Yet Another Letter the Editor Was Spared

Dear Dr. Bones,

This patient suffers from a common syndrome, that of Narcissus Dexter supposin’ that the most important place in the world is wherever Master Narky happens to be standin’ at the moment. Other people are not the Hell of M. Sartre, they are just nothin’ at all -- as far as Narky is concerned.

Today is Tuesday, and Narky is "a practicing immigration attorney in Miami and New York," so obviously the Key to All Native Management must have somethin’ to do with immigration law or immigration policy. Obviously.

Accordingly, Narky comes up with a sure cure for Global Tourism an’ the Islamophalangitarian Menace™ that collides head-on with other sorts of laws and policies. What does *he* care, for instance, that Pakistan is officially an Ally of his Uncle Sam in the ongoin’ counter-jeehad? " ‘That’s not my department,’ says Werner von Braun." [1] [2]

Happy days.

___

[1] http://j.mp/aZdQgG

Foggy Bottom in particular seems not to be Narky’s department:

Determination should be decided (sic) by intelligence officials AND NOT THE STATE DEPARTMENT[!]

barks he.

Hard not to wonder if at some point an attorney from State did not signally triumph over the patient in a courtroom.


[2] Mainstream an’ full-time jihád careerists often paint themselves into this same corner, with Sa‘údiyya more often than not the immediate occasion. There is an awful lot to dislike about that joint, no doubt, but nevertheless Riyadh has been a MAJOR Ally for decades. If kiddie selfservatives seriously want to break off the Wahhábí Connection, it is very kiddie of them indeed not to discuss the Big Picture.

Outremer for Dhimmies

Dear Dr. Bones,

Look what just discovered Outremer!

To spend ninety minutes or so working up such a theme from scratch for purposes of factious polemic is not unworthy of Don Rossito de Douthát’s chosen faction.

Doubtless, ninety-nine neocomrades in a hundred will stick with their received Party-an’-Ideology line, "History is bunk," yet even they can enjoy hearin’ an illiberal and antidemocratic señorito stickin’ it to what selfservative kiddies call "the Democrat party" and all bicycle-challenged perfessers by condescendin’ to "a mix of amnesia and self-abnegation."

Speaking of self-abnegation, I should say the best part of this, or any, Douthatian joke is that corporate soapbox from which Sir Oracle the quick study gets to condescend. Why, sir, with Don Rossito, ’tis almost as if the late M. de ‘Arafát had been in a position to use the pronouns ‘we’ and ‘our’ with reference to the Tel ’Avîv Parliament!

Genuine TAPsters may worry about drowning suddenly in a tempestuous sea of Natives, but the New York Times Company soars far above such courage-challengedness, setting an admirable example for all decent political grown-ups.

Genuine TAPsters and Hyperzionists generally, not to mention serious historians of Century VI/XII//XLIX, will probably notice that the señorito does not take quite a perfectly tel’avîvocentric view:

[Hyperzion’s] friends can learn something from Outremer as well. Like today’s Jewish republic, the Crusader kingdoms were small states forged by military valor, based in the Middle East but oriented westward, with distant patrons and potential foes just next door. Like Israel, they were magnets for fanatics from east and west alike.

I daresay any ninety-minute analogy whatsoever is likely to be deficient with that sort of deficiency. Your P&I agitpropper wants her neo-analogies for a reason, after all; she is not going to spend lots of time puzzlin’ out wie es eigentlich gewesen when it is so extremely easy to come up with wie es wiedermassagiert werden dürfen, a neoproduct which, as noted, very few marks and dupes can reliably distinguish from the former. Such being the nature of the neoproduct before us, we ought to attend to the analogy that a Don Rossito thinks it has discovered quite without reference to any of its long-ago analogy-fodder. Nothing could be easier: this ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ would dearly like to live in a parallel universe where Jewish Statism is "based in the Middle East but oriented westward, with distant patrons and potential foes just next door."

Though perhaps not too far off in the manifold, that is plainly not quite the universe Don Rossito is actually stuck in. As I started to say, though, such Jewish Statists as have taken the trouble to emigrate to the neo-Levant personally and find themselves playing the "Immigrants and Natives" game for high stakes will see as well as the Muses and you and I do that el mondo douthatiense is not quite the Terra which Hyperzionists know and congenitally rise far above.

At any rate, they won’t be liking their little North American fellow traveler’s talk about "distant patrons" one bit. M. le président de Nétanyahou and Gospodin Ministr von Liebermann and the rest may consider that they still need Uncle Sam at least a little, but there can be no question of neo-indigenous Immigrants to Hyperzion accounting their "Jewish republic" any patron’s client.[1]

And I wish you, sir,
Happy days through affordable healthcare.

___
[1] If one may decently draw Miss Clio into a dispute with Fordian bunkists and opportunist señoritos and militant extremist HZ’s at all, then serious value ought to be attached to the mass of evidence that she has assembled to suggest that the words "Jewish Statism" pretty well mean not being anybody’s stinking client ever again.

I conjecture that Don Rossito de Douthát is a tad unreliable on this point due to its personal circumstances. One might say that Cui servire regnare est is the maxim the NYTC neoladdie tacitly goes by: "To be a client of Sam is to enjoy Perfect Freedom™."

That’s all very well in Hackensack, maybe, and when it is thought in English. Thought in neo-S*m*te at, say, Haifa, however, . . . .

To venture on a little ad juvenem, Dr. Bones: I would not be altogether flabbergasted to learn that Don Rossito thinks it really nifty that he (dba as ‘we’) should get to be somebody else’s "distant patron." Quite a number of more adult neowingnuts, some of them actual members of The Greatest Demographic, think like that.

When Mr. Walt and Prof. Mearsheimer start making those distressing noises of theirs about "dual loyalty", I fear they run off the track as regards most of the Little Foreign Friends of the Tel ’Avîv Statelet, missing the not exactly obscure point that pushin’ other folks around is a good in itself, a good thing that does not have to be explained in terms of some comparatively abstract Kiddie Kause like Hyperzionism or Anti-Islamophalangatarianism. To be sure, one almost always finds the practitioners of neoconnery pretendin’ that some Kause makes ’em do the pushin’. And, oddly enough, ’tis always a Kause that the pushy happen to devoutly neobelieve in.

What this flummery signifies, of course, is only that even at Rio Limbaugh and in the neo-Levant, the Spiritual Evolution of the Human Race has not yet progressed far enough for "I just happen to LIKE pushin’ other folks around" to stand alone in splendid isolation and full ethical-intellectual respectability. It looks like we will be sinking to that any day now, but today is definitely not the day. Check back next October, Dr. Bones, why don’t you?

(( A tad more ad juvenem: with RD and the señoritoly element in general it is unquestionably a matter of "JUST happenin’ to like to push." At a loftier level, though, another factor enters in, the factor of Big Management: this señorito’s Daddy Warbucks and its Tio Ruperto and Uncle Scrooge can claim without total absurdity that, over and above and quite distinct from the sheer innocent merriment that libido dominandi affords all its practitioners, some of the practitioners, like for example themselves, have a special flair for around-pushin’. Or make that a special mastery of it credentialised with an M.B.A. from the H*rv*rd Victory School, if you take around-pushin’ to be a science rather than an art.

(( Now obviously Big Management, like Global Tourrorism, is not of itself a Kiddie Kause, but rather a tool or weapon available in principle to any Kiddie Kause that may come down the pike. Yet this obviousness is one easily lost sight of, especially when your HVS MBA’s start goin’ on about ‘efficiency’ or ‘productivity’ or ‘technocrats’ &c. &c. That unwarranted self-esteemin’ could be tolerated if the Big Managers were playin’ at contract bridge or dominos, but the case is rather different when ’tis all us noncorporate organic persons who are to get pushed around, not tiles and cards.

