Being Clever Does Not Make Thee Righteous!
I daresay thee know as much already, sir. I wish thee would have a word with the Senatorino from Illinois about the matter, however, before the escutcheon of Smartassèdness in America gets tarnished even worse than already.North of the border, at beautiful downtown Goofville, the huntin’ and shootin’ and conspiratorialisin’ gentry have decided to go whole hog in illustration of the converse proposition,
Right[eous]ness Don’t Make You Smart!
which accordingly shall be text-in-chief for this morning’s sermonette. One could play it either way, for naturally when two variables vary independently, X is as indepent of Y as Y is of X. Partisans of X may assure thee that their product varies far more independently than the competition’s, but pay no attention when they do, Mr. Bones, or rather, pay enough attention to collect the specimen and file it away for future reference in the Insipientia Originalis section of thee’s memorandum book.
’Tis a vicarious embarrassment how extremely hog the goofballs go, Mr. Bones. Fortunately, however, this time the semi-demi-hemi-public e-display of Dunce Virtue does not require any character assassinations nearer to home that the tents where Mr. David Ignatius of the Baní WaPo dwells, and hangs out, and generally has his being. . Though that publicist manages to be both unsmart and disrighteous simultaneously, he is not likely to learn that he has been badmouthed, and even if he should notice, getting badmouthed happens to him frequently enough that he will not be broken-hearted by a little more of it. In their previous episode, Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and Dr. Cartoonoclastes decided to persecute a couple of victims known to them personally. Of course no good was accomplished -- Does that approach ever accomplish any good? Is it possible under any circumstances whatsoever to successfully advise a moral agent over the age of about twelve that she cannot distinguish Right from Wrong accurately? -- and a number of feelings are still hurt, it looks like to me. And hurt pointlessly, it further appears to the same observer.
The silver lining to the present cloud is all that we need quote verbatim. "If you can’t say anything nice, . . .":
| ... the massive rejection by Iraqis of any continuation of the occupation and the bad faith of anyone who supports it ... |
Hmm, I had thought there was a little more silver lining than that. To extract any more, though, would require complicated chemical processes to separate the silver from the insapience. A severe judge would find traces of unwisdom even here, for what can Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes LLC know for certain about mass rejections in the former Iraq? Why, the paleface invaders and their local levies cannot even conduct a basic census of religionisms, for Pete’s sake! Still, it the thought that counts. Maybe. The thought that eight or nine ex-Iraqis out of every ten or twelve reject occupation continuance, no matter how prettily it is packaged and presented, warms the heart, does it not? Perhaps we had better not look at such gifts through a microscope, sir. [1] Let us charitably assume that the Mu’ámara Junction gentry think so well of ex-Iraqis at large that they may attribute to them more than the ex-Iraqis really deserve. In contrast to the customary bitter paranoia of Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes LLC, here we meet a genial "antiparanoia" -- a Christian Science, almost! -- the delusion that (almost) everybody is conspiring together behind their backs for the good and true and beautiful. So pleasing a thought ought to count for at least a little something, no? Si non è vero . . ., well, and ’twas the thought that counts, begorrah!
In its way, even "bad faith" is a sort of silver lining. Errare est humanum, no doubt there are former-Iraqí neosubjects of AEI and GOP and DOD and USIP who are out for themselves rather than for their Heimatland. That is sad, of course, but remember that moral conditions could be far worse than LBC report: how if ex-Iraq were overrun with local natives who sincerely believe that having armed operatives answerable to the militant extremist Republican Party around is a good thing, a thing that ought to go on for another fifty or hundred years? That is to say, what if the International Zone neorégime collaborationists were collaborating with Hell and Crawford in good faith rather than in bad? Maréchal Pétain was not at all satisfactory, but Major Quisling was far worse, insofar as he genuinely believed in le Hitlerisme. An ex-Iraqi so degraded as to believe that the cowpoker vigilantes has a right to march in supralegally, and grab control (sort of), and make themselves at home, and now kindly offer to stay another century or two to make sure that their Willful Coalition brand of rightness does not perish from the earth . . . . No need for me to finish that sentence, Mr. Bones. "If you can't say anything nice," don't you know? The main thing is that we have been assured by Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes that no such degraded ex-Iraqis actually exist. Thee need not be a devotee of Mary Baker Eddy Thought to find that a sterling silver lining.
If I go one step farther in the same general direction, I may, or may not, lapse into mere Eddyfication. Thee must decide for thee’s self, sir. And may the Spirit of Rupert -- "We reports, thee decide!" -- be with thee!
Anyhow, it goes like this: even the main body of the Cloud of Insapience is perhaps not quite as black as it looks primâ facie. After their mass acquittal of ex-Iraqis, Ms. Lynx and Mister Badger and Cartoono the Magnificent and their peanut gallery naturally wind up defaming mainly citizens of the holy Homeland. Not only US, but ‘us’ as well. ‘Us’ like, for example, Mr. David Ignatius. Now of course I recognize that there are theoretical and Pascalian difficulties about calling that sort of thing "SELF criticism," a grave risk of lapsing into that peculiar pronoun of the first person plural that mysteriously manages to include neither the speaker nor the person or persons addressed. An exuberance like
| ... the 19th century atmosphere in clubhouse Washington, where military policy is debated at the US Institute for Peace, and where bad faith is still a scandalous idea and not to be mentioned |
is clearly about U.S. Whether it has anything at all to do with the Mu’ámara Junction ‘us’ (inclusive) is not the easiest of questions. ‘Clubhouse’ rather suggests that it was not intended to, yet to suggest is not to dictate. [2]
That particular genre of exuberance always makes me wonder whether the badmouthers would really think any better of their patients if the latter were to come clean and frankly relabel their clubhouse the "Republican Party Institute of Aggression" or the like. The bad guys are never goin’ta do that, naturally, but if they did, how many points would they score with Goofville? The implication appears to be that the goofs consider insincerity worse than mere murder and kidnapping and invasion and occupation and genocide and double parking. No doubt believing that in good faith is psychologically possible, but do Lynx and Badger and Cartoono and their peanut gallery actually perform this trick?
On the other hand, why should anybody pretend to believe that pretending to believe is the alone Unforgivable Sin? Can thee answer me that one, Mr. Bones? Happy days.
___
[1] The LBC folks could, however, know their proposition 100.0% for sure if they shibbolethise it. If, that is, they decline to label any local native of the Mesopotamian provinces "an Iraqi" unless the specimen agrees with themselves about unconditional occupation continuance rejection. Let us hope that this is not the case, Mr. Bones, for obviously to play their hand that way would be no better than silly cheating. Their victory would be illusory and their winnings worthless.
[2] As with the Angry Ex-Iraqi over chez Cobban, it would be nice if this defamation were a little less unintelligible. No doubt the USIP Gang of Four -- Mme. l'Ambassatrice al-Rahím, Dr. Kahl, Dr. Knight, Big Management Party neocomradess K. Kagan -- never accused one another out loud of dishonesty, or even of subliminal insincerity, yet what does it mean, exactly, to announce that "bad faith is still a scandalous idea and not to be mentioned"? That ‘still’ gives me a notion Cartoono believes that Princess Posterity will eventually pronounce somebody at the Clubhouse guilty of mauvaise foi. But will all four of the above perps be indited on the Sartrean count and duly convicted and lynched, or only some of them?
Neocomradess Kagan is particularly difficult to take at other than her own word. She invites rehearsal of the late Mr. Lincoln's wisecrack, "If I did have another face, do you think I would wear this one?" But God knows best.
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