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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Thursday, November 10, 2005

It's only this big.


Ran across this reference again, and figured it might be time to bring it back up. This is from a speech Rove gave somewhere years ago, and, yes, it is true.

“As long as I can remember, I’ve always loved politics,” Rove said. “At the age of 9 I put a Nixon bumper sticker on the wire basket in the front of my bicycle. Unfortunately the little Catholic girl down the street was a couple years and about 20 pounds on me. She was for Kennedy.

“When she saw me on my bike with my bumper sticker for Nixon, she put me on the ground, flattened me out and gave me a bloody nose,” he said.

“Despite that beating I never lost interest in politics.”


Everytime I read this, I travel down the "What if Hitler had been a better painter?" or "What if Castro had a better breaking pitch" line of thought. How the chain of events might have been altered if Rove had not suffered this Freudian castration?

And, Karl, you can beat on Joe Wilson all you want, but you'll still never erase that memory.

5 Comments:

  • Most mature people stop looking to their childhood to explain issues that they have as an adult around the time they turn 18.
    Those that look to other's childhoods to explain their behavior need a new hobby.

    Freudian castration? I think you qualify.

    Rove's just good at beating liberals... (granted, it's so easy these days, with most Americans getting wise to the plight of our 'betters' in Europe, who implemented liberalism before us).

    By Blogger Brass Pear, at 10:54 AM  

  • Leo,

    If you want to discuss childhood traumas affecting adult life, I would be more than willing. In the psychiatric literature, there are innumerable examples of individuals with neurotic phobias, for instance, which stretch back to childhood trauma.

    Personally, I don't think your blanket argument that these things don't exist has any real validity. Whether they affect Karl Rove, I don't know, but simply because you have established a mental wall (a wall of anger it seems from your tone,) doesn't mean that you're right.

    And, where exactly did the Europeans come into this except in your own nativist interpretation of the world?

    And I'd be more than happy to look at what you have to say, but you have your blogger profile turned off. Safe to snipe behind anonymity?

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 1:21 PM  

  • Mike, awesome post. Awesomely funny and awesomely true. Don't you hate that stupid "liberal" blanket that is used to cover all people who voice dissent?

    Most "mature" people who bury any traumatic experiences from their youth at 18 end up crazy at 35, Leo. I wonder what issues you might be in denial over?

    By Blogger JOS, at 1:35 PM  

  • All right boys.

    Nice to know you've got my back.

    Mike

    (and one policy note: I leave all critical comments up unless they're racist, laced with tons of profanities (more than a few)or ridiculously offensive in some way. My hope is that I could get some valid argument in comments, although past experience trends against that.)

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 1:57 PM  

  • Matt, tell him to come back. I will legitimately change my position on something if faced with a superior argument. Something beyond that "liberals is bad" mantra.

    For instance, early on in this blog, I was going off on the soldiers at abu ghraib, and I received a comment from someone who had spoken at length with his grandfather about some of the things he saw and did in WWII. We ended up trading emails for awhile, and I am much more sypathetic to the low level soldiers in some of these "abuse" situations.

    I cannot imagine how I would react in a circumstance of such pressure with my life at constant threat and total power over people whom I considered part of that threat. If you ever watch the "Off to War" tv series where the national guardsman talk casually about killing every Iraqi they see because they don't know what else to do, that's kind of what I'm talking about. These guys aren't crazy, they're just in an impossible situation where they have aboslutely no control over their lives and are getting shot at and shelled every day. They have no recourse and no outlet.

    Don't get me wrong, what happened at Abu Ghraib was awful, and the soldiers should be punished for it, but after talking with this guy awhile, I began to understand how it could happen. How it could have happened to me.

    Also, the whole experience further enraged me all the more at the higher ups and the policy in which these people were left to operate. The reason Abu ghraib happened was a failure up the military chain, yet only the lower downs took the blame. And that is sooo wrong.

    And the fact that they are now in Iraq with no plan, no goal, and no exit strategy.

    The point of this is, tell Leo that I will change my mind if someone makes a good argument. Unlike my president, I consider rationality a strength.

    But "liberals bad, euros bad, that's not an argument."

    Mike

    And let me say this one more time a bit more clearly.

    The maltreatment of prisoners is a horrible, horrible thing, and it should be punished. But I now find it impossible to look at the crime without considering the context. And we should punish the crime, but we should also consider punishing the context.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 2:35 PM  

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