(( BTW, what on G*re’s green earth is more bigmanagerial than WHOSE service is perfect freedumb? And what more laughable than for Don Rossito de Douthát and the Singin’ Señoritos to echo the paternal motion as Nobis servire regnare est?

(( But Mammon knows best. ))

A Traitor to his Faction?

Dear Dr. Bones,

Is not Neocomrade R. L. Simon, Freelord & Kiddiemaster Padjaama in the peerage of Foxcuckooland, here sacrificin’ the very essence of his belovèd Party and its AEIdeology for trashy yalodramatic effect and comfy self-chauvinism?

As follows: if The Wicked State be always wrong, and the Secret Sector almost as good as infallible (which is the crux and pith and gist of wingnuttinesss, no?), does it not follow in a flash that all boycotts and blockades, not to mention lesser political tamperin’s with Absolute Freedumb of Trade, are an unclean abomination in the eyes of Lord Mammon?

You may recall that thirty or forty years ago the hard-rightist scribbler of anticommunist potboilers A. S. Drury wrote a book about the former Suid-Afrika in which he seemed generally distressed about this point. One of the reasons why he could not enthuse about the Baní Malan as much as he wished he could was that, although they were forever representing themselves at Washington as a crucial concern of the former Free World, examination of how they actually ran their racket at home made them seem like a ragtag band of quaint backwoods Socialists.

Naturally even neo-Dutch rednecks have their excuses: the S-A Secret Sector of 1967 was all Brits of dubious loyalty to the Pretoria neorégime, not to mention that they (or Brits, anyway) had fed ground glass to the alone Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom in their concentration camps circa 1900.

Nothing would be easier than to write a yalodrama about all that. And, who knows?, the DVSW of S-A might even have managed to pull the wool over the eyes of Neocomrade A. S. Drury altogether, had he not been (roughly speaking) in the yalodrama business himself.

And I wish you, sir,
Happy days through affordable healthcare

Snoopy at Bay meets The Shadow

Dear Sir or Madam Bluepearl, High-falutin’ though your matwood be, I believe I will see it and raise you one evermeule and half a snoop. [0] The Sea Might Folk of Hyperzion must (or at any rate, ought to) feel that what impends overhead like the sword of Bar Damocles is a good deal more substantial than any mere ‘shadow’. To be sure, an iceberg would do even better than an icicle, substancewise, but what with global warming and all nowadays . . . . Furthermore, that discrepancy--the fact that the immediate danger is merely ridiculous--was an original part of the Rev. Schultz’s little funny. The esteemed H*rv*rd did not have any use for that angle in elucidating Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry, but happily the courage-challengedness does fall in with the neoëxistential Angst of the self-exceptional, and self-indispensable, and in every conceivable and inconceivable way selfwunnerful and wunnerselfish, Tel ’Avîv statelet. Happy days. ___ [0] This must be my all-time favorite cartoon -- a judgment that presumably establishes me as a total Palestinian in the killing fields of graphic art. ( Music is much more like it, if you ask me.) Nevertheless, "Snoopy At Bay" would be striking just as anecdote and ‘narrative’, would it not? Which leaves me amazed that G@@GLE has swiped it only in conjunction with the entire specimen eruditionis I remember it from myself.

"Changes everything"

"Changes everything"?

An odd estimate, even as coming from the little green gentlebeings of Planet Justworld, zillions of light years removed from Terra, not to mention from the neo-Levant. Possibly an original High Justworldic expression has been mistranslated, one that originlly meant something more like "One just don't see how the earthlings’ world can keep on like this!"

Less remote and aetherial observers may take refuge with the New York Times Company, which almost certainly thinks and writes in North American English and sees fit to write as follows :

Israel’s deadly commando raid on Monday on a flotilla trying to break a blockade of Gaza complicated President Obama’s efforts to move ahead on Middle East peace negotiations and introduced a new strain into an already tense relationship between the United States and Israel.

Rather a fascinating forty-four words, though scarcely because they contain anything utterly unprecedented. Au contraire, the main fascination is to find so much that is stale and trite crammed into so tiny a package. Especially to be relished in this revelation of the NYTC Weltanschauung is how POTUS and Peaceprocess stand in the center of the ring, Natives and Immigrants alike relegated to their proper and peripheral rôles.

Here, in fact, is a tale that can wag two different dogs simultaneously.

But alas, from every perspective but the literary, the performance only narcissism as usual. Narky D. [1] will no doubt be among the last to have his whole day wrecked when "Changes everything" actually takes place some day.[2]

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the good, gray NYTC is trying her [3] best to make quite sure nothing changes. This is a bit of a challenge in light of that organ’s traditional bias in favour of Immigrants as opposed to Natives. Notice how boldly she grasps the obvious and obnoxious nettle: ‘deadly’ comes right up front, word #2 of 44. [4]

Once that's out of the way, the rest can be pre-owned fudge, and that it more or less is, apart from possibly 'break a blockade of Gaza." Without countenancing any Chicken Little exuberances of Planet Justworld, I must admit not having heard much about Gaza being under a blockade before early Monday morning. But of course the NYTC cooked that piece of fudge on the basis of this blockade being the status quo, in place ever since the year 1387/1967/5726. To take a "changes everything" stance would sadly spoil the NYTC confection, which requires that the burden of aggression, or at least of status-quo infringement, fall upon Natives rather than upon Immigrants.

An objector might object that this ploy rather tends to make the neo-Levantine status quo a sort of endless surprise packet: "Who knows what hitherto unknown unknowns," Ms Objector expostulates, "We shall be told next have been the established rule for decades?"

I reply: though naturally each particular surprise must be unanticipated, yet the general surprise-packet shtyk has indeed been going on for decades. I do not pay a great deal of attention to the Palestine Puzzle compared with true fans and passionate groupies of Immigrants or Natives, but even I have learned to expect about a Copernican Revolution in international law that finally and definitively proves that one or the other crew are right -- have been utterly right all along!! -- about every month or six weeks.

‘Fudge’ , I calls that parlour game myself, though you may call it ‘spinach’ if you prefer. "Changes everything" I should never dream of calling it.

More as a curiosity of literature than as substantive agitprop or serious analysis, I notice that the NYTC rather paints herself into a corner: if the blockade is to star in this production by the Surprise Packet Players, then the hapless Natives (or friends of Natives) must have been "a flotilla trying to break" the blocakde. Sort of like at the Dardanelles in 1333/1915/5674, don't you see. (The parallel is especially happy because the Terrible Turks come in on both ends.)

Zeal and chauvinism will stand anything, I know, but it takes a great deal of them to swallow what the NYTC here strives to get swallowed, that a foolish and deplorable publicity stunt is to be classed well up there with the Spanish Armada.

***

The little green viewers from afar write "[Israël] can [not] hope to have this version of events generally accepted-- or at least, accepted by enough of the people in power around the world that they don't need to worry about the real facts getting out. It seems they don't understand the 21st century," -- referring to a ‘version’ in which that the publicity stuntsters "fired first."

I suppose the proposition is likely enough to prove verbally true, but not in such a way as to warrant any tripe and baloney about "changes everything." There is no need at all for the hack pols and violence pros of the Tel ’Avîv government to insist on "people in power around the world" genuinely believing the T. A. version of events. Simply not being laughed at to their faces when they rehearse it will do nicely.

Few human events are less like "changes everything" than a parcel of rogue diplomats solemnly assuring the world of facts that pretty well everybody anywhere near being "people in power" understands to be fictional.

