(Note to literalists: the Watched column presently contains only a smattering of 'warblogs' because the facilitator of the template-change--Dr. Menlo--is not very familiar with them, and will be adding more as they are sent to him. Also, this blog may contain areas of allusion, satire, subtext, context and possibly even a dash of the surreal: wannabe lit-crits beware.)
Control
[Watch this space for: Pentagon and Petroleum, The Media is only as Liberal as the Corporations Who Own Them, Wash Down With, and Recalcify]
WARBLOGGER WATCH
Sunday, October 27, 2002
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan's "non-partisan totally partisan ally," intesifies his prejudice against Progress and hastens his retreat from Advancement. His latest pithy pronouncement on analogies between the present peace movement and that of the Vietnam era is maddeningly stupid and morally ugly beyond belief. After excerpting from Andrew Stuttaford who purports to show that the anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s factored in the destruction of Vietnam and the attendant mass deaths and horrendous maltreatment of the populace, Professor Reynolds writes, "And the campaigners remain proud of their success."
The Professor has never marshalled logic that was anything above flaccid, and he has never furnished proof on his warblog of any capacity for sustained and reasoned argument - and even less proof of a sense of moral decency. Even with his demonstrated inability to reckon where the equator lies, this is an audaciously low blow.
Though GHR allowed himself just eight words, I wonder if a lengthier treatment would have concerned itself with the crimes of colonialism, the viability and legitimacy of a South Vietnam as a state, and the massive unpopularity of the war stateside, most notably among returned servicemen. The unpopularity of falling bombs with the people of Southeast Asia is, for The Professor, a non-issue. They are, for the warbloggers, if not beneath contempt, then beneath recognition. Their intrusion would upset the feel-good stories that Glenn and his allied idiots scribble so assiduously.
As a corrective exercise, substitute the word "blog" for "story" in the following: "A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made victim of a very old and terrible lie."
