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You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you

Heraclitus of Ephesus, Fragment 41; Quoted by Plato in Cratylus

Andrew Sullivan calls the passing year for Obama and reflects on the ‘Wright’ Speech, pompously christened by Obama’s aides as the ‘More Perfect Union’ speech. This was the speech in which Obama refused to denounce Jermiah Wright’s spitting hatred, likening the demagogic, racist bigot to his own grandmother – shortly before he went on to, in fact, denounce Pastor Wright when it became politically impossible for him not to do so.

Sullivan quotes himself:

And so there is a difference, pace Jonah, between a white charlatan like Robertson who chooses to demonize minorities in the name of Jesus and a pastor like Wright who vents rage against a majority that has, in the not-so-distant past, given African-Americans every reason to be angry

Andrew Sullivan, The Year Of Obama II,/p>

In writing this Sullivan commits a common error I find increasingly frustrating. His excuse of Wright, who claimed that HIV had been deliberately created by the US Government to kill black people, is only remotely sensible if the majority against which Wright now vents his anger is the same majority as the one responsible for the racist bigotry of the past. But the majority of white people now is not the same majority of white people then. The people are not the same people and were not responsible for the policies of the past, were not responsible for the past segregation and oppression.

Sullivan’s error is a simple logical one to which Heraclitus drew attention so long ago.

I’ve just returned from Germany. I had no thought that the people around me were pro-Nazi fascists responsible for Dachau, Auschwitz-Birkenau or Treblinka. That happened 60 years ago; the people are not the same people and the society is not the same society and the politics today are not the same as the politics of 1944. Andrew Sullivan would, I suppose, see the anachronistic foolishness of ranting against Germans today for the Germans of half a century ago.

I suppose the best explanation why Sullivan excuses Jeremiah Wright for his hateful ranting and excuses Obama too is that he feels personally guilty, possibly because of some residual prejudice in himself. Why else promote the racism of lower expectations?

“What’s the difference between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama?”

“One is a well turned-out, good-looking, and let’s be honest, pretty sexy piece of eye-candy. The other kills her own food.”

Notice, though, that the joke relies on the comparison being made between the Democratic Presidential nominee and the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee.

Well, exactly.

There has been some rash speculation about the cause of Andrew Sullivan’s recent blizzard of Daily Kos-style posts, including a suggestion of dementia – which, given Sullivan’s medical condition, is a possibility I suppose. Whatever. His latest:

Did I just see Cindy holding Trig? I mean: can we have it one way or the other? Either the family is out of bounds or it is in the spotlight. Brandishing a child with Down Syndrome as a campaign statement is daring the press to ask questions about him.

Andrew Sullivan, Parading the Baby

Not parading, Andrew, holding. In the audience. Very unlike Michelle Obama and her two children appearing on stage at the DNC. Remember?

Some evangelicals tout Obama’s family values. The contrast with the once-philandering, adulterous divorcé running for the GOP goes unstated:

Andrew Sullivan, Christianists For Obama

Sullivan usually has little time for evangelicals interfering in politics, despite his own obsession with politics and Catholicism. When it comes to evangelicals for Obama, though, Sullivan repeats their snide insinuations and adds his own bile.

The phrase used to describe McCain – a once-philandering, adulterous divorcé – is Sullivan’s alone but what could be Sullivan’s objection to a reformed philanderer? For Sullivan, who is so adamant that the Church of the famously hedonistic and sexually licentious Augustine can encompass his own homosexuality, objecting to McCain in this way invites clichéd responses about motes and beams and casting stones. It’s not only in his own sexual life that Sullivan finds himself at odds with his faith’s traditions and teaching.