If the Planet Justworld theory be that Terra will abandon old-fashioned insincere diplomacy in Century XV/XXI/LVII and take to something else instead, one cannot rebut without relying on those very tricky "predictions about the future" that the wise have warned us to be wary of. For all I know, "Changes everything" may be lurking just around the very next bend in Ms. Clio’s dark tunnel.

Nevertheless, I detect nothing in this teapot tempest to support so extraterrestrial a conjecture.

Happy days.



___
[1] Strangers refer to my hero as "Master Narcissus Dexter." But come along, gentile reader, who is really a stranger to Narky?


[2] Narky is ubiquitous and unavoidable, yet more so some places than other: “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky, because everything there happens twenty years after it happens anywhere else.” – Mark Twain."

(( The NYTC folks oddly classify that as a joke about "the current state of the U.S. economy," when obviously it mocks Paul Minor, the dilbertarian dingaling nominated for the Fedguv Senate by the KY GOP. For practical purposes, Planet Dilbert can be taken to be quite as distant and alien as Planet Justworld herself, only in a polarly opposite direction. ))


[3] The present keyboard’s holy Homeland™ having resolved by a five-to-four vote that corporations are persons once more, it shall loyally do my best to pronominate them accordingly. Fifty-six percent of the time, anyway.


[4] Making it the very first word would be a stiff challenge to an Anglphone stylist, though perhaps not insuperable.

"national paranoia and xenophobia"

Public opinion in Pakistan is fashioned by the newly independent Pakistani media, which is often cross-owned. The media, made independent during General Musharraf’s era, has a pro-Islamist bias, which is reflected both in its vehement anti-Americanism and in its attacks on the social democratic Pakistan Peoples Party. Some analysts have recently referred to the Pakistani media as feeding national paranoia and xenophobia.

Dear Dr. Bones,

Can Roger, Freelord & Kiddiemaster Padjaama, foremost of yalodramatists[1] quick or dead, seriously suppose that he can sneak this neospecimen in over the border?

But wait! Perhaps we should wonder instead which brand of Kiddie Selfservatism is usin’ which here, for his freelordship could conceivably be the gettin’ the kiddie end of his own shtyk here.

Consider, sir, that Brahmin’stán has ALWAYS been at war with Pákístán , and that in deed and not in Orwell alone. Whereas his freelordship perverted to his neoteric pajamatarian kiddie selfservatism only the other decade. M. Apama de Pande has potentially whole kalpas of wombscholarship and wingnuttiness behind him. M. de Pande may or may not be an individual capable of mustering all the vast Brahmingstání forces, natural and praeter- and supernatural, for agitprop purposes -- that’s his look-out.

As to our own look-out, I fear M. de Pande does kind of appear as if he may not be very good at the agitation-propaganda racket. I cannot make out what he is up to in this scribble -- a situation also explainable, of course, on the hypothesis that he is far too smart to let his games be detected by the likes of me.

Still, I ask you, Dr. Bones, are the base an’ vile of the Party of Grant likely to care about the present state of journalism on Planet Mleccha? And even if Wally Wombschool and Cindy from Wasilla cared passionately enough to get their eyes off their bellybuttons and look towards Karachi ("where?") , what could they do? Write a letter to their neoheartthrob, Kiddiemaster Paul of KY, and then Kentucky Taxpayers United sends an ultimatum to ’Islámábád, which insolence bein’ insolently rejected, a state of war obtains between the High Noncontractin’ Parties, whereupon ... ¡B@@M! ...?

M. de Pande is alleged to be a student of political science, though when PJM does the allegin’, ’tis caveat emptor time at the O.K. Corral. Still, it should not take a degree of any sort from Hillsdale or Wombschool Normal or Pepperdine or St. Dilbert Antistate or George Mason to notice that no pack of aliens, legal or illegal, official or secret-sectorian, criminal or tamely conformist, have ever yet brought our holy Homeland™ riding to their rescue by first stirring up rank-and-file Homelanders™ to put pressure on their elected and representative statespersons at Washington City. An attempt along those lines as recently as the year of religionism 1207/1793/5557 was signally unsuccessful. Nothing much has changed in the interval since, which interval is, for those equipped with the Brahmin’stání sense of time, less than the nanosecond of us unspiritual in Greater Europe .

True, the Party of Grant and Hoover an’ Goldwater ’n’ Atwater has been known to flirt with the occasional "China Lobby" from time to time. It has always been clear in such cases that the Natives addressed themselves to the G.O.P. geniuses, all attempts at mobilizin’ the Wingnut City mob (such unimpressive attempts as there were) bein’ undertaken by the latter.

Hence, Pol. Sci. or not, M. de Pande certainly ought to know that he must apply at Beltway City DC to obtain the kind of public assistance and affirmative action for which he feels himself and his congenitals qualified.

And even then . . . .

Suppose the ideal pscenario from M. de Pande’s point of view, Dr. Bones:

Today is Monday, 2 April 2013 in the revised Christian-Christojudæan calendar. M. de Pande has been invited to make his case in a personal audience with the U.S. Secretary of State (John Freelord Bolton) after a ceremonial handshake or snakehandle with the POTESSA herself (Neocomradess S. L. Heath-Paling, the former Freedame Wasilla) plus more substantial strategy sessions with the Vicepotus (not the aforementioned Neocomrade R. H. Paul, who would likely have a tin ear for Natives, but ... how about Holy Joe, the now Senator from Neoconn.?).

So, then, what relief does M. de Pande petition for, exactly?

’Tis obvious enough that he would like to see the abominable Pákís bashed definitively, bashed so well that they will never make trouble again for Brahmingstán -- so well that that they never CAN make trouble. A thorough course of Hiroshima Therapy (®) would be ideal, I guess, but that is a bit around the neobend even for pscenario purposes.

At the other end of the Shock-an’-Awe scale--and improbably supposing M. de Pande to have no more grievances against the eternal abominables than he here rehearses, perhaps every editor in Pákístán might be required to send all her copy and videotape and audiotape--electronically, of course, nobody is talking donkeys--to be vetted first at Varanasi (for substance and ideology and ‘attitude’) and then at Bangalore (to make sure there are no secret code messages). Only after that process might approved media fodder be promulgated amongst the PK abominables.

A small thing to ask (especially compared to the sort of favour one suspects M. de Pande would like to ask), is it not? Yet how is even a Heath-Paling régime (pardon my Limbaugh) to accomodate this little request, the least of mutual courtesies as between fervent ideobuddies? Would the Party of Grant and Hoover not have to conquer the whole PK joint and then administer it seriously in order to grant M. de Pande what he prays for?

‘Seriously’ means at least "not like PGH rule of the former al-‘Iráq." Recallers may recall how the hogen-mogens of Party an’ AEIdeology dealt with the indigenous media of Postiraq, bribin’ WOG journalists (very paltrily) to praise the Occupation and the Occupyin’ Power, but never crackin’ down in earnest of the sort of incorrigible nogoodniks upon whom M. de Pande wants cracked down. [2]

I daresay M. de Pande could get the Heath-Palin’ites to award him a platinum star for being the very model of a modern Little Foreign Friend of the Republican Party, but when it comes to more substantial assistance, one must hope he does not hold his breath until it eventuates.

Oh, well! Che sarà, sarà and vice versa.

Furthermore, Father Zeus knows best.

And I wish you, sir,
Happy days through affordable healthcare.


___
[1] Let’s try ‘yaleodrama’ minus that obnoxious ‘E’, shall we?, in unsure hope that the inquiring student of neocomradology will take the first syllable to run to the tune of "halo" -- as it certainly ought to run, given that the ‘L’ is not doubled.

