There's No Such Thing As Right Or Wrong/But Your Bullshit Is A Sin

We always find the reactionary response of "EVIL!" amusing; it's been dragged out again by one of the self-righteous who no doubt believes himself to be the personification of yummy goodness.

Part the first was especially interesting to us; we mightn't have bothered abusing Gelernter just for re-forging of boilerplate had it not caught our eye.

(Fuck, rereading w/ intent to comprehend is painful, obviously & because we realize it will require us to type several sentences just for the first paragraph.

Ugh. Well, easiest out: Bold the stupidest parts.)

First: Suppose all these terrorists and terrorist hopefuls had in fact been run-of-the-mill madmen. What would that circumstance say about the age-old left-liberal dream of de-institutionalizing the insane? Are liberals ever wrong?

We (speaking here for each & every left-liberal) thought it might be a good idea to consider individual cases carefully, rather than automatically toss the loons into Bedlam because they are demon-possessed & evil. And (speaking for the truth here) we have a distinct memory of Calif. Gov. Ronald W. Reagan signing California's let-the-loons-out bill. Funny that Mr. Gelernter thinks this is a bad idea; the usual reaction of his neo-con ilk to spending money on social programs like warehousing the disabled & disturbed (And who the fuck isn't disturbed these days?) is that they make this good nation dangerously weak by siphoning funds from the national security state that, oddly enough, would just as soon have us all under 24-hr. surveillance in a national asylum.

Argh, three sentences already. (Equivalent to at least six sentences by a disciplined typist, so stop bitching about our bitching.)

Third: If reporters ever read their own words or listened to their own voices, they would stop repeating the ugly cliché (as they did yet again post-Times Square) that the Taliban (or gang X) has “claimed credit” for some revolting crime or attempted crime. Do we say that “The jury assigned credit to Joe Shmoe for beating up an old lady and kicking her dog down the stairs”? The word reporters are looking for is guilt. The Taliban have admitted guilt, once again, for an attempted mass murder. Do liberals ever listen to what they are saying?

Oh, just fucking stop. Now. This will go over as well as substituting "homicide bomber" for "suicide bomber." Do reactionaries ever listen to anything but the voices in their heads?

Now brace yourselves, here it comes:

The deeper point: The intellectual mainstream has long sought refuge from the concept of evil in the far easier-to-swallow idea of insanity. [...] the latest symptom--made worse (of course) by a phobic terror of bigotry--of the inability to look evil (and thus reality) in the face. The Obama administration has shown exactly the same incapacity in its dealings with the Iranian regime.

We see an even deeper point: The Obama administration has shown an incapacity to whip some good ol' fashion Bush-style shock & awe on the towelheads over there, what's wrong w/ them?

There may be more points to be made (Hell, we actually scrawled some notes, for the second or third time in three yrs. of typing for semi-public consumption; can't let that much effort go to waste.) but right now, five hrs. after starting this load, we intend to watch more tee vee & then pretend we're dead for about eight hrs. This can stand on its own for a while ...