Swift Boats and Sheehan

So I see in the paper that the Right is attempting to discredit Cindy Sheehan by “exposing her Leftist politics.” Apparently, or so we’re told, her past statements and beliefs invalidate her current ones.

Interesting.

Say, did anybody look into the previous political opinions and backgrounds of the “Swift Boat veterans for Truth” when they were torpedoing the Kerry campaign?

Just curious.

Giving the Left a Farping Clue

The political Left in America fascinates me. From the Reagan years to the present (I write this in 2005), Liberals have been rendered impotent by the seemingly boundless appeal of the Right. They ask themselves again and again: How could such a thing happen? How is this possible?

Let me offer these bewildered people a clue.

For nearly forty years, you told the American people in general, and white males in particular that they were a revolting band of sheep-rapists who tortured dogs and napalmed babies and ought to pay extra taxes just for breathing.

And you expected them to like you?

Ideology 2

More on ideology and idealists . . .

I believe that most idealists are actually rationalists, and that most ideologies are, at base, founded on purest reason. For example, some years ago, I read an article in a major publication regarding the human tragedies attending one of Africa’s endless wars. The article concluded with the description of a boy that the reporter had seen at a hospital. The child had been struck by shrapnel and had lost, among other parts of his body, a testicle.

A few days later, the same publication ran a letter it had received from a reader about the article. The reader, a woman of strong opinions, pointed out that if the reporter had bothered to examine girls in the region he would have noticed that many had been subjected to “female circumcision,” that is, the removal of external genitalia. Compared to this crime against an entire gender, she wrote, one boy with a little metal in him was hardly worth discussing.

It was an interesting letter . . . though, I must confess, at first, I didn’t follow the logic. What the writer was saying, after all, was that one innocent victim’s personal tragedy was rendered (by magic?) less significant by other victims’ personal tragedies. It didn’t seem to follow, in other words, that one bit of agony should be made less by more.

But, then, I realized I had misunderstood. The writer was, in fact, speaking as an ideologist, and what she was really saying was “The pain of people who are like me is more important than the pain of people who are not.” Or, more precisely still, “Your pain is less significant than my pain” – a sentiment, which, I think, is at the secret core of all ideologies, no matter nobly it may be otherwise expressed.

And, you must confess, it is entirely rational.

Not particularly attractive.

But wholly rational.

Drill, ye ideologists, Drill!

I’ve discovered that most ideologies are sort of like sitting on a dental drill.

You’re pretty sure they have a good point, but you also have the feeling you’re getting scr*wed.

The Late J.J. Bittermuch

I received sad news the other day. An acquaintance of mine, J.J. Bittermuch, quite possibly the world’s most astringent man, passed away suddenly when his bile glands exploded from excessive capacity. However, shortly after being translated instantly to the fifth circle of Hades (the Wraithful, if you’ll consult your Dante), he re-established contact with me via Magic 8-Ball, Ouija Board, and Internet email.

Last night, around midnight, he sent me the following:

“I’ve been reading that banal little exercise that it pleases you to call ‘explosive-cargo,’ though ‘toxic waste’ strikes me as the better title. But, anyway, it warms my heart to see that you’re still the reasonably dimwitted troglodyte you were before. Nice to know that some things remain inviolate.

“For example, you remain clueless about life in the academy. Let me, my dear fellow, put your pointed little head in the right direction . . . and explain the obvious.

“The thing to remember about ‘higher education’ is that the ‘higher’ is theoretical and the ‘education’ a myth. Professors are rewarded not for their ability to convey information to students, but rather for the capacity to impose turgid prose on learned journals and score grants from bounteous foundations.

“And so, we have the result—Educators . . . who couldn’t teach a rectum to defecate.”

Eurotrash

Notes from the Academy:

What would European intellectuals do without Americans? Why, they might have to go back to being anti-Semitic.

Assuming they ever stopped.

All Mama Rand's Chillins

I love Libertarians. They’re so sincere. So earnest. So serious. So full of sh*t.

~

No. Really. I love ‘em. Libertarians remind me of what socialists were like in the 1960s—-absolutely certain that they have the future under control, assured of their own intellectual superiority, convinced of their moral authority . . .

And, most of all, like the Left of my youth, they are beginning, now, ever so uneasily, to wonder if (as Geo W and the Neocons install a petro-theocracy in America), that maybe . . . just maybe . . .

They’ve been scr*wed.

Mo PoMos

Notes from the academy:

Reading a postmodern historian is like going to a blindfolded dentist for a filling. You get a number of holes and rather a lot of screaming . . .but remarkably little progress.

Bushwhacking

Is it just me, or . . .

Does it seem like the Administration is more interested in protecting the President from having to talk to one, middle-aged, middle class, unarmed woman who happens to be the mother of a dead boy . . . than in protecting American boys and girls from snipers, chemical weapons, and roadside bombs?