"Ought to" is a very treacherous guide to Mandarin English orthography, but what else is there?


[2] ¡¡For G*re’s sake, Dr. Bones, the Busheviki would not even insist that that arrest warrant (¡a warrant for bloody murder!) on the Rev. Señorito al-Sadr be executed!!

Phashism at Los Angeles and elsewhere

Dear Dr. Bones,

Should you happen to require more fruit of the wombschool, sir, come and get it while the poop is hot!

I betcha, Bones, that Neocomrade (Sixth Class) J. X. Dunphy of the Party of Grant (& Hoover & Atwater &c. &c.) has never before been called a PoG NC-6 in all its little life to date. Whereas no doubt it gets called a phashist at least six times every workin’ day -- every policin’ day, that is -- by all the beautiful people of ...

(( ... a small technical difficulty arises: at five thousand klicks’ distance, I have no idea where the beautiful people foregather way out there in the Mecca of darkest Schwarzeneggerland. And that despite being quite sure I heard the name of it from Neocomrade (Third Class) Dr. M. X. Weinstein-Savage [1] just a few days ago. Dr. Alzheimer seems to be *IN* of late.

(( Well, we can always make something up, Dr. Bones. That is what they do in Foxcuckooland, and we have it on high authority (and even in the High Tongue!) that fas est et ab hoste doceri. Hmmm. Let’s see, to annoy both plain vanilla kiddie selfservatives and tutti-frutti neokiddies simultaneously, how about we pretend "Laguna [de] Mecca" is the Los Angeles equivalent of Weston (oops!) or Dover or Kennebunkport or Chappaquiddick MA. The philological and ethnohistorical objections are formidable, but no matter, we can feign further that Dr. Dryasdust holds ‘Mecca’ to be a vulgar Yank corruption of some earlier and more Hispanically correct form. That should be close enough for Fedguv work. So, then, where was I? ... ))

No doubt poor, put-upon NC-6 J. X. Dunphy gets called "a [exp. del.] phashist" at least six times every workin’ day -- every policin’ day, that is -- by all the beautiful people of Laguna Mecca, who never policed (or even worked) a day in all their élitist lives, and absolutely never miss a chance to make mock of uniforms that guard them while they sleep , as the bard of Wingnut City hath so memorably barded. [2]

At the aforesaid distance of five thousand kilometres, one feels reasonably safe in spoofing NC6 JXD a little from Zip Code 0213X, in the sure and certain hope that Sgt. Crowley of the local constabulary will afford one protection, should protection be required. ’Not Joe Friday of the LAPD, perhaps, but not bad either.

Less unseriously, and before I digress off the map altogether, it seems to me that NC6 JXD does its cowingnutettes an’ cowingnuts a detectable discourtesy. It solemnly assures Cindy from Wasilla and Wally Wombschool that "When They Call You a Nazi, You’ve Won the Immigration Argument," an assurance which we may here, for purposes of pseudargument, admit to be excellent advice. But if I had the misfortune to be Master Wally or Miss Cindy, I’d be a little miffed that NC6 JXD does not explain where the lottery office is located that I take my lucky ticket to and cash it in for my winnin’s.

The purely moral rewards of bein’ defamed as phashist are all very well in their way, I suppose, but it would be ridiculous to pretend that that almost untravelled byway [3] is the mainstream Path of Party an’ AEIdeology. "If it doesn't pay, it doesn't count" is perhaps a slight exaggeration of the consensus omnium of the neocomradely community, but for practical purposes, it is highly reliable.

And I wish you, Dr. Bones,
Healthy and affordable days.

___
[1] Or perhaps Neocomrade (Third Class) Dr. M. X. Savage-Weinstein? San Francisco may not lie beyond the human event horizon altogether like Los Angeles, but it is a long, long way off all the same, so I fear I did not make a memorandumb of what NC-3 MXS-W (or NC3 MXW-S, as the case may be) identified for some call-in neopatient from Flyoverstan as the tip-top toniest zone of L.A. Except I do remember never having heard of the ’burb before.


[2] Needless to say -- but fun to add -- is that none of los alumbrados de Laguna Mecca either (1) knows more Spanish lingo then is indispenable to direct the servants -- always remember, sir, which language it was that the late fiend Kennedy Tertius had to hire a hand to take for him at H*rv*rd! -- or (2), would ever dream of religionating the Muslim way. Religionation of any sort is, like Cathtilian and Andaloosean, more or less left to the servants at Laguna Mecca. Up the slippery slope at Castle Podhóretz, the neogentry take that line too -- possibly it results from lookin’ down (figurative and political) slippery slopes all the time?

Please tell Dr. Dryasdust not to trouble me about los alumbrados being a laughably bad equivalent for "the beautiful people." Remember your Charles Williams Guideline , sir, and apply it a little: when in Hell (or at Sevilla), one must try to talk like a native speaker of Inaccurate (or of Andaloosean).


[3] "A mighty spoof, but not without a plan," that’s OUR lucky ticket, sir! Did the Muses and you and I not long ago identify the obscure by-way in question, and link it up with Sabbath School and Commencement Day in particular? Of course we did!

So then, 95% of neocomradely misbehaviour can be predicted on the basis of ""If it doesn't pay, it doesn't count." When that fails, perhaps as much as 95% of the oddball five percent is classifiable under the rubric of Sabbath Day and Commencement School, that is to say, lip-service paid by the neogentry to geistlich values that real gentry used to really value. Not altogether by coincidence, this rubric overlaps admirably with the one invoked above as "Servants, Matterss best left to the."

So "at the end of the day," there is only .0475% (one part in about 2,105) of neocomradely misbehaviour that calls for really SPECIAL explanation.

From this I draw two tentative conclusions for ourselves, sir, as follows:

(A) to prepare a tract called Neocomradology for Dummies -- or perhaps "for Dhimmies," or maybe even for both classes of customer? -- would be feasible enough, though it is not a project I care to undertake myself.

(B) Few sentimental/‘ideological’ things on G*re’s green earth are less like brand-name Fascismo than "If it doesn't pay, it doesn't count." And the same applies to the Hitlerism with which the kiddiemasters intend that their kiddies should confuuse the Italian product whenever the dread F-word is mentioned.

Even in High Prussian, Dr. Bones, geistlich is nowhere near synonymous with gut. The Master has taught us, Pol. 1267a, that no man becomes a tyrant in order to keep warm, and the same applies, I think, to devotees of ""If it doesn't pay, it doesn't count." Pushin’ folks around after the neomanner of weekly standardisers and commonterrorists &c. is unedifying in the extreme, yet if one insists on deciding whether it is to be called spiritual or materialistic, there is no doubt that it belongs in the ‘spiritual’ pigeon-hole. As, obviously, do all the contents of the "Sabbath School" and "Commencement Day" pigeon-holes. Q.E.D.

But Father Zeus knows best.

"A Fatwa on your head?"

Dear Dr. Bones,

I know your Ph.D. is in Progressive Assyriology, sir, but perhaps you know a trick cyclist or two with a veterinary sideline?

Common sense and general knowledge fail me, I fear, when presented with sweet puppies capable of supposin’ with a straight muzzle that their own 'liberty' -- "(yes, those are sneer quotes)" [0] -- to consist in publicly placardin’ the religionism of others as if it were a communicable disease.[1]

The potential fun side of the latest puppy game is obvious, though, or at least it was great fun for me up to the point at which Paddy knocked me down after noticing the sketches I was preparing for my proposed "You, Too, Can ESCAPE FROM PAPISM!" ad campaign.[2]

Oh, well! I doubt the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority would have taken my doits and sheqels and published my copy in all their buses and trolleys: the VC people are a forty-four percent (44%) plurality up here, according to Big LEW . And by the way, "Isn't that a bit of Destructive ©®eationism™ to set Governor Winthrop revolving in his grave?," I ask you.

