| Whenever I see references to the possibility of a cross-sectarian "nationalist resistance" in this blog, for some reason I'm reminded of Linus talking about the Great Pumpkin.
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Goofballs have their funny side, Mr. Bones. That is most of why one calls them ‘goofballs,’ although there is also a minor element of presumed ineffectuality, an expectation that the former Real World would probably win, should they ever have occasion to interact with it. Yet to complain first and foremost that Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and the Herr Professor Doktor von Schachtelbrecher [1] "affect a haughty tone" is the act of a critic with whom I have a few non disputandum nits to pick.
But let Cartoono have the first shot at his own cultivated despiser:
| As for [our cultivated despiser], don't mind him. He has been ridiculing Iraqi nationalism for quite some time now. It is one of his hobbies. |
And the second shot also:
| The thing is [that, as] we've seen right in this here thread, the whole idea of a national focus, of the kind that Sadr, Dhari and others talk about, is not only completely shut out of the corporate media and the thinktank bloviation world, but also seems to be something of a redline to some, to be ridiculed whenever it is brought up. So whatever you may think about the political implications of the military campaign against the Sadr trend and the Sadr trend's response, you have to be careful not to swallow the entire "Iraq is entirely sectarian"/"nationalism is all rhetoric" koolaid. |
Can thee call what Cartoono there affects ‘haughtiness’ with a straight face, Mr. Bones? I cannot. Our favorite Parmenidean conspiratorializer seems rather to be posing for a Pietà. The audience is solicited to feel sorry for him, one lone David -- lone, nay, "completely shut out," apart from his peanut gallery! -- going up against Massa Goliath’s "corporate media and the thinktank bloviation world." Plus always there is Juan the Wicked for David Jr. to go up against, whom he does not even mention.
Mr. Spurgeon anticipated [2] the general flavour of that performance admirably, though naturally he was talking about Somebody Else altogether:
| Behold and see, was there ever sorrow like unto his sorrow that is done unto him? All ye that pass by draw near and look upon this spectacle of grief, unique, unparalleled, a wonder to men and angels, a prodigy unmatched. Behold the Emperor of Woe who had no equal or rival in his agonies! Gaze upon him, ye mourners, for if there be not consolation in [him] there is no joy in earth or heaven. |
If blasphemy were still in the Code, a prosecutor might have recourse to that charge against young David von Schachtelbrecher with some show of plausibility. ‘Haughty’ is far off the mark. Mr. Despiser may have been misled by the defendant’s aggressive assurance that the side he has chosen to side with cannot possibly fail to be triumphant. Cartoono would indeed be "the Haughty" as well as "the Magnificent" if he supposed that the inevitable radiant dawn for rigorously nonsectarian Sunni-lovers will be due to his own personal efforts. But he does not.
Let us not get carried away, Mr. Bones, when some minor league goofball gets irritating. Dr. Cartoonoclastes makes no claims for himself, not even "I report, you decide" -- that one is so obviously a steal that it is not a steal at all. Thee would not, surely, say that the slaves of Murdoch are ‘haughty’? They believe in their own peculiar tripe and baloney eleven hundred percent, just as Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes do, but what has doctrinal bigotry to do with haughtiness? [3]
Perhaps we had better examine what set Mr. Despiser off, the exact shape of "references to the possibility of a cross-sectarian ‘nationalist resistance’ in this blog":
| THEY say that this government has retreated from its sectarianism, namely by striking the Sadrist trend, to provide a "balance" between striking the Sadrist trend on the one hand, and striking Sunnis in various areas on the other. WE say: They are throwing sand in our eyes. This is still a government of sectarian allocations. They struck the Sadr trend because the Sadr trend had come to represent pressure on it, and had become a strong competitor in the coming elections--and because foreign interests from here and there wanted to clip the claws of this movement, because in this movement there are nationalists who do not want the partitioning of Iraq; who oppose the occupation and all that goes with it. And that is the reason they struck the Sadr trend, despite what had been done by some of the trend's renegades, some of the sellouts, some of the ignorant, did to their brothers in an earlier period. |
None too clear who THEY may be, but WE is undoubtedly the Very Reverend Hárith al-Dárí and nobody else. Mr. Despiser seems to have lost his patience with biased nondenominational goofballism at a moment when Cartoono was, for a change, really and truly murdochising. Or almost so -- admittedly, he very much reveres the Very Reverend and patently wants his customers to do so as well. Still, all Dr. Cartoonoclastes actually says for himself about the possibility of a cross-sectarian "nationalist resistance" is (1) that he has translated wataniyyún as ‘nationalists’ and (2) that the Rev. al-Dárí "dwells on the word in his delivery." The translation is unobjectionable, though of course we all understand exactly what it takes to be accounted echt wataní with that gentleman and his factious reverers. Mr. Despiser is quite right to despise, though he picks an odd occasion to bear his witness.