Nukes, Terrorists, Hearts of Darkness

The previous entry might make you think I’m a foe of “the war against terrorism.” Untrue. Yes, I think the invasion of Iraq was a complete and total muck up, but I also think the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda was justified, necessary, and even moral . . . or, anyway, as moral as war can be. Nations and governments have an obligation to defend their citizens when they are attacked.

Indeed, in the shadowy recesses of my dark heart, I have sometimes wondered if it wouldn’t have been better if we’d taken the affair nuclear right after 9-11 . . . say, toss a few sub-kiloton devices at the Al Qaeda camps, which tended to be fairly remote. Non-combatant deaths would have been minimal, and more importantly, the world would have been given notice that anyone contemplating the mass murder of Americans (and, further, citizens of any Western nation) faced instant and total obliteration.

Of course, afterwards, the United States would have been roundly denounced for its actions. But, come. Let us be frank. What difference would that make? Right after 9-11, and long before Geo-W’s ill-conceived invasion of Iraq, a glance at the editorial pages of newspapers around the world . . . even in Western Europe, even in the English-speaking world . . . revealed that the opinion of a whole lot of Heavy Thinkers was that the ole US of A had dang well got what it deserved, thank-you-very-much, and that we, as a culture, should respond to the slaughter of our people by dropping our collective pants and saying, “Please, Sir, may I have another?”

The point being that we could curry the favor of the People Who Know Best the world over . . . or we could just bash ourselves in the head a few times with a 2x4. It would achieve just about as much, and be a whole lot quicker.

Bushwar Two

Regarding the previous posting. “Bush-War.” I like that. Great term. Very descriptive. “You can almost taste it, can’t you?”

Bushwar One

This one I got from my father.

It has been fascinating to watch as the justification for the Bush-war in Iraq has changed with time. First, it was because Saddam had WMDs (he didn’t); then it was because Saddam was a tyrant (he was, but so is Robert Mugabe, and we don’t seem to bombing the sh*t out of him at the moment); and, now, at least as of this writing, we’re told we’re in the Gulf as part of the war against terror.

Except . . . well . . . you see . . . what’s filled the power-vacuum in the Southern part of Iraq seems to be a number of Islamic Fundamentalist militias heavily influenced by Iran. In other words, we have put into power the very people who would just dearly love to fly the not-so-friendly skies into a few more of our population centers. Those people hadn’t been effective before because Saddam was shooting and gassing them, along with anybody else who even remotely threatened his position.

Ergo, viewed from the perspective of a cold hearted, self-interested, realpolitickin’, son of a CENSORED, the invasion was a waste and it would have been a lot more profitable to have left Saddam where he was.

He was killing the people we wanted killed, and doing it more cheaply than we could ourselves.

Postmodernists (PoMos)

One of the BIG THINGs in the academy for the last couple of generations has been postmodernism (a.k.a., that stuff they had in the Matrix but with a French accent). Boiled down to elementals, the postmodernists (PoMos for short) teach that we are all sealed into our little bubbles of perception and therefore can never share a common reality. Nor does any one single “reality” exist. In fact, what we think of as “Reality,” is really a “hegemonic narrative” imposed by an exploitive and oppressive social elite to maintain its dominance over the rest of us.

Thus – and I’ve actually heard this said – whether or not there really was a Holocaust is both un-provable and irrelevant. What matters is who tells the tale and why. The answer is – or so say some of my professors – the Jews, who employ the “narrative” of genocide to justify Zionism and gain a privileged position in social interactions.

On reflection, I’ve decided there is a proper response to PoMos.

It involves an Uzi.

University Life

For twenty years, I was in the trade press. Specifically, I wrote about computers. Then, one morning, I realized that if I wrote one more gawdam article about disc drives, I was going to kill somebody.

So I went back to the academy and set out to get a Ph.D. in history. I’m now about three quarters of the way there. On the whole, it’s been fun. But . . .

You know what?

Some professors make disc drives look like a Brittney Spears rubber catsuit hootenanny-qua-Chippendale tarantella-fest on d-meth at the Playboy Mansion.

Xcargo Returns

Yes, oh my friends and neighbors, I’m back.

Some of you my have been subscribers to my original explosive-cargo ezine. You will recall that this was my weekly column of gibberish, feeble attempts at humor, and occasional mutterings of the mildly moderate political sort.

I gave it up some years ago when I realized that:

A) I didn’t feel funny any more (some would say I never was funny, but we won’t listen to such base canards. Nor malevolent mallards. Ha Ha Ha. Eh . . . it’s a joke. See. Canard. Sounds like a duck. Mallard. Um. Oh, never mind); and,

B) When I left the trade press to return to the academy, I found I simply didn’t have the time for writing 2000 extra words a week; and,

C) I discovered that my ezine was being widely ignored while people like Drat Sludge were making a fortune and bringing down elected officials a lot. Made me grumpy. You wouldn’t like me if I was grumpy. I turn green and grow fangs. Well. Greener than normal. Hard to tell in this light.

But, alas, I’ve decided to return. No. No. I’d spare you if I could, but it is impossible. You’ll just have to cope. After all, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

So, fasten your seatbelts and let’s be off . . .

Onward and upward.