Further afield by the way, I walked across Boston Common on a sunny spring afternoon (yesterday’s) and, begorrah, did not hear even a single word of Irish (Gaeilge) ! What does the late Henry Adams make of that, I wonder, down there below where the warming, though global enough, is decidedly ananthropogenic?

Gov. Winthrop, for his part, with a much longer posthumous career already behind him, may (as I conjecture, perhaps a tad wildly) even be somewhat pleased that at least a little something has been snatched from the burning: in A.R. 1431/2010/5770, the bread worshippers of MA mostly worship their bread in "a language understanded of the people."

That was not exactly the main plank of the original reform platform, yet if the Muses and you and I, Dr. Bones, were to concoct something like St. Woodrow’s XIV Point Plan for the salvation of humanity by A. R. 1803/2371/6040 -- as far in the future, that is, as His Worship’s obituary date lies in the past -- would we not, all things considered, be happy if only whichever Point we now original-intent fourtheenth and hindmost were actually instantiated in full?

’Twere a blatantly impar congressus to contrast and compare a Party Neocomradess (Seventh Class) P. X. Geller with a veritable parens patriæ -- so let’s do it! [3]

At any rate, let me point out one seeming resemblance that looks primâ facie plausible to this coarse and illiterate keyboard, namely that, like His Worship, today’s specimen of Chlorella vulgaris in human or pajama form seems to be afraid of the religionism that she craves to badmouth and swiftboat. Furthermore, Gov. Winthrop and the Massachusetts Bay seem, in retrospect at least, to have been in quite as little immediate danger of being overrun by proto-Ratzingerites and Foxites and Laudians (and even Ms. Anne Hutchinson, by G*m!) as is the now Dade County FL by the Baní Ibn Taymiyya.

With NC7 PXG, the Chicken Little shtyk can instantly be put down to bad judgment and courage-challengedness, imprudentia ignaviaque, two qualities very prominent indeed at Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City and, indeed, up the slippery slope at Castle Podhóretz also.[4]

To present Governor Winthrop as an out-and-out proleptic disciple of Party Neocomradess Ch. X. Little and Party Neocomradess P. X. Geller would be scandalum magnatum to the max. Fortunately there is no need to think it, for His Worship judged by rather different canons of judgment back in Century X/XVI/LIII than those of Dade County FL wingnutettes and wingnuts circâ 2010. Governor Winthrop was not scared of proto-Ratzingerites and Quakers and ‘prelatists’ directly, the way ChXL and PXG cower under their beds in personal terror for the safety of their physical and material hides. Winthrop’s undeniable Enthusiasm having not yet undergone the decerebration process that eventually produced the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, he can have been directly afraid of Father Zeus alone.

As follows: Puritan divines took certain passages of the Uncommon Testament seriously and literaliter after a fashion that I betcha pretty well nobody at all in Dade County does nowadays. Various afflictions that fell of yore upon Palæojerusalem in deed and not in allegory alone were attributed to the anger of Himself at toleration of idolatries and abominations perpetrated upon the High Places. ’Twould be silly to fancy that ’Elîyáhû was afraid of Queen Jezebel as Neocomradess P. X. Geller and her Party base an’ vile are self-terrorised of M. bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí: the problem was simply that if the Elect did not ditch the bitch and stop playing ball with Baal and otherwise change the régime a little, Father Zeus would make sure that it never rained again, so good-bye milk and honey! [Lib. III Reg. cap. 18]

The allegorice of that for the Massachusetts Bay of 1640 was not far to seek, the search being of course conducted upon the inexpugnably sound basis of Enthusiasm in Massachusetts as it was in 1640. It would be extremely unreasonable, Dr. Bones, to subtract even a single point from John Winthrop’s score because, eighteen score years afterwards, an uncharitable painter could, if he chose to, paint His Worship’s short way with dissenters to look like the notions of those evil Qommie ayatollahs who was in the news this week for discovering that female unchastity and impudicity, and missed prayers, and being stingy about charitable giving somehow provoke Father Zeus to harrow the land with earthquakes.[5]

I wish you, Dr. Bones,
Healthy and affordable days.

___
[0] Cf. peanut-gallery Peanut #3.

Final score: singles enclose sneers, doubles mark mere quotation. (( Yet can any 'quotation" ever be really "mere' ? A promising topic for some other day. ))


[1] I had written "COMMUNICABLE disease" but have decided the adjective is unwarrantable.

Neocomradess (Seventh Class) P. X. Geller provides only the one sample of her factionette’s agitation and propaganda -- " ‘Fatwa on your head?’ " &c. &c.--and that one happens to offer relief to victims of the alleged disorder, rather than callin’ upon healthy sheep to quarantine afflicted goats in ‘existential’ self-defense. Though everything we know in general about this less common neobreed of sweet puppy suggests that NC7 PXG would not hesitate a nanosecond to do the latter, still in fact it is not done here.

Accordingly, I withdraw "placard ... as communicable" so as not to fall afoul of the Charles Williams guideline, " Hell is inaccurate. "

And Father Zeus knows best!

(( You may remember Comrade C. R. Dawkins, Oxon., who proposed that all Enthusiasm and Superstition without exception consists of memes , these being feigned entities which, as far as I was ever able to make out, are much the same thing as "communicable diseases." To be sure, when one borrows a term from the High Tongues, or coins one that pretends to be such a borrowing, Wally Wombschool, and Cindy from Wasilla, and (probably) NC7 PXG are not half so likely to notice that one is laughing from them. ))


[2] Cal Luther -- you may remember I introduced you to her once when we were touring Nantes ? -- offered some criticisms that were less trenchant but more weighty, as that simply substituting "Ratzinger" for "Alzheimer" in all sorts of existing scripts would not just "vix dignum ingenii vestri", as Cal neatly put it, but positively tacky.


[3] Like the man said, "Never give a wingnut an even break!" Furthermore, only a genuine blue-state meanie could wish to deprive sweetpuppiedom of their occasions of sweetest self-sorrowin’: "Nobody knows the trouble [they've] seen, nobody knows but G. Suss" -- whoever G. Suss may be.


[4] Hooverville is much more intellectually respectable, perhaps because one can always gauge from casualty insurance rates how afraid of the Islamophalangitarian Menace (Pat. Pend.) Daddy Warbucks and Uncle Scrooge really and objectively are. BFZKB.


[5] Chicken Little and NC7 P. X. Geller et al. might -- but doubtless will not -- reflect that they maybe look just a little silly bein’ existentially autoterrorised by a religionism not yet purged of flagrant Dark Ages stuff like that.

’Tis now to be "war of awesome dimensions," by G*m!

Dear Dr. Bones,

Let us invoke the Spirit of Music, shall we, seeing that Bedrich Smetana will be making a guest appearance this morning?

*** OVERTURE ***

"War of awesome dimensions, a war with a long and bloody history [that] is not the consequence of this or that unpopular policy but above all of beliefs we are not even supposed to pronounce nowadays, the crazed visions of Muslim extremists who are waging jihad against us. And [a war that is the consequence of] the beliefs of radical secular extremists who share the goals of jihad. That war is being waged by people who hate America and Israel, as they hate Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, and those many Muslims who want to live in peace."

