Saturday, October 14, 2006
Sleight of hand and twist of fait-accompli
Writing in this issue of the New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann exemplifies what I consider to be the sophomoric, weak-minded "sophistication" of the American left - the way the confuse cynicism with skepticism and abtuseness with being thoughtful:
Excuse me, Mr. Lemann, but what Bush said - as you characterize it - was and is absolutely correct, in every detail.
Are you going to try to argue that Al Qaeda and its many offshoots (and there are many - even if Nicolas Lemann is too naive to understand the nature of threats that are ideological movements, rather than a neat and defineable political entity, all wrapped up and packaged so even a leftard can understand it) are not a shadowy group?
Are not a broad category of terrorists? You who are so ready to implicitly deny, via the use of scare quotes, that these terrorists hate our freedoms... what is your evidence that those who force women under pain of torture to wear burkas, who embrace the tradition of honor killings, of forced genital mutilation, who murder women who dare educate themselves, what is your evidence that these people do not "hate our freedoms?"
What is the purpose of striking at a world financial center for the west if not to disrupt a way of life? And what are dreams of an Islamic Caliphate extending from Indonesia to Spain but dreams of ending a way of life for those unfortunate to live under its venomous rule?
What Lemann wants to characterize as a "framing," clear-headed people must consider to be the thing itself.
This is how a generation of post-modernist and deconstructionist "analysis" (to use the scare-quote technique against them) has crippled the intellectual capacity of a nation. They are incapable of correctly percieving the threat - thinking for all the world that what we call the threat is really a construction. While they are paralyzed by analysis and reduced to hand-wringing sycophants by the house of mirrors they have constructed to shelter their little minds from the threat, one of those mirrors is going to turn out to be real - and blow their brains all over creation.
Indeed, that already happened, on 9/11.
They can't figure out that it wasn't an illusion.
More Lemann:
Excuse me, Mr. Lemann, but you're willfully ignoring a lot that has already transpired - and was no Halloween funhouse illusion. Just because the terrorists have failed to mount another strike inside the US is not dispositive in any way. You glide right past the blood bath we saw in Bali - twice. You are blind to the carnage in Madrid commuter trains, oblivious to the viciousness of Baslan, and whistle past the graves of the victims of Islamic savagery in London - not to mention the widespread destruction ensuing from the collapse of the rule of law in hundreds of cities all over France last year.
Combined with the attacks of 9/11 themselves, if those are not a 52-ounce cluebat to the side of the New Yorker intellectual's head, then there is simply no getting through to those like them. They can be dismissed as irrational - as so hobbled by their intellectual leg-irons imposed on them by their neo-Marxist professors that they can be considered irrelevant to the solution. Ironically, Lemann's essay is entitled "The Paranoid Style -" yet Lemann himself exemplifies the very Paranoid Style of politics that he set out to deride.
Yes, Lemann does have a moment of insight - he correctly perceives that the Paranoid Style of American politics is more common on the left than the right. But he fails to understand that the cocktail-liberal's reflexive skepticism - regardless of the weight of evidence - represents the rich and nutritious whacky-turf that enables florid paranoia to take root and prosper.
Lehmann:
Straw man. There was no direct connection between September 11th and the invasion of Iraq. Lehmann presents a false argument. No one ever seriously argued that there was such a connection.
Rather, September 11th was a catalyst that radically altered our perception of the threat. The attack on Iraq was not retaliatory. It was preemptive. It was an attempt to take the strategic offensive against the terror threat. (I would like to talk to someone like Lehmann and ask them what the strategic offensive would look like to them? How would they seize the strategic offensive from the terrorists? Hold them to specifics. Pin them down. I suspect they will be forced to concede that they would consider it to be an abuse of American power to seize the strategic offensive at all. Because we are strong, says leftard logic, we must be content with the strategic defensive. Because our way of life is superior, we must consign millions to permanent slavery under the rule of our enemies. Is there any way to seize the strategic offensive - and strike fear into the hearts of our enemies that they would support?
No. Instead, they will look past the giant hole in the ground in Manhattan and advocate policies predicated on the assumption that we don't have enemies at all. And damn the honored dead.
But I digress.
What Lemann cannot grasp is that the US did not attack Saddam because of 9/11. The US attacked Saddam because he was an obvious potential sponsor of FUTURE 9/11s.
Let the left try to demonstrate otherwise - they cannot carry the point. Logically they cannot, because a negative assertion is not readily proveable. It can only be disproved...and they would have the weight of the world against them - having to argue Saddam's innocence.
Not that that stops these rats, from doing so, even now.
