Dear Dr. Bones,
Sticking as usual to the literary / rhetorical / agitprop[p]er side of the path to allow impatient wingnutettes an’ wingnuts to pass on their way to that funeral they seem always rushin’ to get to in time to make quite sure it can serve as their own, I put it to you, sir, that Don Ricardito de Fernández y Podhòretz throws away most Rio Limbaugh’s -- an’ especially its own -- more promisin’-lookin’ cards in this rubber.
Consider: (A) the Greater Levant and _la América Ibérico-Indocumentada_ are rather dreadfully like one unto another, now as much as ever, and (B) the _nuevoseñorito_’s Daddy, or perhaps its Daddy's Daddy, or . . . probably lived square under the yoke of John Quincy Monroe.
Even if there are no F&P family anecdotes left over from the Banana Grande period, little Ricky could appeal to public-domain fiestaware. ¿How about, say,
| Poor Egypt, ¡So far from Father Zeus, so near the Tel ’Avîv statelet! |
That Antiseemighty soundbark may seem nothing very special when this coarse and illiterate and semi-Pseltic keyboard clicks it forth, but -- comin’ straight from the armadillo’s kisser, as it were, ’twould sound very different, ¿_no es verdad_?.
Instead of which we get miscellaneous scraps--scraps , I presume, intended to insinuate that the verbal ragpicker might actually know a little somethin’ more ’bout overseas than most of the Party neocomrades-- that are entirely devoid of that heart-warmin’ an’ trust-cadgin’ cor local or regionalismo y nacionalismo which we, being Ice People, very naturally crave.
To be sure, little Ricky F&P has as much right to appropriate boilerplate claptrap like _Après moi, le déluge_ or "carry cole slaw to Newcastle" -- possibly even to the occasional little exuberance of Physics Envy like "some giant unseen gravitational source" -- as anybooby else. What we have here, though, is not a _Rechtsfrage_ nor even a _Machtfrage_, but a question of rhetorical technique. If the _nuevoseñorito_ was not aimin’ at the effect created -- the "rootless cosmopolitanism" effect -- then its competence is questionable.
If, however, you decide that the R. C. savour happened by neodesign, then kindly apply your figurative Y@@ T@@be to Don Jr.’s judgment and to the señoritoly taste.[*]
***
More substantively, . . .
Well, I much prefer to march into ‘substantively’ from a better jumping-off point than the brain-flat terrain around Pajama Junction NJ affords.
Still, it can't hurt to single out the passage in which Don Jr. comes closest to barkin’ somethin’ of real interest for the theory and practice of Native Management:
| >“In countries like Serbia and Ukraine direct and indirect U.S. aid helped youth driven opposition movements successfully oust repressive leaders by training them in non-violent civil disobedience, election organizing and other fundamentals of civil society.” [**] |
However, that sentence has quotation marks around it that make no sense as a solicitation to shudder or to sneer, so I guess the jackdaw [***] picked that scrap of flash up in a dumpster somewhere an’ pecked off the designer label.
"In my end is my beginning," for ’tis plainly an offense against Comp. Lit. rather than against Mil. Sci. thus to deploy unmarked dumb-dumb neobullets.
_Els desitjo dies feliços_ (like the Natives used to say to St. George Orwell, self-fetched from afar to do them Homage.)
--JHM
___
[*] Forget that silly proverb, please; nobody expects you to ‘dispute’ about or with so dubious a commodity as Party Neocomrade R. X. de Fernández y Podhòretz. All you need to do, sir, is CONDEMN.
Should you have forgotten how to do that less than civil trick, take two aspirins and fifteen minutes of Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh in aërial suspension. After that, the technique is bound to come back to you. Like cycling, "¡never apologize, never explain!" denigration, once mastered, is a skill that even Dr. Alzheimer can never deprive us of. Hardly ever.
[**] Though Ukrainia (_¿Quién?_) be more recent, mention of Serbia strikes me as especially good. So think about it carefully, please. Wink, wink; nod, nod.
[***] _"la gravilla" sive "Corbus monediva neoterrorica"_
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