*** INTERMEZZO sive ZWISCHENSPIEL ***

Suppose, sir, that you woke up in your hammock one fine morning to discover that that, presumably either for your sins or for His own entertainment, Father Zeus had transformed you, not into a fat disgusting cockroach like poor Herr Samsa chez Kafka, but into a lean-an’-mean and militant and extreme Hyperzionist. Rather like Grand Ayatollah Mikey Bin Ledeen is, if you know what I mean.

If you prefer, we can leave you out of the game and directly imagine His Eminence wakin’ up and findin’ His own Self-Eminence in the Cartesian plight of literally havin’ "to live [say, the Tuesday of next week, 4 May 2010] as if it were the first day of [His Eminence’s] life." [0]

Well as usual , I don't strictly mean ‘literally’, even as I do not propose to dabble in any philosophy more exalted than the joke Neoëxistentialism of Team Jabotinsky. To refine the hypothesis, then, suppose His scenario-bound Eminence to wake up, recallin’ what Hyperzion is, and more or less able to find it on a map, and--above all--remainin’ militant and extremist that Hyperzion must remain Hyperzion [1], exfoliatin’ all its exotic neobeauties without stint or limit in sæcula sæculorm amen.

What our feigned H.E. does not remember is the correlation of farces in the world: who is a friend to Hyperzion, or at least a useful idiot, who is neutral, and who is not only antimegistodemographical [1a] in sime inherited or religionistic way, but actively and avowedly antihyperzionist, at Turtle Bay or in any other forum that dares to show its head in public.

In short, imagine that my travesty of Mikey Cardinal Ledeen has somehow forgotten who the enemies and friends of the GD™ Folk [1a] are, and must start from scratch to russle ’em up some new ones. [2] How well adapted to that end, in your opinion, Dr. Bones, would be the agitational-propagandistic modus operandi that His Eminence here deploys in "preachin’ to the choir"?

Whether you care to play my parlour game or not, Dr. Bones, please make a memorandumb [3] of this Binledeenian exuberance so we can find it later and use it against the kiddies.

Considered narrowly as choir-preachin’, "We are all Israëlis now" is a damp squib: the sweet birds of neosong would have been given the Frum’s rush [http://j.mp/9a9K9M] out of the Neotemple the instant they were detected to be anythin’ but.

Tthe Cardinal Auxiliary of Jehádkarírestán in partibus infidelium must, one presumes [3], intend His Eminence’s choristers to march forth and proclaim the Neogospel Accordin’ to Mikey unto benighted heathens and perverted heretics proper.

What makes this item memorandumb fodder, Dr. Bones, is how extremely perspicuous His Eminence makes the underlyin’ Common Terror magazine shtyk, which consists in Castle Podhóretz (or other competent neoäuthority) issuin’ a Woodrovian declaration of "War against war." Needless to say, it was THEM that started it, commenced a

"war of awesome dimensions, a war with a long and bloody history [that] is not the consequence of this or that unpopular policy but above all of beliefs we are not even supposed to pronounce nowadays, the crazed visions of Muslim extremists who are waging jihad against us. And [a war that is the consequence of] the beliefs of radical secular extremists who share the goals of jihad. That war is being waged by people who hate America and Israel, as they hate Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, and those many Muslims who want to live in peace."

Lots and lots of neodingalingism crammed into very few words -- ninety-one, I make it -- that is, Dr. Bones, and therefore memorandumb-worthy to the max.

To be sure, nothin’ human, except of course the GD Folk™, can achieve perfection. Mikey Cardinal Bin Ledeen has not provided us a sort of handy-dandy CliffsNotes™ edition of "Rupert’s List," that conjectural omniumgatherum of all the scattered enemies lists held at Hooverville and Rio Limbaugh and Castle Podhóretz and Port Ste Lucie and Pajama Junction, indeed, anywhere at all in Foxcuckooland from sea to whinin’ sea.

Notably absent are (1) the "Smash Capitalism!" contingent (unless His Eminence’s little word ‘radical’ is read far stronger than I think it can bear), and (2) environmental whackos,

*** CODETTA ***

"war of awesome dimensions, a war with a long and bloody history [that] is not the consequence of this or that unpopular policy but above all of beliefs we are not even supposed to pronounce nowadays, the crazed visions of Muslim extremists who are waging jihad against us. And [a war that is the consequence of] the beliefs of radical secular extremists who share the goals of jihad. That war is being waged by people who hate America and Israel, as they hate Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, and those many Muslims who want to live in peace."

I wish you, sir,
Healthy and affordable days

____
[0] Not "the first day of the rest of His Eminence’s life" as the vulgarism runs, but Day One simpliciter, the entire space between the ears of His Eminence contain’ nothin’ but hard vacuum, or call it tabula rasa.


[1] Paddy suggested the slogan ¡Hyperzion go bragh! at this juncture when we were confabulating this little fable. I had to point out to him with some asperity that, like most rules, the rule "A cat may look at a king" has the occasional probative exception, this exception, or one prominent exception, being obviously catus felix Kilarniensis.

[1a] A denier may deny, for the sake of argument or with gusto, that the Greatest Demographic™ is in fact so extraordinarly self-exceptional and self-indispensable and all-’round self-wunnerful as to be out of legitimate range of ALL the slings and arrows of us miserable Lesser Breeds Without, but that certainly does not mean than any Irish need apply as archers or peltasts.

Quelle idée!, like my great-great- ... -grandma used to mutter into her porridge in the Gaeilge, before the villagers lynched her for a witch.

As you and the Muses know, Dr. Bones, my favorite breed amongst the LBW to set up with dhimmian uppitiness against the GD Folk fanatics is the Bohemians, who call themselves ‘Czechs’, but thereby deceive nobody and haven’t for several centuries. Probably Herr Smetana [http://j.mp/bs84On] is the efficient cause of this McWhim: "Would you believe it, Princess, that shixy peasant had the gall to associate our tune with his vlast!"

Whimmed or whimless, I have never set foot nearer the place than Schneeburg (?) in Upper Bavaria, or for practical purposes, say Bayreuth BRG. A notorious hotbed of antimegistodemographical activities was that town, to be sure, when the Serene House of Wagner reigned. This is immaterial, however, because with Bohemia Bayreuth has nothing political to do and never did, beyond being Habsburg subjects.


[2] Like any good pscenario, this one is, I flatter myself, not entirely unconnected with the former Real World. For, in a certain sense, every snake-oil salesman and agitprop artiste that ever lived has been in the situation I conjure up for my pseudo-Mikey. As regards the "swing vote," I mean, those who have not yet taken any definite position on the merits and drawbacks of hula hoops, or Shock-an’-Awe (®), or le surchauvinisme hebraïque, or pet rocks, or . . . -- whatever product or ideoproduct the flogger may be trying to flog.

The analogy is imperfect, I admit, because Team Jabotinsky and the Hyperzionism product have been around since, at very latest, shortly after the war of A. R. 1387/1967/5726, twoscore and two (solar) years ago. His Eminence is bound to be especially concerned with official State enmities and friendships and neutralities and idiocies and utilities, and one can scarcely imagine any foreign ministry on G*re’s green earth where the statespersons have simply never heard of Hyperzionism the way Cindy from Wasilla has (almost certainly) never heard of the blessèd and meaningless hula hoop [http://j.mp/aubixm].


[3] To give you a head start, here’s ... Mikey: http://j.mp/9mGUo4

That is the pajamatarian neopost, but who cares? The PJM title of the thing is right there inside it, even if Mikey called it somethin’ different chez soi.

And by the way, the former chez soi seems to redirect straight to Mikey’s latest pair of pajamas in any case.

"Creativity and Destruction in all about I see / Father Zeus, Who wingnuts not, / Abide with me!"


