Archive Listing
January 11, 2008 - January 4, 2008
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Nobody Move...!
No
more clever repartee.
RULES. InstaPunk is old. And obsolete. Too polite by about a mile and a half. Did you hear him making nice with that D-Cup bimbo? She's a left-wing loon. There's no point in talking with loons. So we retired him. With prejudice. This is supposed to be scriver territory. It will be from now on.
We almost retired him back in April. But he was more resilient than we figured. Part of him being too f***ing clever for his own good. That's all done now. Youth will be served.
It's not that InstaPunk was wrong. He knew that this country was meandering through the valley of death checking out the store windows while the dragons were circling overhead. But he was too circumspect. He tried to exchange ideas with people who are actually part of the problem. Like that InstaPundit goof, who's as fascinated by digital cameras as he is by the campaign tactics of Harold Ford and Barak Obama as he is by the legal niceties of the GWOT. If you put that boob in the crosshairs of a sniper's rifle, he'd be asking questions about the optical precision of the scope while you were pulling the trigger. That's the American disease: smug obliviousness. He doesn't deserve a wife with a rack like that. So there won't be any more grovelling here for -- what do they call it? -- an "insta-lanche."
Reasonableness is a dangerous trap. There's absolutely no point in trying to persuade people to see the obvious. If they can't see their f***ing nose in front of their f***ing face, f***'em. Here's some of the obvious crap that InstaPunk was trying to be reasonable about:
1.
The United States Congress is full of spineless, self-obsessed retards.
When Republicans had the majority, Congress was a joke. Now that the
treasonous Democrats have the majority, Congress is a loaded gun aimed
at our heads. Everyone who voted in a way that helped Nancy Pelosi
become Speaker of the House should be stood up against a wall and shot.
2. The President of the United States had -- for several years -- balls. Fine. He deserved praise and some loyalty for that. But he let them get clipped off by person or persons unknown. Rice and her State Department fags? Pelosi and her hormone-crazed castration fantasies? Who knows. All that matters now is that he's an inarticulate eunuch who listens to the advice of ancient zombies who should be locked up in Alzheimer's sanitariums. He's a menace. InstaPunk just never could overcome his irrational loyalty to an over-achieving fighter pilot. We can. Bush has become the enemy he once had the courage to confront. That's tragic. But it's also despicable.
3. The mainstream media is a colossus of traitors. Everyone who works for a major newspaper or network news organization should be hunted down, rounded up, and shot in the back of the head. They are actively working to enable our enemies to destroy America. It doesn't matter why. Self-hatred. Post-Modern ennui. Existential angst. Post-Soviet vindictiveness. Who gives a flying f***? Kill them all. Now.
4. Political Correctness is the new Black Death. All the topics that can't be discussed are part of the pandemic that's killing America. Feminists so pin-headed they lend their political support to anti-semitic death merchants whose religion defines their sex in terms of slavery. Academics who abandon their subject matter expertise for political rants in support of forces that would exterminate them without a second thought. Minority rights activists who sup with traitors on a daily basis while they demand the extension of exceptional American privileges to those who would rape their wives, subjugate their children, clap them in chains, and entirely eliminate the gravy train on which they have feasted for a generation.
5. The death of Christianity is the end of human civilization. Period. Muslims are, at best, semi-conscious barbarians, a thousand million f***ing idiots who think their problems could be solved by murdering all of the twenty million Jews on earth. All the eastern religions so prized by New-Agers are in the business of killing individual consciousness so that the faceless group can rule the masses. Scientific atheism is the patricidal bastard spawn of the only faith willing to tolerate their arrogant fantasies of omniscience. Only Christianity encourages thought, freedom, creativity, exploration, and accomplishment while seeking to restrain the baser human instincts that lead to sadism, sexual violence, totalitarianism, genocide, and cultural death. The fight against Islamic jihad should be a religious crusade, but nobody anywhere has the guts to say it. If a billion muslims have to be killed to save human civilization, the benefit still outweighs the cost. And virtue is not obliterated by choosing to kill rather than be killed.
6. It's not true that the crusade, or any one of its battles, can't be won. It could be won in 90 minutes. Everyone keeps forgetting that. The only question is, how much do you believe in the value of the civilization that created you, all your experience and beliefs, and your children? Are you willing to commit suicide and end the lives of your own offspring in order to avoid hurting murderous morons who would cut your throats in an instant given a knife and a chance? The Romans knew the answer to that question for close to a thousand years. The Egyptians knew the answer for almost three thousand years. But since you're so much smarter than they were, it's taken you less than 250 years to come up with the dumbest possible answer.
