latest
Subject: latest
From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Date: 1/11/11, 17:12
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>

The rhetorical dance that ensues in the wake of every act of domestic political violence took an amusing turn yesterday when the relatively reasonable George Will decided to discredit those of us who occasionally refer to him as relatively reasonable. As is the custom among those who are too respected to read over what they write in order to ensure that it is something that would have been published if the person were not respected, Will attempts to rise above the post-shooting fray while also jumping in himself. That a conservative columnist has engaged in some manner of logical tomfoolery would hardly be newsworthy on its own, of course; in this case, though, the ideological splashback is particularly revealing and, more importantly, amusing.

Will begins his latest work with the following specimen of what a mediocre person might consider to be thoughtful prose: 

<blockquote>It would be merciful if, when tragedies such as Tucson's occur, there were a moratorium on sociology. But respites from half-baked explanations, often serving political opportunism, are impossible because of a timeless human craving and a characteristic of many modern minds.</blockquote>

Note that "modern minds," as quickly becomes evident, is best rendered in English as "those who do not ascribe to those timeles conservative tenets that have not been discarded in the wake of blacks being accepted as our equals or creationism being debunked," or at least something to that effect; I only took two years of Conservative Beltway in high school and have relied on Google Translate for this passage.

<blockquote>A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism. And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first.</blockquote>

If Will's own bit of sociology - and remember that sociology is a pursuit that he himself declared inappropriate at such times as these just twenty seconds ago in Person Who is Reading This Time - is accurate or the Beltway conservative equivalent thereof, then we would expect that someone such as myself, for instance, would not be able to immediately produce a hilarious counterexample off of the top of my head. Let us wait for a moment and see if that happens.

Hey, does anyone remember when Charles Krauthammer appeared on Fox News in the wake of the Virginia shootings? Because I do. 

<blockquote>Krauthammer: And he did leave the return address ‘Ismail Ax.’ ‘Ismail Ax.’ I suspect it has some more to do with Islamic terror and the inspiration than it does with the opening line of Moby Dick.

Brit Hume: Which was, “My name is Ismael.”</blockquote>

Close enough, Brit. Incidentally, the Asian-American shooter with zero connection to Islam and an interest in literature did not turn out to have been influenced by Islam, but rather literature, but then of course hindsight is 20/20, particularly when the hindsight is in regard to some very obvious thing that is lost only to Pulitzer prize winners like Krauthammer.

I shall now close the circuit by further noting that Krauthammer's ideologically-advantageous declaration was followed back then by a column in which, like Will, he mourns the fact that "advocates of one social policy or another will try to use the Virginia Tech massacre to their advantage."

In conclusion, George Will makes more money than you and so does Charles Krauthammer. Enjoy your day!

--
Regards,

Barrett Brown
512-560-2302