[4] One may be presuming temerariously, however, for it is not impossible that His Eminence intended no more than to warm up the water a little in that bath of self-wunnerfulness in which his immediate auditors incorrigibly wallow: "O nos felices, who alone actually realize that ‘we’ "are all Israelis now."

A wonderer may wonder, after all, whether Neocomradess Ch. Little entirely likes the idea that others should detect the imminence of skyfall with her own eagle eye and squawk against it with equal volume. Or whether the hack pols and violence pros of the Tel ’Avîv statelet would rejoice singleheartedly and without mental reservation to discover three or four additional and undeniable ‘democracies’ scattered around the neo-Levantine landscape.

Grand Ayatollah Mikey Bin Ledeen bein’ what His Eminence is, the only complete certainty hereabouts is that H. E. would dearly love to see somebody bomb the evil Qommies back into the Stone Age. To "wipe them off the map," you might say, even.

Ray Takieh and the Space Invaders

Dear Dr. Bones,

Prescinding from the neo-Levantine politics, wasn‘t that a swell show? [0]

Neocomradess (Fourth Class) R. Solowitz of Boston MA and Masada NL makes for fine entertainment, there can be no doubt at all about it, sir!

Dr. Takieh gets completely eclipsed by the e-Delilah with her Dance of the Seven Veils [1]. That eclipse may even have been a (very) small part of what the producers and directors of the performance intended it to accomplish, although strictly speaking a critic must be only guessing when she takes the on-stage persona "R. T." to be an allusiom to poor Ray.

Ms. Critic must decide for herself, exactly as the slaves of Rupert, Lord Foxcuckoo, keep insistin’ every time we turn on WRKO AM 680 Boston. While she is making up her mind, though, allow me to remind you, Dr. Bones, that we knew poor Ray back when he was only "an Iranian-American Middle East scholar, former United States Department of State official and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations." [2]

Back about breakfast time yesterday, that was. Time sure flies when you are having fun, does it not? Golly!

As I was saying, it is clear enough for Fedguv work that the customer or patient was intended to take "R. T." for Ray Takieh, even though only patients or customers who never heard of the latter can be duped. In context, this point is quite unimportant. The producers and directors of "Rebecca Solowitz" are not really referrin’ to poor Ray in any case, but rather to a previous account of him provided by the management and staff of Planet Justworld, "... nonsensical claim ... gross errors of fact ... extremely tortured ‘reasoning’ ... a very dangerous argument ... bizarre ..." and so on and so forth. You know the drill, Dr. Bones.

Though the Muses and you and I know it well, perhaps we should explain it a little for "those of you at Rio" Limbaugh. The Justworldian account made the literary mistake [3] of telling the reader directly that the villain is a very bad man instead of showing him acting badly. I guess the offender would plead that a link to the URL of bad action was provided. And I guess that there is at least a little something to be said for that notion. But not a great deal, especially not when a little scrap of the supposed badness is in fact provided, and then the lady says, in effect, "Kindly allow me to know best!" Know, that is, that it is ‘nonsensical’ to ‘claim’ that

The notion that the incumbent Arab regimes are reluctant to collaborate with the United States on Iran because of the prevailing impasse in the peace process is a misreading of regional realities.

That unilateral and preëmptive critical aggression won’t do. Poor Ray may be dead wrong, but he is not the least bit nonsensical. Nonsensical would be if he had declared the notion in question to be, say, "a runcible spoon" or, with a different flavour of nonsense, "a round square."

(( It would trespass into talking politics to wonder whether the notion is or is not a misreading, so only inside parentheses dare I editorialize that Dr. Takieh may well be more or less right. ))

On the literary front, though, the upshot is that the customer is being hornswoggled into supposing that Gen. Mubárak and les altesses royales du Ryadh and the rest of the usual crew of heroes really DO put Palestine first. The literary objection to the attempted hornswogglement is not crudely that it ain’t so, but rather that it is not discussed, that the matter is not presented as being discussable. Everybody who is anybody must see that poor Ray might as well be telling us that twice two is five. Period.

Let us have a little argumentum ad verecundiam, Dr. Bones, just to wind things up with, like:

What shocks me is his instantaneous assumption that the question is so simple that there could be no real hesitation about it. It is breaking Aristotle’s canon--to demand in every enquiry that degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not on your life to pretend that you see farther than you do.

Naturally to appeal to the Master in that fashion presupposes that it is ‘enquiry’ that one is engaged in, as opposed to, say, agitation-and-propaganda or spectacle. The producers and directors of "Rebecca Solowitz" are spectaclemongers, their "T. R." a phantom fit only for the Yoo Toob, a straw dog that is scarcely even seriously feigned to resemble its supposed original, bein’ obviously trotted out only in order to be rude about somebody else.

The nonsensical and grossly erroneous and bizarrely dangerous (&c.) Dr. Ray Takieh looks a lot like another straw dog to me, and therefore like a tip-off that whatever may have been going on when it was sighted, ‘enquiry’ was not the name for it.

Mais que sçay-je?

Healthy days.

___
[0] So you see, sir, I am NOT the only geezer left who still remembers swellness.


[1] Yes, of course I realize there were only six veils: have you never heard of bloggherary license, sir? I accomodate my facts to a vulgar cliché, as any sensible rhetor would. Give me a break.


[2] Whoever "R.T." may be, if anybody at all, the learnèd elders of Wiki are undoubtedly talking about the same "Ray Takeyh, PhD (born 1966)" to whom the Muses and you and I have been previously introduced.

The article seems harmless enough. I was unaware of "a doctorate from St Antony‘s College, University of (sic) Oxford, in 1997," though, a detail which further lessens the likeness to "R.T." Miss Delilah’s producers and directors presumably missed it as well, St. Anthony’s being to the jihád careerist what Hell is to person of religionism. Here is a short list of fiends and demons.


[3] By low terrestrial standards, this is undoubtedly a literary mistake, though perhaps Planet Justworld is altogether "a foreign country where they do things differently"? Father Zeus knows best.

Be that as it may, we are not cheating when we judge such a product by our own standards rather than attempt to divine how the vendor would prefer his wares to be evaluated. If the human race at large had been silly enough to adopt the latter course, Madison Avenue would have gobbled us all up long ago.

Ardor-Motivated

Dear Dr. Bones,

As long as the Old Sinner is up repenting and amending and rewording anyway, perhaps he would consider a little reordering as well?

First thing I thought, looking at the title before reading the article, was, "But surely the O. S. has got it backwards?"

So, then, how about this?

‘Conservative’ Hatred of Arabs Motivated by Ardour for Israël!

Hmm.

Looking at it done my way, I must pronounce that way to be not infallibly sinfree either, even after disallowing weekly standardisers and Common Terror magazine groupies to pass themselves off as the Little Friends of Eddie Burke, LLC. [1]

Things look a little more complicated still, as is often the case in and around the neo-Levant. There is another factor involved here that has to be reckoned with, though doing so produces something that would be grotesque as a headline:

Hyperzionists’ Ardour for Israël Motivates Hatred of Arabs among ‘Conservative’ Non-Jews!

Probably ‘incites’ is the better verb in a case where the motivators are different from the motivated. On the other hand, that language could make it sound almost as if somebody were committing a (hate) crime here. Far be it from!

After that much revision, who will be surprised if Mr. Rosenberg wants to have nothing to do with his own verbal baby?