2. The President of the United States had -- for several years -- balls. Fine. He deserved praise and some loyalty for that. But he let them get clipped off by person or persons unknown. Rice and her State Department fags? Pelosi and her hormone-crazed castration fantasies? Who knows. All that matters now is that he's an inarticulate eunuch who listens to the advice of ancient zombies who should be locked up in Alzheimer's sanitariums. He's a menace. InstaPunk just never could overcome his irrational loyalty to an over-achieving fighter pilot. We can. Bush has become the enemy he once had the courage to confront. That's tragic. But it's also despicable.
3. The mainstream media is a colossus of traitors. Everyone who works for a major newspaper or network news organization should be hunted down, rounded up, and shot in the back of the head. They are actively working to enable our enemies to destroy America. It doesn't matter why. Self-hatred. Post-Modern ennui. Existential angst. Post-Soviet vindictiveness. Who gives a flying f***? Kill them all. Now.
4. Political Correctness is the new Black Death. All the topics that can't be discussed are part of the pandemic that's killing America. Feminists so pin-headed they lend their political support to anti-semitic death merchants whose religion defines their sex in terms of slavery. Academics who abandon their subject matter expertise for political rants in support of forces that would exterminate them without a second thought. Minority rights activists who sup with traitors on a daily basis while they demand the extension of exceptional American privileges to those who would rape their wives, subjugate their children, clap them in chains, and entirely eliminate the gravy train on which they have feasted for a generation.
5. The death of Christianity is the end of human civilization. Period. Muslims are, at best, semi-conscious barbarians, a thousand million f***ing idiots who think their problems could be solved by murdering all of the twenty million Jews on earth. All the eastern religions so prized by New-Agers are in the business of killing individual consciousness so that the faceless group can rule the masses. Scientific atheism is the patricidal bastard spawn of the only faith willing to tolerate their arrogant fantasies of omniscience. Only Christianity encourages thought, freedom, creativity, exploration, and accomplishment while seeking to restrain the baser human instincts that lead to sadism, sexual violence, totalitarianism, genocide, and cultural death. The fight against Islamic jihad should be a religious crusade, but nobody anywhere has the guts to say it. If a billion muslims have to be killed to save human civilization, the benefit still outweighs the cost. And virtue is not obliterated by choosing to kill rather than be killed.
6. It's not true that the crusade, or any one of its battles, can't be won. It could be won in 90 minutes. Everyone keeps forgetting that. The only question is, how much do you believe in the value of the civilization that created you, all your experience and beliefs, and your children? Are you willing to commit suicide and end the lives of your own offspring in order to avoid hurting murderous morons who would cut your throats in an instant given a knife and a chance? The Romans knew the answer to that question for close to a thousand years. The Egyptians knew the answer for almost three thousand years. But since you're so much smarter than they were, it's taken you less than 250 years to come up with the dumbest possible answer.
TruePunk. We know that complications are generally evasions and delusions. That's why we may not be here for long. Too many morons have too much to lose when we speak the truth. But we're here for the moment. Listen while you can. If InstaPunk returns, you'll know we've been silenced.
posted at
2:04 pm
by
TruePunk
Monday, December 11, 2006
Oversight
Silvestre
Reyes, chairman-designate of the House Intelligence Committee.
'O' IS FOR.... Here's a dictionary definition from Word Web Online:
Noun: oversight 'owvur`sIt
- An unintentional omission resulting from failure to notice
something
- inadvertence
- Management by
overseeing the performance or operation of a person or group
- supervision, supervising, superintendence
- A mistake resulting from inattention
- lapse
Yeah, I'm talking about the little "quiz" Reyes failed that most every right-wing blogger will be chortling about over the next day or two. Just an excerpt from an article by the National Security Editor of CQ.com, Jeff Stein, for those of you who need a reminder:
Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or
Shia?
“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominantly?”
“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.
That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up al Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics.
Al Qaeda’s Sunni roots account for its very existence.
“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominantly?”
“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.
That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up al Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics.
Al Qaeda’s Sunni roots account for its very existence.