Splash, out
Jason
"Bush quickly, and evidently correctly, ["evidently???"] editor] identified Al Qaeda as the party responsible for the attacks on the United States, but he chose to present the nation with a different, more mysterious enemy: a broad category of terrorists, people scattered all over the world who "hate our freedoms" and "want to disrupt and end a way of life." These were resonant and inspiring phrases, and the framed the national situation, plausibly enough for people not to notice that it was being framed, as one in which untold numbers of unseen enemies were engaged in an ongoing and highly effective conspiracy to do us terrible harm."
Excuse me, Mr. Lemann, but what Bush said - as you characterize it - was and is absolutely correct, in every detail.
Are you going to try to argue that Al Qaeda and its many offshoots (and there are many - even if Nicolas Lemann is too naive to understand the nature of threats that are ideological movements, rather than a neat and defineable political entity, all wrapped up and packaged so even a leftard can understand it) are not a shadowy group?
Are not a broad category of terrorists? You who are so ready to implicitly deny, via the use of scare quotes, that these terrorists hate our freedoms... what is your evidence that those who force women under pain of torture to wear burkas, who embrace the tradition of honor killings, of forced genital mutilation, who murder women who dare educate themselves, what is your evidence that these people do not "hate our freedoms?"
What is the purpose of striking at a world financial center for the west if not to disrupt a way of life? And what are dreams of an Islamic Caliphate extending from Indonesia to Spain but dreams of ending a way of life for those unfortunate to live under its venomous rule?
What Lemann wants to characterize as a "framing," clear-headed people must consider to be the thing itself.
This is how a generation of post-modernist and deconstructionist "analysis" (to use the scare-quote technique against them) has crippled the intellectual capacity of a nation. They are incapable of correctly percieving the threat - thinking for all the world that what we call the threat is really a construction. While they are paralyzed by analysis and reduced to hand-wringing sycophants by the house of mirrors they have constructed to shelter their little minds from the threat, one of those mirrors is going to turn out to be real - and blow their brains all over creation.
Indeed, that already happened, on 9/11.
They can't figure out that it wasn't an illusion.
More Lemann:
"That already seems like a long time ago. Since then, the United States has not had another major terrorist attack."
Excuse me, Mr. Lemann, but you're willfully ignoring a lot that has already transpired - and was no Halloween funhouse illusion. Just because the terrorists have failed to mount another strike inside the US is not dispositive in any way. You glide right past the blood bath we saw in Bali - twice. You are blind to the carnage in Madrid commuter trains, oblivious to the viciousness of Baslan, and whistle past the graves of the victims of Islamic savagery in London - not to mention the widespread destruction ensuing from the collapse of the rule of law in hundreds of cities all over France last year.
Combined with the attacks of 9/11 themselves, if those are not a 52-ounce cluebat to the side of the New Yorker intellectual's head, then there is simply no getting through to those like them. They can be dismissed as irrational - as so hobbled by their intellectual leg-irons imposed on them by their neo-Marxist professors that they can be considered irrelevant to the solution. Ironically, Lemann's essay is entitled "The Paranoid Style -" yet Lemann himself exemplifies the very Paranoid Style of politics that he set out to deride.
Yes, Lemann does have a moment of insight - he correctly perceives that the Paranoid Style of American politics is more common on the left than the right. But he fails to understand that the cocktail-liberal's reflexive skepticism - regardless of the weight of evidence - represents the rich and nutritious whacky-turf that enables florid paranoia to take root and prosper.
Lehmann:
"The logic of the connection between September 11th and the American conquest and occupation of Iraq has been obliterated."
Straw man. There was no direct connection between September 11th and the invasion of Iraq. Lehmann presents a false argument. No one ever seriously argued that there was such a connection.
Rather, September 11th was a catalyst that radically altered our perception of the threat. The attack on Iraq was not retaliatory. It was preemptive. It was an attempt to take the strategic offensive against the terror threat. (I would like to talk to someone like Lehmann and ask them what the strategic offensive would look like to them? How would they seize the strategic offensive from the terrorists? Hold them to specifics. Pin them down. I suspect they will be forced to concede that they would consider it to be an abuse of American power to seize the strategic offensive at all. Because we are strong, says leftard logic, we must be content with the strategic defensive. Because our way of life is superior, we must consign millions to permanent slavery under the rule of our enemies. Is there any way to seize the strategic offensive - and strike fear into the hearts of our enemies that they would support?
No. Instead, they will look past the giant hole in the ground in Manhattan and advocate policies predicated on the assumption that we don't have enemies at all. And damn the honored dead.
But I digress.
What Lemann cannot grasp is that the US did not attack Saddam because of 9/11. The US attacked Saddam because he was an obvious potential sponsor of FUTURE 9/11s.
Let the left try to demonstrate otherwise - they cannot carry the point. Logically they cannot, because a negative assertion is not readily proveable. It can only be disproved...and they would have the weight of the world against them - having to argue Saddam's innocence.
Not that that stops these rats, from doing so, even now.
Splash, out
Jason
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