Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Sometimes one clause is enough to know you don't need to read any more

In this case, it's "Israel’s wars have evolved from existential to territorial over the last sixty years."

WARNING: Above link leads to Obsidian Wings. Brace yourself.

Oh, what the hell, I'll turn this into a liberal roundup.

Yglesias says "if WalMart manages to 'drive mom and pop stores out of business' by selling affordable groceries to under-served urban neighborhoods, that’s what I would call a triumph for human progress." Yeah, it's great, because then mom and pop can join the ranks of the "under-served," too. And, hey, maybe one day every single person in the country can be underpaid by the same company that's the only one they can afford to buy necessities from. Honestly, do people like him really think that some people are "under-served" and others aren't for just no reason at all?

Suzie posts on Echidne defending Clinton, the person, against those wikileaks revelations that her office spied on UN officials. And I like that blog in a lot of ways (the series on the so-called science of gender difference that Echidne herself wrote recently was great), but this, like an unfortunately high proportion of posts there, is liberal insanity of the first order.

Shakesville poster PortlyDyke follows up on McEwan's coding post (which we discussed here) with a post that's kinda-sorta interesting and kinda-sorta not-entirely misguided, but she also just casually throws off one of the howlingly inaccurate applications of the gender coding model that some of the commenters on my earlier post were concerned about: "Imperialism/Masculine Nationalism/Feminine."

Not too long ago in comments I promised bonobo an agonizingly sincere self-examination essay on why I'm so obsessed with the stupid things liberals say, and I promise it's coming. Those selfish Egyptians went and had themselves a revolution and distracted me.

15 comments:

Jack Crow said...

the first link hurts the contents of my brain case...

...it's so like begging the rapist to be nice the next time that it's exactly like begging the rapist to be nice the next time

Anonymous said...

maybe one day every single person in the country can be underpaid by the same company that's the only one they can afford to buy necessities from. Well, the dream of every capitalist is to corner the market and own it all. That way the whole world can be functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis instead of just Gaza.

drip

Anonymous said...

Yggie really is a Good German, I'd even say he's angling for a top spot in the Schutzstaffel.

Interested in seeing your essay for bonobo. I know what pulls me in to critiquing fellow leftists: they are falling for more subtle propaganda, and many find the subtlety oddly ego-soothing... as if it's better, wiser, more elevated to be conned by a master con artist instead of two-bit sidewalk bunko scammers. By falling prey to a more intellectualized scam, they are more susceptible to intellectual (rational, logical) refutations of where they're mistaken, politico-socio-economically.

Whereas the people on the right often are operating at a visceral level, the one pilloried by South Park ("they took our JAAAAAABS")... and it's a lot harder to reason with those folks. You first have to empathize with them, which many don't want to do.

Christopher M said...

Never click on a link to Obsidian Wings, Jack. Just a straight channel into the liberal id.

Jack Crow said...

Lesson learned, Christopher. In my defense, though - when I hover the cursor over a link, it doesn't show what it leads to anymore. Lost that function sometime before Thanksgiving. Don't know how to fix it.

Bolo said...

For Yglesias:

"OCP -- The only choice"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8xI3GznxbM

David said...

Jack,

Somewhere in your browser options there'll be one for display/ hide destination bar.

Ethan said...

Jack, your first comment: when does a simile stop being a simile? I think you've found one place.

On your exchange with Christopher: haha, I'm so sorry! Adding a big warning now so others won't go through what you went through.

Charles, that's part of it, to be sure, but not all. I'll work on the essay tomorrow but I make no promises.

Bolo, hah! Perfect. Gotta watch that again, it's been too long.

Jack Crow said...

Heh, Ethan. I never take for granted that your ridiculously smart and insightful. But that last comment re-applied the knowledge to my memory banks.

David,

I hate being an ignorant middle aged guapo. Thanks. Fixed.

Anonymous said...

one day every single person in the country can be underpaid by the same company that's the only one they can afford to buy necessities from. That is every business owner's dream. Unfortunately, it seems only states can keep people functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis. Monopoly can be such a burden.

drip

Randal Graves said...

Ethan, whatever your reason is for your perfectly normal obsession with a permutation of the trainwreck, I'm just glad you're reading the stuff instead of me, heh.

Picador said...

Amazingly, the Shakesville post is actually worth reading. And in her defense, the "Nationalism = Feminine" comment is a quick aside at the beginning, not something she actually expands on.

Still, yeah: wtf is that even supposed to mean?

Christopher M said...

I have no idea, other than "I don't like 'imperialism', which is done I guess by old British men in pith helmets, but gosh I like it when troops march around waving flags and the guy who blows up brown children gives nice speeches about us being an Exceptional Nation, so I'll call one of those 'masculine' and the other one 'feminine'."

bonobo said...

Maybe she means nationalism that fights colonialism, such as the Palestinian struggle or Arab nationalism. Regardless, it's really dimwitted.

The rest of the post is actually not bad, though, apart from that it states things that should be obvious to anyone on the left.

Ethan said...

Jack, thank you.

Randal, you're welcome!

Picador, bonobo, yeah. One of the things that keeps me so fascinated with Shakesville (besides the fact that Melissa McEwan has really cute pets and posts pictures of them all the time) is that so many of the people there....almost have it. McEwan occasionally, Portly Dyke more often, and EastSideKate in particular comes extremely close to being awesome, if you take out her internet-speak (her personal narratives in particular are wonderful). They all walk right up to the edge at times, and I have to watch and see if they flinch. So far, they always have, but at times it seems like they're getting closer and closer.

So, yeah, Portly Dyke's essay wasn't half bad, which made that weird feminine nationalism thing stand out even more. I think bonobo's theory is more likely than Christopher's, but honestly I'm as much in the dark as anyone.