I don't know where to start on this. There are so many implications. In fairness to Reyes, though, I'll cite another quote from the same article that some of us righties will probably omit (by inadvertence, I'm sure):
.
To his credit, Reyes, a kindly,
thoughtful man who also sits on the Armed Service Committee, does see
the undertows drawing the region into chaos.
For example, he knows that the 1,400- year-old split in Islam between Sunnis and Shiites not only fuels the militias and death squads in Iraq, it drives the competition for supremacy across the Middle East between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.
That’s more than two key Republicans on the Intelligence Committee knew when I interviewed them last summer. Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., and Terry Everett, R-Ala., both back for another term, were flummoxed by such basic questions, as were several top counterterrorism officials at the FBI.
For example, he knows that the 1,400- year-old split in Islam between Sunnis and Shiites not only fuels the militias and death squads in Iraq, it drives the competition for supremacy across the Middle East between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia.
That’s more than two key Republicans on the Intelligence Committee knew when I interviewed them last summer. Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va., and Terry Everett, R-Ala., both back for another term, were flummoxed by such basic questions, as were several top counterterrorism officials at the FBI.
In fairness to myself, I'll note that I've conceded the stupidity of Republican politicians in the past, more than once, in fact. But we're entering a new phase in our national policy-making process, one in which the Congress is going to try to steer national foreign policy by committee. The Republican dunces, bad as they were, played a different role in the government. They used their political skills to try to give their party leader, the President, as much of what he wanted as was consistent with their overriding desire to get reelected. Under the new regime, the Democrats are planning to harass, undermine, and obstruct the President in the mistaken belief that their recent electoral victory represents an endorsement of their political positions rather than a repudiation of Republican corruption and sloth.
In this context, it's much more relevant to ask what they really want, what they anticipate as the results of their policies, and what base of knowledge drives the first two. Reyes's quiz performance tells us something important about these general questions and something specific about two individual politicians: himself and Nancy Pelosi.
As to Reyes, Jeff Stein's assertion that he is "a kindly, thoughtful man" is ridiculous. To aspire to a life-and-death responsibility one is totally unqualified for is the opposite of kindly; it is selfish and utterly uncaring of others. It is also the opposite of thoughtful, because it's far from considerate to perform surgery without medical training. To be a member of Congress voting at frequent intervals on matters that relate to the national security of your country without bothering to learn essential facts about the competing factions of the enemy who is sworn to annihilate the people you represent is criminally ignorant. Reyes may be "nice," but he doesn't know enough to be a back bench congressman, let alone chairman of the House Committee on Intelligence. He should be sent home forthwith.
Then there's Nancy Pelosi. Elected to her seat by a few hundred thousand voters, she is now the second most powerful figure in the United States government. How does she choose to use her new power? By plunging herself -- and, not so incidentally, the country she intends to "govern" -- into one vengeful bitch fight after another, consequences be damned. First, she nominates a demonstrably corrupt and addled old ward heeler to be her number two in order to score off an old male rival. Then, she nominates two completely laughable candidates -- Hastings the Crook and Reyes the Dolt -- for chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Why? Because she just can't stand to be in the same room with that c*** Jane Harman, a fellow female legislator from her own home state.
In case you're not getting it, we're talking All-Time Dumb here. Classic Democrat affirmative-action diversity. Hastings was black, so she figured San Francisco voters (the only ones she's accountable to, don't forget...) wouldn't mind that he's as ethical as Marion Berry and Al Sharpton combined. And Reyes is hispanic, so she never even thought to ask if he actually knew anything about the Islamic fascists who are killing Americans every day of the week. Government by face color as a substitute for competence. In fact, she doesn't give a rat's ass about corruption, competence, or even the lives of her dimwit constituents. She cares about destroying her political enemies and sucking up to the brain-dead hedonists of her decadent city.
Lest we forget, that's why the framers of the Constitution created an executive branch and gave it so much power to conduct foreign policy, despite their deep fear and long bad experience with kings. When it comes to life-and-death national issues, decision makers have to be accountable to more than 0.001 percent of the voters. And decisions made by committees of politicians are both accountable to no one and doomed to prefer showy rhetoric to rational rigor.
Is all this funny? Yes. In a way. As long as you're a fan of Desperate Housewives. It's also not funny, because U.S. security over the next two years, at least, is being driven by a compulsion to surrender to an implacable enemy simply because surrender is the opposite of the hated opposition's policy. Many Americans are going to die from sea to shining sea because Nancy Pelosi's stunted self-esteem requires inside-the-beltway victims aplenty. Pathetic.
