to go up to pay for it.

This illustrates Andrew Scheer’s problem here in Canada. It is not that his rather mainstream views are too radical. It is that he seems to be fudging. He looks dishonest. Not a good look.

I’m tempted to say the electorate has become too smart for that. But really, they are not that smart. Elizabeth Warren’s dishonesty has been obvious to all at least since her DNA test results. Biden’s has been obvious since the 1980s. It usually takes a while.

This is a big reason for the Tories not to turn now to Peter MacKay. No politician has shown more blatant dishonesty than he, in his pact with David Orchard long ago to take the PC leadership. Electing him would be like grabbing at a grenade with the pin missing.

Indecency

Joe Biden recently opined that US VP Mike Pence was “a decent guy.”

Uncle Joe Biden has been around a while. He still has something of the old school in him. Republicans, of course, still talk like that.

But not Democrats. Elizabeth Warren soon found a microphone and challenged him on this. Mike Pence was not a decent guy. Just look at his views on homosexuals. Biden quickly retracted his comment and agreed that Pence was not a decent man.

This is a good measure of how sick our public discourse has become. It was refreshing recently to watch debate in the British House of Commons over Brexit. There the rules still apply, and real discussion takes place. One does not question the integrity of an opponent. One addresses policy, not character. Sadly, it is no longer so even in the Canadian Parliament.

Even if that level of mutual respect were not essential to any honest debate, Mike Pence is indeed, by all accounts, objectively a decent guy. This is a man who will not be alone with any woman other than his wife. His “immoral” views on homosexuality are simply the views of all of the world‘s religions or long-established ethical systems: that it is sinful. Although he believes it should nevertheless be perfectly legal.

So we are at a point at which two high-profile presidential candidates feel comfortable in declaring all religious or conventional ethical beliefs “indecent.” Which is essentially inverting the meaning of that word.

Pence’s position on homosexuality is also the publicly stated position of either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton as of 2008. Apparently everyone was immoral until some time after that date.

Or rather, Warren’s and Biden’s “decency” presumably consists in changing your morality as required to conform to those around you. That’s postmodernism. Reality is constructed on the go by the social consensus. And can otherwise be anything at all. Men can suddenly be women, you can suddenly be Cherokee if it suits you, and pigs might suddenly start to fly. And it then becomes immoral to see or say otherwise.

By this standard, of course, it would have been equally indecent and immoral to object to killing Jews in Nazi Germany, or to slavery in Alabama before 1865. Or to lynching before 1965.

Any way you look at it, this ought to disqualify either Warren or Biden from public office. To begin with, they are clearly objectively immoral. Even if you are too, what then is their function, if they are just going to conform to the views of whoever is around them at the moment? Why pay them the salary? What are they doing for us that an opinion poll couldn’t? And how can we ever predict what they will do in office?

Mrs. Warren's Confession

Pocahontas on film, 1910.

We're watching a crazy situation with Elizabeth Warren's DNA testing. The mainstream media generally are reporting it as a huge propaganda victory for Warren: now she had proven that she really is “native American,” making Trump look bad for doubting her. And Trump has shown himself a liar for not paying up the million dollars he supposedly bet her.

A bet he never made, by the way. He suggested he would make a hypothetical bet if she claimed to be aboriginal while debating him.

Warren's test suggested she had an Indian ancestor 6 to 10 generations ago.

What is not mentioned by the mainstream news reports—maybe they are just too lazy and incompetent to do the simple leg work, maybe they are just that partisan--is that this is about equally true of the average American of “European” ancestry. Warren's detectable aboriginal DNA actually turns out to be a little below the average for the American population.

So has she indeed proven herself to be an Indian?

If so, we all are.

I hope this concept holds. It will end the artificial and destructive separation into two distinct levels of citizenship, and the myth of aboriginality. And I think it is true: all present North Americans are more or less equally the inheritors in any real sense of the various Indian cultures. We are all mixed. We are how they developed. Cultures are not static. And in any case, you should not get any special advantages because of genetics. Race is not a helpful or a Christian concept.

But hey, in passing, were the media once much better, or are we just becoming more aware of how bad they are now that we can compare notes with other sources online?

I think it is a bit of both.