{"id":1428,"date":"2015-06-29T20:47:09","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T01:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2015-06-29T20:47:09","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T01:47:09","slug":"drama-queens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/06\/29\/drama-queens\/","title":{"rendered":"Drama Queens"},"content":{"rendered":"

A number of news sources have reported on the reactions of Cruz, Huckabee, et al to the gay marriage and ACA decisions.\u00a0 Cruz wishes to call for a Constitutional Convention in order to overturn gay marriage decision (and, of course, for those of us of a naive turn of mind, we’re asking whether he has stopped to check whether a Convention, any form, would overturn or confirm <\/i>the decision); Huckabee talks about enabling legislation <\/i>and, without it, the decision is really meaningless.\u00a0 Benen has some commentary on Huckabee <\/a>and Cruz<\/a>, if you’re interested.<\/p>\n

But I see this as just another step in the long running story of Americans as drama queens.\u00a0 Throughout US history we can see the determined drive towards self-importance in the American psyche.\u00a0 It can be the nationalism of the early 20th century as we joined The Great War and became a great Power, or our ascendance after World War II as we became one of two great powers; when the USSR collapsed, the entire theme nearly collapsed from exhaustion.\u00a0 In the area of religion, the periodic proclamations about the End Days (after all, those who live in the End Days must be more important, eh?), the proliferation of sects (as everyone starting one must know better than the parent sect), the suicide cults, the rise of the new prophets, such as Warren Jeffs<\/a>, etc.<\/p>\n

So now Cruz says the rulings are<\/p>\n

\u201csome of the darkest 24 hours in our nation\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Think of that.\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 Pearl Harbor?\u00a0 Gettysburg?\u00a0 No, this is not <\/i>a statement of direct rationality; rather, it’s an appeal to the sense of (self-)importance<\/em> of the base .\u00a0 Suggest there’s a crisis and it’s time to form up ranks.\u00a0 Battle is to be joined and the righteous shall triumph.\u00a0 (Everyone’s righteous, right?)<\/p>\n

It makes for heady emotions, appealing to the sense of a national crisis – and you can play an important part in heading it off.\u00a0 It’s dark days, it’s a national crisis, but hey, you’re righteous and don’t stop to think about the other side.<\/p>\n

It’s an old tradition with the USA, sadly.\u00a0 When you appeal to our better nature, we can do some amazing things – save West Berlin via airlift, speed aid to other countries, even go to the moon in one heck of a hurry.\u00a0 But our dark sides are equally vulnerable – stir up emotions, the fear, our incipient xenophobia (and, for an immigrant nation, we sure have a lot of that), a certain fundamentalism that is happy to live off the creature comforts provided by science without accepting the fundamentals of that science … and so the message about the justice of gay marriage doesn’t really get through.\u00a0 We’re on stage, the end of days is waiting in the wings, and we have to enact our part, dammit, without regard for how much it costs<\/em> our fellow Americans.<\/p>\n

In short, we’re important<\/em>.\u00a0 Vast historical forces converge upon us; it’s important to hold the walls, fight the good fight, throw the barbarians down from their ladders.<\/p>\n

As Americans, we don’t usually realize it.\u00a0 But just two words: Manifest Destiny.\u00a0 That’s it in a nutshell.\u00a0 It’s easier to feel those dark emotions than think about what our actions may mean for our fellows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of news sources have reported on the reactions of Cruz, Huckabee, et al to the gay marriage and ACA decisions.\u00a0 Cruz wishes to call for a Constitutional Convention in order to overturn gay marriage decision (and, of course, for those of us of a naive turn of mind, \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1429,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions\/1429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}