The rest of us should be asking of the new Democrat leviathan, What do you really want? What do you think is going to happen if you get your way and drive GWB from office in disgrace? Does it matter that hundreds of thousands will die in Iraq? Since when did you really care about the lives of American troops? Did you ever take any responsibility for the million and a half dead in Cambodia after you had your tantrum in the Sixties? Have you ever really learned anything? Or is the whole agenda just a kind of Hollywood movie remake -- the evil Nixon (Bush) triumphantly replaced by the sublime Carter (? Where can we find anyone as bad as that ?) -- with no thought of any kind given to the real-life events that follow the closing credits? When you're from California, the future -- that is, the real-world future -- is frequently an oversight.
Reyes, if you really are a kindly man, resign. Pelosi... well, forget it. We'll skip to the next step, which is identifying the new Carter. God. Help. Us. All.
posted at
6:31 pm
by
InstaPunk
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Flipping Syria
IF YOU CARED. Last
night, I watched Brit Hume
interview James Baker and Lee Hamilton about the findings of the Iraq
study group. Hume rapidly closed in on the weirdest of the reported
recommendations, that the situation calls for negotiation with Iran and
Syria. Baker immediately conceded that Iran probably wouldn't respond
favorably to U.S. overtures, although he insisted that Iran doesn't
want chaos in Iraq -- even though chaos in Iraq is something they have
been working tirelessly to produce. Huh? Then he proceeded to his trump
card, presumably the idea that's generating so much excitement among
Democrats and mass media types: the opportunity to "flip" Syria via
clever diplomacy. He seems to think that if we offer Syria the Golan
Heights, they'll be willing to stop assassinating Lebanese government
officials, disband Hizbollah, and become an active partner in
stabilizing a free and independent Iraq, not to mention help broker a
permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Brit lifted an eyebrow, a sure sign that he is flabbergasted and appalled by the preposterous nonsense he is hearing. After the interview footage had run, he reported from his anchor desk that as he was departing the interview, Baker lifted a finger and repeated, "Flip Syria. Flip Syria. That's the key."
I wasn't going to comment on this. There didn't seem to be much to say about it besides, "uh, okay. Whatever." Even the members of Brit's panel just laughed nervously and suggested that perhaps Baker should be designated the "flipper-in-chief" and sent off to Syria to perform this improbable miracle.
So I had miracles on my mind when I discovered this news story making the rounds of the Internet:
Stevie
I was really struck by the phrase "distinction between fantasy and reality." In this case, it's apparently the adults who are having more trouble with the concept than little Stevie. This time, fantasy became reality: his unlikely gambit did secure its objective, after all. The gangsters left and no one got hurt.
God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Perhaps there was a kind of divine logic at work in assembling a study group averaging about 80 years of age. Forget the fact that most of them have little or no experience in foreign policy. Forget the fact that most of them have been out of government longer than the lifespans of our troopers in Iraq. Forget the fact that committees notoriously produce decisions and recommendations hopelessly mangled by compromise and lowest-common-denominator groupthink. Instead, consider the possibility that octogenarians live on the cusp of renascent childhood, a vantage point from which some actually recover the confident innocence of childhood. Are we the potential beneficiaries of such a morphing process?
The Iraq Study Group
I think we should give it a chance. However insanely delusional they may seem to the rest of us, Baker and Hamilton may be onto something. Let's send them to Syria the way fortune sent Stevie into the living room waving his plastic sword. Let's all believe loudly and childishly in the inevitability of a miracle. Perhaps the Syrians will be taken so off-guard that Assad will suddenly forget he's a bigoted murderous tool of the Iranian Nazis and stand up for truth, justice, and the American Way. Stranger things have happened. Well, actually, they haven't, but overlook that. This is no time for half measures. The only alternative is to win the war we set out to win years ago. Right now, it's far less likely the American people have the will to do that than that they have the capacity to believe in magical salvation by the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
As a footnote, I'll also point out that there's an opportunity here to defray some of the huge expenses the war has run up over the years. Let's capitalize on the celebrity of the Baker-Hamilton commission and start selling some action figures.
At $20 to $30 a pop in the Christmas season, revenues could pile up pretty quickly.
Think about it. But not too hard. You might sprain something.
