Maybe I Just Don't Get It

I periodically dip into The Bilerico Project and find myself wondering why it's so highly regarded among gay blogs. It strikes me as pretty much the left-wing version of GayPatriot: predictable, knee-jerk, and not much depth. (I could be wrong, and there's really nothing wrong about being all of the above, but I'm looking for the unexpected, thoughtful, and substantial. It's out there.*)

Take this post for example:

So I've tried to shy away from posting about the election (except for my one post about Obama's gay crush on John Edwards). But this article about Obama's foreign policy goals had me scratching my head. (If I had balls, I'd scratch those instead.)

Sen. Barack Obama said Friday he would return the country to the more "traditional" foreign policy efforts of past presidents, such as George H.W. Bush, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

At a town hall event at a local high school gymnasium, Obama praised George H.W. Bush - father of the president - for the way he handled the Persian Gulf War: with a large coalition and carefully defined objectives.

Is Obama running to be the GOP candidate, or what?

If you're scratching your head (and why would you scratch your balls over something like this?), I'm right there with you. It may just be that you're hampered in accepting something like this if you know anything about history and/or our foreign policy over the past fifty years -- in basic terms, we created a "pax Americana" that ran echoed the pax Britannica that held throughout the nineteenth century and pretty much up to WWII. To put it in the words of Teddy Roosevelt, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." And since WWII, we've had the biggest stick on the block, so we didn't have to use it. We also made good use of international cooperation. Dubyah has blown that, and getting back to the status quo ante is a laudable goal -- after all, it worked. I'm not sure it's possible, since our standing in the world is so badly eroded -- it's the kind of stance that relies on moral authority. I have a sneaking suspicion that there's going to be a period of relative chaos until the next world policeman rises, whether that's a united Europe or China, or some nation that's not even on the horizon yet, because once you've lost that moral authority, it's almost impossible to get it back.

At any rate, that poster just doesn't seem to get it. (The commenters seem to be a lot more on the ball -- and better informed.)

* See "Friday Gay Blogging, Sunday Edition," below.