Indeed, it really is not his baby any more, for what I have just done amounts to changing the subject from (part of) what it is about Commonterrorists that annoys him to (part of) what it is about them that annoys you and me. And these are mostly not the same things, or parts of things. [2]

Up to a point, they *cannot* be the same things, for you and Paddy and I can no more be "self-hating Jews" than Mr. Rosenberg could plausibly set up as Voice of the Shanty Irish. A great deal of the public misbehaviour by Commonterrorists must be almost a personal embarrassment to him. Whereas we are lucky enough to be saddled with nothing much worse than Miss Piggy Noonan over at the Wall Street Jingo.

Truly, sir, our yoke is easy and our burden light!

Healthy days.


___
[1] It is silly game indeed to guess what so-and-so would have said, were he still alive. But don’t you think it at least *posssible*, Dr. Bones, that Mr. Burke might have seen V. Ye. Zhabotínsky [http://tinyurl.com/y36wmz5] , say, or, M. le géneral du Sharon, or ... as, well, as Warren Hastings Writ Large?

I guess the Commonterrorist response to such an affront would be to ask me whether I suppose their ideopal Eddie wanted to hand central North America back to the Iroquois and the Algonquin and the Massachusetts. There is, of course, no sign that Eddie did, despite having been alive at a time when the pertinent facts were available to him.

But at that juncture things would begin to get complicated, for Mr. Burke almost certainly would have thought it pertinent to point out that the East Indians had Sanskrit, whereas the Algonquins had to make do with only Algonquin. Unwritten Algonquin, too!

At which point Commonterrorists would (I guess) have to protest that in 1431/2010/5770 they certainly do not hate the Natives of the neo-Levantine for being woad-painted savages! ... "Though, by the way, did you know that more books have been written and published in Estonian in the last six months alone than have appeared in Arabic in the last three centuries?" (Or whatever -- I misquote from memory.)



[2] One problem with any scribble of the present sort is the risk of giving pointers to the abusers of the world. Still, facts are facts, and it is really is a fact, is it not?, that the biggest problem Hasbara GHQ faces is gettin’ the *commonality* of their neoterrorisin’ exactly right.

The Old Sinner’s own self-correction illustrates what I mean from the flip side. If Castle Podhóretz were addressin’ its agitation and propaganda exclusively to dhimmís like you and me, then definitely ‘Muslims’ rather than ‘Arabs’ ought to appear at the top of their hatelist. If only to their own coreligionists, pious or nominal, then definitely ‘Arabs’ rather than ‘Muslims’ -- though with perhaps a tacit hope that the dupes and marks will forget that the evil Qommies are not Arabs.

But how shall Commonterrorism broadcast to both audiences simultaneously?

Not an easy question! though I probably wouldn’t tell them the answer even if it were.

We can watch ’em tryin’ to cope, though, Dr. Bones. It looks to me as if they waver back and forth between (1) hopin‘ -- surely a bit desperately? -- that hardly anybody dupable makes the Arab/Muslim distinction, or at least that no great importance is attached to so techical a pettifoggery out in Televisionland, and (2) resortin’ to much vaguer language altogether, ‘radical’ and ‘militant’ and ‘extremist’ and -- in first place, naturally -- ‘terrorist’.

Hasbara GHQ and Castle Podhóretz and the jihád careerist community have it easiest when they can borrow straight from the obvious Enemy. If M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí have already lumped together a "World Islamic Front for Jihád against Jews and Crusaders," why should Neocomrade Amb. M. B. Oren or Neocomrade Dr. D. R. Pipes, ’71, or Bob Cardinal Spencer do more than provide their more wombschooled customers with carefully selected titbits about what happened in the brand-name Crusades?

TPM Café (09 April 2010)

Dear Dr. Bones,

What is the point of signing up for a Ludicrosity Competition? The pig usually wins, and, win or lose, she is *always* going to enjoy it more.

Bint Kh’zîr does put up a remarkable show of un- or anti-erudition with her ‘Quatab’ and her "zionist America circa 1950" [1] Indeed, the show is so remarkable that one is tempted to worry that it may be precisely that -- a performance deliberately staged, as if by one of Dr. Screwtape’s little military friends [2].

Nevertheless, a retaliation such as

Never across the past thousand years of European history has oppression and killing of Jews due to anti-Semitism been more rare than during the past fifty years

won’t do at all. Though the sentence is ludicrous enough to be getting on with, the subject-matter with which it trifles is too grave for trifling.

Moreover, Jewish Statism -- and militant extremist Hyperzionism to boot, as witness the late M. de Jabotinsky, http://tinyurl.com/y8wefwh -- goes back a good deal farther in Old Europe than "fifty years." Quite a lot of the Palestine Puzzle as we know it would look more or less the same even if Auschwitz and a’ that had never come to pass. [3]

If one puts one mind to it a little, Bint Kh’zîr can be taken seriously. Imagine that Hasbara GHQ is deployin’ her with a new secret weapon that works by lurin’ the unwary dhimmí into at least the appearance of an admission that Médînat Yisrá’él possesses some special ‘need’ [4] to exist that nobody sane would ever dream to demand from, or grant to, the Czech Republic, or the Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, or any other nation-state or -statelet that obviously "just happens" to exist by gracious permission of Time and Tyche. [5]

Regardless of anythin’ B. Kh. in particular is or isn’t up to, such appears to be the T. A. government’s grand agitprop strategy, which I take to be twofold:

(1) the ’dhimmí’s are to be seduced into accepting that M. Y. has "a right to exist as a Jewish State" in some sense not one-tenth as ludicrous as the Czech Republic’s claiming "the right to exist as a Bohemian State" would be. [6]

(2) And then there will never, ever, be any satisfactory elucidation from the direction of T. A. as to exactly what this supposed right comprises. Apart, that is, from its bein’ -- obviously! -- incompatible with any and all offers of peace or ‘peace’ or hudna or whatever from the Natives, for this perpetual incompatibility is the object of the whole exercise. Q.E.D.

It really IS pretty neoclever of them, Dr. Bones, is it not? If there is a weak point, I guess it would be that such a plan can never be frankly admitted without self-destructing on the spot.

Oh, well: no silver lining without a cloud!

Healthy days.

’’’
[1] That lower-case ‘Z’ is a small masterpiece itself. If it happened on Purpose, that is.

The mysterious Monsieur de Qu. almost certainly has at least a little something to do with http://tinyurl.com/ydafh9m . But Father Zeus knows best.


[2] "No doubt you have often practiced transforming yourself into an angel of light as a parade-ground exercise. Now is the time to do it in the face of the Enemy." &c. &c. [ http://tinyurl.com/yba4uq5 ]

Maybe it is a bit paranoid or narcissistic, though, to suppose that Hasbara GHQ has to take TPM Café seriously and send out somebody competent. Mr. Rosenberg they can e-bomb over on J Street, after all, and other than that, why should they bother?


[3] This analysis cuts both ways even-handedly, I believe, inasmuch as the Natives and their apologists often give the impression that the Tel ’Avîv statelet has been gratuitously inflicted upon them by Europe and America solely as a cheap or free form of misdirected reparations for what Germany did in 1933-1945. (( Talk about ‘ludicrous’! ))


[4] Mr. Poster says "Therefore, employing davidai66's form of logic, it is 'ludicrous' to think that now in our period is when Jews of European origin really NEED to have their own special state in the Mideast."


[5] ’Cf.’ http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivia . Also http://tinyurl.com/z2j4h, but only if you absolutely *must*.


[6] There is nothing particularly self-exceptional or self-indispensible about the Prague government apart from the linguistic accident that English happens to have both ‘Czech’ and ‘Bohemian’ -- which is a fact about us, plainly, and nothing to do with them.

Culture vultures will know at least the Bohemian seacoast of http://tinyurl.com/ycrzg3a . But that, too, is of zero *political* relevance.