P.S. For the skeptics among you, here's a video of Baker and Hamilton discussing their recommendations with Brit Hume. OOPS! That wasn't the right file. I think it's this one (apologies to Wuzzadem the Great...)
Brit lifted an eyebrow, a sure sign that he is flabbergasted and appalled by the preposterous nonsense he is hearing. After the interview footage had run, he reported from his anchor desk that as he was departing the interview, Baker lifted a finger and repeated, "Flip Syria. Flip Syria. That's the key."
I wasn't going to comment on this. There didn't seem to be much to say about it besides, "uh, okay. Whatever." Even the members of Brit's panel just laughed nervously and suggested that perhaps Baker should be designated the "flipper-in-chief" and sent off to Syria to perform this improbable miracle.
So I had miracles on my mind when I discovered this news story making the rounds of the Internet:
His sister in danger,
4-year-old plays hero
DURHAM - The robber was holding a gun to 5-year-old Mary Long's head when a 3-foot-tall Mighty Morphin Power Ranger leapt into the room.
"Get away from my family," 4-year-old Stevie Long shouted, punctuating his screams with swipes of his plastic sword and hearty "yah, yahs."
The robber and his accomplice, who was waiting outside the apartment Friday night, fled with credit cards, jewelry, cash and other items that Stevie's mother, Jennifer Long, dumped from her purse.
"I scared the bad guys away," Stevie said Tuesday evening at the apartment at 901 Chalk Level Road in north Durham.
DURHAM - The robber was holding a gun to 5-year-old Mary Long's head when a 3-foot-tall Mighty Morphin Power Ranger leapt into the room.
"Get away from my family," 4-year-old Stevie Long shouted, punctuating his screams with swipes of his plastic sword and hearty "yah, yahs."
The robber and his accomplice, who was waiting outside the apartment Friday night, fled with credit cards, jewelry, cash and other items that Stevie's mother, Jennifer Long, dumped from her purse.
"I scared the bad guys away," Stevie said Tuesday evening at the apartment at 901 Chalk Level Road in north Durham.
Stevie
Two men had approached Jennifer Long's
boyfriend and his son Friday night as they stood outside the apartments
she helps manage, according to a police report. The strangers asked for
pot, and then a cigarette, and as the son went to get one, both men
pulled guns, police said.
One stayed with the boyfriend as the other forced the son back into the apartment, police said. Inside were Jennifer Long, a cousin, Stevie, Mary and two other children, police said.
They were forced on the floor. The robber pointed the gun at Mary and a 1-year-old girl named Sierra, said Stevie's uncle, Bernie Evans, 33, who lives above the Longs.
Enter Stevie.
"During the robbery, a ... boy snuck into his bedroom, dressed himself in a Power Ranger costume and armed himself with a plastic sword," police said. "The child then exited his room and approached the armed suspect, in an attempt to protect his family."
Relatives said the robber abandoned plans to take Stevie's mother to an ATM to withdraw cash when he saw Stevie.
"It tripped him out, and that's when they moved on," said Evans, who did not witness the incident....
Evans said family members are struggling to help their children understand their ordeal. A counselor said Stevie needs to improve his distinction between fantasy and reality, said Heather Evans, Stevie's aunt.
"He fully believed he morphed," she said.
One stayed with the boyfriend as the other forced the son back into the apartment, police said. Inside were Jennifer Long, a cousin, Stevie, Mary and two other children, police said.
They were forced on the floor. The robber pointed the gun at Mary and a 1-year-old girl named Sierra, said Stevie's uncle, Bernie Evans, 33, who lives above the Longs.
Enter Stevie.
"During the robbery, a ... boy snuck into his bedroom, dressed himself in a Power Ranger costume and armed himself with a plastic sword," police said. "The child then exited his room and approached the armed suspect, in an attempt to protect his family."
Relatives said the robber abandoned plans to take Stevie's mother to an ATM to withdraw cash when he saw Stevie.
"It tripped him out, and that's when they moved on," said Evans, who did not witness the incident....
Evans said family members are struggling to help their children understand their ordeal. A counselor said Stevie needs to improve his distinction between fantasy and reality, said Heather Evans, Stevie's aunt.
"He fully believed he morphed," she said.
I was really struck by the phrase "distinction between fantasy and reality." In this case, it's apparently the adults who are having more trouble with the concept than little Stevie. This time, fantasy became reality: his unlikely gambit did secure its objective, after all. The gangsters left and no one got hurt.
