Keep Those Mangy Paws To Yourself, Fraternal Or Otherwise
Well, just like anyone on the stump, we break our promises. There was an attempt to stay silent, but resistance proved useless(could be all the cheap coffee).
Gee, thanks for ever so deftly slicing the electoral Gordian Knot for us Hitch. I get it. The trick to getting over disgust with the corruption of our political system is to pick a single issue, ignore the facts, policy complexities and anything else inconvenient, then suck it up and judge The Man based on...What?
Does anyone honestly believe Bush did an about face on his foreign policy goals? ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME? A man uses a politically convenient disaster to bolster up a failing presidency and cynically sell the public on his goals - which he did manage to obscure throughout his first campaign - and this is illustrative of something important to Hitch, Sullivan, whoever(I'd include Horowitz in this list, but he never had any reservations about Bush). I don't understand it. I thought these men were supposed to be incisive critical thinkers, serious minded and so forth. But since they can't even be bothered to read what these people were actually proposing back in 2000 and before, it seems to me they're lazy opportunists.
Which reminds me, Wolcott has already dispensed with the fatuous "anyone but Bush, even Al Sadr?" argument, twice so far(and with much more wit than is managed here). Color me unimpressed with Hitch's willingness to even put that in print, however. Not only is it a cheap shot, it's nonsensical - no one is suggesting solidarity (no, not even Naomi Klein - yet another masterful stroke of missing the effin' point) with these kinds of leaders. It's yet more evidence that it's not Hitch's politics that are disappointing, it's his substitution of second rate rhetorical hair pulling for reason and wit. Wipe away the fraternal paw extension and all you have is Ann Coulter with a little more grace, a fatter ass(though same size tits, it would appear), and a diminishing English accent. See? We can do it too.
As far as the company we keep, wasn't it Hitch who wrote in Letters To A Young Contrarian that you shouldn't judge your positions by who happens to agree with you? Maybe some of us who didn't want the Iraq war didn't want it because, unlike the serious intellectual "liberal hawks", it was obvious to us where that would lead. If you wanted nation building done right, Gore was your man, and since it looks like it's going to be mostly people who would have made up a Gore cabinet in Kerry's, maybe you've got the wrong man?
As for the pointless suggestion that no one really wanted a second Carter term, or a Dukakis presidency(which, by the way, is at least the third time I've seen this claim in print, along with the equally pointless "no Democrat is really that into John Kerry"), ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME? The reason hard core peacenik leftists don't like hawkish Democrats is because they're hawkish. Doves can't be single issue because no matter who you elect, the foreign policy is going to be imperial to a greater or lesser degree. So when faced with the choice of an intolerable(and possibly immoral) foreign policy and despicable domestic aims or an intolerable(and possibly slightly less immoral) foreign policy and a slightly less brutal domestic agenda, you go with the guy who gets it sort of half right over the guy who gets it totally wrong. I'd also prefer to ask a different question of Hitch. If we're stuck with the policy we have - and we are - then why does anyone really care if it's Kerry or Bush? They're both cynical political hucksters(and both quite clearly insane). The only difference is while one has the capability to be competent in the current situation, the other has demonstrated quite clearly otherwise.
It seems to me the "relief" offered by slightly favoring Bush is cold comfort.
Gee, thanks for ever so deftly slicing the electoral Gordian Knot for us Hitch. I get it. The trick to getting over disgust with the corruption of our political system is to pick a single issue, ignore the facts, policy complexities and anything else inconvenient, then suck it up and judge The Man based on...What?
Does anyone honestly believe Bush did an about face on his foreign policy goals? ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME? A man uses a politically convenient disaster to bolster up a failing presidency and cynically sell the public on his goals - which he did manage to obscure throughout his first campaign - and this is illustrative of something important to Hitch, Sullivan, whoever(I'd include Horowitz in this list, but he never had any reservations about Bush). I don't understand it. I thought these men were supposed to be incisive critical thinkers, serious minded and so forth. But since they can't even be bothered to read what these people were actually proposing back in 2000 and before, it seems to me they're lazy opportunists.
Which reminds me, Wolcott has already dispensed with the fatuous "anyone but Bush, even Al Sadr?" argument, twice so far(and with much more wit than is managed here). Color me unimpressed with Hitch's willingness to even put that in print, however. Not only is it a cheap shot, it's nonsensical - no one is suggesting solidarity (no, not even Naomi Klein - yet another masterful stroke of missing the effin' point) with these kinds of leaders. It's yet more evidence that it's not Hitch's politics that are disappointing, it's his substitution of second rate rhetorical hair pulling for reason and wit. Wipe away the fraternal paw extension and all you have is Ann Coulter with a little more grace, a fatter ass(though same size tits, it would appear), and a diminishing English accent. See? We can do it too.
As far as the company we keep, wasn't it Hitch who wrote in Letters To A Young Contrarian that you shouldn't judge your positions by who happens to agree with you? Maybe some of us who didn't want the Iraq war didn't want it because, unlike the serious intellectual "liberal hawks", it was obvious to us where that would lead. If you wanted nation building done right, Gore was your man, and since it looks like it's going to be mostly people who would have made up a Gore cabinet in Kerry's, maybe you've got the wrong man?
As for the pointless suggestion that no one really wanted a second Carter term, or a Dukakis presidency(which, by the way, is at least the third time I've seen this claim in print, along with the equally pointless "no Democrat is really that into John Kerry"), ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME? The reason hard core peacenik leftists don't like hawkish Democrats is because they're hawkish. Doves can't be single issue because no matter who you elect, the foreign policy is going to be imperial to a greater or lesser degree. So when faced with the choice of an intolerable(and possibly immoral) foreign policy and despicable domestic aims or an intolerable(and possibly slightly less immoral) foreign policy and a slightly less brutal domestic agenda, you go with the guy who gets it sort of half right over the guy who gets it totally wrong. I'd also prefer to ask a different question of Hitch. If we're stuck with the policy we have - and we are - then why does anyone really care if it's Kerry or Bush? They're both cynical political hucksters(and both quite clearly insane). The only difference is while one has the capability to be competent in the current situation, the other has demonstrated quite clearly otherwise.
It seems to me the "relief" offered by slightly favoring Bush is cold comfort.
posted by jayinbmore at 1:17 PM
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