Miller's Tail

Now here -- down to, but not including the neocomrade’s bottom line -- is a cool, clear steel-claptrap mind at work, Mr. Bones!

Here you will find no sentimental folderol leadin’ to wishful thinkin’ that maybe Uncle Sam (and idiot nephew Barák Husáyn) will suddenly reconsider and start singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb / Bomb, bomb Iran!" along with J. Sidney McCain so that the Tel Avîv statelet need not aggr preëmptively retaliate in isolation.

Better still, and better than their M. de Nétanyahou [1] has been able to manage, is the absence of what we may call the Higher Sentimentalism. Neocomrade A. H. Miller does not waste the time of us insignificant dhimmís with crude mob-appeal stuff like "Western civilization will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons."

You can’t imagine how much it pleases me, Mr. Bones, to find a Hyperzionist who can actually attempt to make his faction’s case without draggin’ in poor old

Western Sieve! I seem to be a tad immoderate on that particular point, sir: why should I become angry at passionate appeals to what I consider a mere figment of self-servicing agitprop in the first place? The intellectual history of Greater Europe exists and is worthy of study: "Western Civilisation" as it emanates from the mouth of hormone-urged Hyperzionisers, "Western Civilisation" as the name of a cause that anybody sane could ever seriously expected to fight or die for, or even merely to drop a few bombs for occasionally -- well, what could be rubbishier rubbish than that, sir? I guess the reason I get worked up about it is not an impartial distaste for rubbish as such, but rather fear that such stuff might actually appeal to the mob. Oh, well!

In any case, it is a pleasure to have no occasion for annoyance on this score with Neocomrade A. H. Miller, at least.

The severe Millerite steelclaptrapness of mind does falter a little at the end, though. It would have been better to omit "Perhaps President Obama too will one day see the benefits of Israel eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat" and the paragraph that leads up to it.

Though I do not suppose the neocomrade himself pins any wishful thoughts on that passage, yet some of his weaker siblin’s might. That is to say, they may unreflectively turn "Someday Sam will perhaps admit that we were right to retaliate preëmptively" into "Eventually Sam must see that we were right, which means that it will all be OK with the Yanks in the long run, which means why not we go ahead this afternoon?" What began as a mere contingency of future fact for Neocomrade A. H. Miller himself would thus become a positive recommendation for the siblin’s -- and also become a wishful thought that they might conceivably not get their wish about.

Perfect Kirkegaardian purity of heart and steelclaptrapness of mind would therefore proclaim altogether unmistakably that "Israel eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat" is a good thing and will be a good thing forever, no matter who does or does not perceive the goodness of it before, during, or after the perpetration. [2]

But God knows best.

Happy days.


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[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200903u/netanyahu


[2] Is the neocomrade obliged to consider now what position the Tel Avîv pols would find themselves if they go ahead and bomb Natanz &c. this afternoon but subsequently find that Sam never does come to agree that they made the right choice?

This is a rather tricky question, it seems to me, and one that calls for protracted cogitation.

Off-hand my inclination is to say it depends on exactly what sort of goodness A. H. Miller attributes to his pet project -- is it an instrinsic goodness or only a goodness of collateral consequences?

Also it depends on how strictly or loosely he deploys the English verb "to eliminate" in formulatin’ it. If one single preëmptive retaliation ensures that there can never be another nuke-you-larry threat to Jewish Statism again, then obviously Sam and Sam’s Barák can be ignored with impunity. But is that scenario likely to be the real-world case? Myself, I kinda don’t think. Mais que sçay-je?

Finally, one must bear in mind that Sam’s reaction after the perpetration would not be an entirely independent variable. Doubtless the unmentionable W*lt and M**rsh**m*r have spoken of this aspect of such affairs in terms that are far too strong, but surely there would at least a small margin of adjustability, so to call it, after the fact. Within limits that we need not specify precisely at the moment, reaction at Washington would be an object of manipulation for Tel Avîv pols and weekly standardisers and common terrorisers et hoc genus omne.

Attaining unto 100% steelclaptrapness of mind and zero percent of sentimentality and wishful thinkimg becomes a very stiff challenge at this point, Mr. Bones. There are simply no adequate precedents to go by. The Osirak preëmptive retaliation is no doubt pertinent to some extent, but the difference in scale probably makes that extent tiny.

Kirkegaardian perfection would be possible, I think tentatively, only if one could predict the worst possible outcome with a reasonable degree of reliability and then decide that the A. H. Miller caper would be worthwhile even at that price. Unfortunately, such a calculation cannot be made. Or more exactly, I have not the faintest clue how to make it, despite reading hundreds of articles for and against Iran-bombin’. It looks as if nobody knows for sure.

Form trumps matter, the Master has taught us, Mr. Bones, and formally speaking, the upshot seems to be that steelclaptrapness of mind is stymied when it faces a sufficiently high level of uncertainty. But God knows best.