God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Perhaps there was a kind of divine logic at work in assembling a study group averaging about 80 years of age. Forget the fact that most of them have little or no experience in foreign policy. Forget the fact that most of them have been out of government longer than the lifespans of our troopers in Iraq. Forget the fact that committees notoriously produce decisions and recommendations hopelessly mangled by compromise and lowest-common-denominator groupthink. Instead, consider the possibility that octogenarians live on the cusp of renascent childhood, a vantage point from which some actually recover the confident innocence of childhood. Are we the potential beneficiaries of such a morphing process?
The Iraq Study Group
I think we should give it a chance. However insanely delusional they may seem to the rest of us, Baker and Hamilton may be onto something. Let's send them to Syria the way fortune sent Stevie into the living room waving his plastic sword. Let's all believe loudly and childishly in the inevitability of a miracle. Perhaps the Syrians will be taken so off-guard that Assad will suddenly forget he's a bigoted murderous tool of the Iranian Nazis and stand up for truth, justice, and the American Way. Stranger things have happened. Well, actually, they haven't, but overlook that. This is no time for half measures. The only alternative is to win the war we set out to win years ago. Right now, it's far less likely the American people have the will to do that than that they have the capacity to believe in magical salvation by the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
As a footnote, I'll also point out that there's an opportunity here to defray some of the huge expenses the war has run up over the years. Let's capitalize on the celebrity of the Baker-Hamilton commission and start selling some action figures.
Lee
Hamilton and James Baker Action Figures (appropriate, ages 4 - 8)
At $20 to $30 a pop in the Christmas season, revenues could pile up pretty quickly.
Think about it. But not too hard. You might sprain something.
P.S. For the skeptics among you, here's a video of Baker and Hamilton discussing their recommendations with Brit Hume. OOPS! That wasn't the right file. I think it's this one (apologies to Wuzzadem the Great...)
posted at
2:33 pm
by
InstaPunk
Forgetting Pearl
Harbor
PSAYINGS.5A.19. Someone emailed to take me to task for ignoring the anniversary of Pearl Harbor in today's post. The truth is, I think it's time we all forgot the events of December 7, 1941. There's something nervy, even presumptuous, about commemorating the catalyst for a great national feat of courage and resolve when we have so utterly forgotten the lesson represented by the initiating catastrophe. The people who rose up as one to defeat Nazism and Japanese militarism were not the people we are today, and if we would honor their memory, the best way is to avoid identifying ourselves with their sacrifices and their heroic deeds. Leave that to the U.S. military, who alone deserve this association with the past. Let their memorials be private and closed to our convenient eyesight.
Yes, we've had our own Pearl Harbor, but it's clear by now that it will take two or three of them to reinvigorate the American spine. The events of September 11, 2001, have been reduced in our common consciousness to a mere disastrous loss of life, as essentially causeless and irremediable as a tornado. We don't hold national days of remembrance for tornadoes or earthquakes or plane crashes. The grief belongs exclusively to those who have lost friends and family, and when those who remember the victims are gone too, the events are consigned to the pages of the almanac. In this context, there is no more 9/11, just as there is no more Pearl Harbor. If we as a people are unable to translate the loss into a determination to conquer the enemy who dared inflict the loss, remembrance is none of our business.
Consider the contrast. Television news is still willing to show us footage of the annihilating Japanese air attack on American ships in 1941, but they have conspired together to stop showing explicit footage of what happened in lower Manhattan five years ago. Why? Too traumatic to the family and friends of the victims. Which argues implicitly that all of us other Americans were not victims of 9/11. Remembrance is none of our business. It belongs purely to the isolated and arrogantly separatist American province called New York City.
Those other Americans tolerated 450,000 battlefield deaths to end the threat finally recognized on December 7, 1941. We have conclusively demonstrated that we can't tolerate one percent of that number to resist a threat that is openly bent not just on our conquest, but our annihilation as a culture.
Find something fun to do on 12/7 and 9/11 from here on in. Believe me, that's a far more appropriate response than any attempt to participate. The tears of the faithless can only soil the wounds we refuse to treat.
UPDATE. La Malkin wants you to remember Pearl Harbor. Decide for yourselves which of us is right.
posted at
12:49 pm
by
InstaPunk
