De Ignaviâ

(( Read it for theeself, Mr. Bones, I haven't quoted anything because I started out by thinking I'd send this scribble to Aunt Nitsy as a comment. ))


Obviously it is a whole different crew hangin' out 'round here than festoon Krugman and Brooks and Kristoff and Cohen (not to mention the avowed op-ed comedians) with assaults or applause from the port side.

I suppose if General Holder had left out the C-word, he'd have slipped past the Wingnut City radar unnoticed. So the question must be whether whether he *deliberately* set out to vex the sweet puppies of the Right by calling them craven.

The lefty blogger who "found his speech unremarkable and vague" and observed that the C-word was (formally) "a statement about the entire nation" is sound as far as he goes, yet plainly he does not grasp what an offense it is against the toxic self-esteemin’ rampant in certain quarters of the holy Homeland™ [*] that persons of liberalism who support affirmative action, amongst other shockin’ obamanations, should have the insolence to exist. (That one should have the insolence to preside over the Department of Justice -- words fail!)

So my guess is that the General did not quite understand what he is up against and did not expect to make such big waves.

As to the merits, to diagnose cowardice as the great fault of the sweet puppies in matters of race is only warrantable if one construes pretty loosely. If they were indicted on that charge in conjunction with their bein’ so self-terrorized of jihád terrorism, it would be an open-and-shut case. To make it out as regards affirmative action, however, requires noting explicitly that Narcissus Dexter, bein’ quite amazin’ly in love with his saintèd self, naturally decides that so wunnerful a treasure as Narky D. must be preserved at any cost. And then we are home, because to put self-preservation above all else is to be a coward. Everybody knows that.

However that is a rhetorical bridge too far for mass consumption. It would be more effective to attack Master Narky's narcissism head-on and not go after mere peripheral emanationes et pænumbræ thereof. That alternative plan strikes me as especially suitable for an Attorney General picking up Uncle Sam's smashed Rule-of-Law crockery in the wake of Hurricane Dubya. Though Addin’ton, Esq., and Yoo, Esq., and the ineffable Gen. Gonzales undoubtedly could be indicted for cowardice, surely it would be more obvious and straightforward to charge them with shameless self-exceptionalizin’, an offense not mitigated by a sincere belief in their own unique self-exceptionality.

Or even, perhaps, a belief in ‘our’ unique self-exceptionality.

Happy days.

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[*] Blogger #1 is a prize catch, toxic-selfesteemwise. What a grand show to rewrite "Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I" as she does! Behold:

We have rejected our racist past more thoroughly than any nation ever has and we have done more to atone for it than any ever will. No people have ever afforded people of every race and creed a greater opportunity to attain their dreams and live in freedom than we have right here. None ever will.

Apart from a remarkable thorough knowledge of all future history, we meet once again that formal and phony ‘we’: even Gen. Holder is free to associate himself with Neocomrade Nostradamus Jr.’s political autoeroticism if he likes, though few things are less likely than that such an offer will be taken up. At Rio Limbaugh, though, I daresay few will mind agreein’ with the Attorney-General of the United States about the cowardice of Mr. Eric Holder, if not that of "the nation" more generally.

If Gen. Holder is going to make a regular thing of rattling the bars in the monkey house like this, he ought at least to improve his rhetoric a little. It would be more satisfactory to define his contextual WE in a thoroughly positive way and simply ignore non-correspondence to reality as blithely as Neocomrade Shack does. If he does not care to learn from the enemy, he might look at certain harangues of the late Mr. Lincoln of Illinois.