Even odder to drag in the Great Pumpkin. [4] Not just odd in itself, but odd specifically in conjunction with that ‘haughty’ charge. Perhaps Mr. Despiser was thinking exclusively of the detail that the G. P. does not actually exist? Literaliter, that there is in fact no cross-sectarian nationalist resistance in the former Iraq -- or, anyway, very little of it? Though true, that was scarcely the main point of Mr. Schultz’s memorable shtik. Superstition and Enthusiasm in general cannot be entirely relegated to some disputation-free aesthetic Cloudcuckooland, Mr. Bones, and Great Pumpkinianity in particular is not altogether and automatically "just a joke" merely because it was introduced to the world in one of those icky cartoon thingees that no conspiratorialiser with a decent lack of humour can take seriously.
Mr. Despiser may have been reading his newspaper in a mirror the morning that Pepo Magnus first showed up. Linus is not ‘haughty’ about the G. P. at all. Au contraire, in his (supposed) ‘fantasy,’ it is rather the G.P. that is haughty. Linus is humble, he fully grants the adorable wonderfulness of Pepo Magnus. Though it would sound a little peuliar, one would not be in detectable error to say that Linus attributes to the G. P. has a right to be haughty.
Now all of this would be excellent ammunition for mocking the Mu’ámara Junction gentry, could Mr. Despiser manage to deploy it correctly. The proper disposition is not far to seek. Set forth in SAT format, it looks like this:
LINUS : GREAT PUMPKIN :: CARTOONOCLASTES : HÁRITH Al-DÁRÍ or impersonally, LINUS : GREAT PUMPKIN ::GOOFBALLS : CROSS-SECTARIAN NAT. RES. |
Naturally a fuller prose explanation ought to be appended, in which it would be explained that the hinge of the analogy is not the nonexistence of Pepo Magnus, but the worshipfulness of the conspiratorialisers. Like Linus, they are perfectly disinterested in their fake-impartial raptures. It would not be defamation to accuse them of taking kick-backs from the Sunni International or from the TwentyPercenters of the former Iraq. That would not be libel or slander, it would only be utterly unbelievable nonsense.
I am aware, Mr. Bones, that under the label of ‘idealism’ this product finds a market and always has. Presumably it always will. If we word ourselves carefully, sir, we may even say that the product deserves to find its market. Anybody who does not at all wish that it were the case that "The People, united, can never be defeated" must be anima naturaliter Republicana et saeva, a congenital Cheneyite or Wolfowitzist.
But idealism turns to goofballism the instant they shut their eyes to the actual state of popular unity and the exact distance that separates us the populists from ignominious defeat. Lynx and Badger and Cartoonoclastes would be far more credible if they could bring themselves to recognise when things are not going well for the good guys. I presume it would be expecting too much of human nature to want them to disclose fully their private-sectarian conception of a genuine good guy.
Is it also too much to expect them to be accurate about the general correlation of farces between "good guys" less narrowly conceived and the obvious bad guys, the Grand Coalition of AEI and GOP and DOD and USIP? Probably, though I assume this objective to be significantly less ambitious than the other. [5]
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[1] I trust nobody can wax much haughtier on the path of Cartoono than der hochwohlgeborene Freiherr von und zu Schachtelbrecher, but it is probably a philological banana peel that I stand upon. Not, perhaps, inappropriately. A Schachtel seems to be rather a Durch or English ‘carton’ (as for bird’s milk or orange juice) rather than
[2] On Ev. Joh. XIX:5.
[3] Further to liken great things to small, Mr. Bones, thee will have noticed that Baron Rupert’s Weekly Standardisers and Foxnewsies are often to be sighted in public feelin’ sorry for themselves. On such occasions it is difficult to distinguish their garb and paraphernalia from those borne mournfully in procession by Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes and Associates. O God, O Montreal! Neither ‘conservatism’ nor scrupulously disinterested partiality for the Sunni International can ever get a fair shake from the fiends of the MainStreamMedia.
’Twould take a heart of stone not to laugh at them both, sir.
[4] Is nothing sacred any more?
[5] On their "posing for a Pietà" side I find Lynx Badger Cartoonoclastes LLC a bit puzzling. They can wallow in a grief worthy of the Baní Murdoch at the way the MSM misrepresent what is ‘really’ going on in the former Iraq, but the idea of lamentation because their pets are really and truly losing ground evidently does not cross their minds. Or perhaps that heretical idea does occur to them, but rather elementary notions about the need for sustaining the troops’ morale cause them to censor it at once? I dunno.
For what it may be worth, the Weekly Standardisers and Foxnewsies behaved the same way back before the Ever-Victorious SurGe of ’07™ finally made them ever-victorious.
I suspect thee and I should not make too much of such resemblances, Mr. Bones, even though it is fun to imagine how much they would annoy the goofballs. Rupert Baron Murdoch and Dr. Cartoonoclastes of Mu’ámara Junction are a long, long way from being a par congressus. But God knows best.
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