Name that Decimation! II

You could even girdle your selfishness in plaid, if you had the moral capital to pay for it. Image from Vintage Dancer.

We dumped Brooks ("How to Repair Moral Capital") this morning just as he was throwing down the gauntlet personally to me, to get some names rectified:

It’s becoming ever clearer that the nation’s moral capital is being decimated, and the urgent challenge is to name that decimation and reverse it.

I think I'll name it "Howard", after Howard Kurtz. Or maybe "Radical Islamic Terrorism".

But seriously, folks, before I jump into naming stuff, can I ask what "moral capital" is? Because it puts me in mind of a society in which most people are allotted just the amount of moral value they need to stay alive, while a fortunate few are able to accumulate tons of surplus moral value, which they can invest into creating still more.

Joe Did What? Signs of Spring

I can't fault the movement in Michigan's Democratic primary tomorrow, mostly I think of Arab Americans but also of other Muslim and/or Black and/or young people, to vote for uncommitted delegates instead of the Biden slate, in protest against Biden's perceived lean toward Israel in the Gaza conflict—I mean, I can and will complain that they're reading Biden wrong, but I think it's right for them to communicate the distress on behalf of the Palestinians in Palestine as well as the Palestinians in Dearborn.

We've been told repeatedly, and rightly, about how traumatized Israelis have been by the horrible events of October 7, but I'm not sure how much the broader US public is getting on what's been happening to Arabs in Gaza and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank since October 8, but the number of killed in Gaza is now approaching 30,000, that's well over one out of every 100 people, not to mention those starving and killed by the lack of medical care and polluted drinking water.

The 1200 dead of October 7 were killed in unspeakably disgusting ways. I don't usually use the term "barbaric" because I think it's unfair to barbarians to suggest they are somehow similar to Colonel Chivington's force at the Sand Creek Massacre of around 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho people in 1864

Return of the Stupid Shit Caucus (like they went somewhere?)

Agnes Ayres and Rudolph Valentino in George Melford's The Sheik (1921).

Verbatim David Brooks, "When ISIS rapists win", August 28 2015:

President Obama has said that ISIS stands for nothing but savagery. That’s clearly incorrect.

Aw, Mom, do I have to?

OK, OK, incorrect in what sense? What are you, Politifact? By what metric would you determine the truth or falsity of that statement?

And by the way when did Obama say it? You put a link there as if to lead us to your source, but it just leads to the Times Obama Navigator page, and a search button whose closest result is your column today.

FBI director James Comey has called the Da'esh forces "savages", White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough has said that their killings show they "stand for nothing" tout court. Secretary of State John Kerry called the killing of Stephen Sotloff "an act of of medieval savagery by a coward hiding behind a mask."  At the United Nations last September, Obama must have been referencing the Da'esh indirectly as the contrast when he told young Muslims, "You come from a great tradition that stands for education, not ignorance; innovation, not destruction; the dignity of life, not murder." But that's as close as it comes.

He has used "barbaric" in association with a "nothing but" account:

The Epistle of Brooks to the Philistians

World-famous moderate leftist David Brooks out to troll his friends in the Twilight Zone! I don't think we've seen him doing that since Romney was running for president.

Henri Balland's smoked haddock (I think) from Le Boeuf d'Argent, Lyon.

Shorter David Brooks, "The Next Culture War", New York Times, June 30 2015:

I fully understand the pain and despair you guys must be going through as orthodox Christianity vanishes from our society, but a Benedict Option of the kind proposed by Rod Dreher where you all withdraw from the world to contemplate the Last Days in prayer and anguish might not be the best way to go from the political standpoint. Why don't you make use of all that selfless love and commitment like my homegirl Dorothy Day, serving the poor in the urban jungle?

Not a bad idea at all, especially since Dreher's Benedict idea seems to involve leaving the prayer and anguish to the wives, while he and his bros console themselves with the haute gastronomie at the Boeuf d'Argent and the Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, as we learned from Edroso last week. Because let's face it, nothing says martyrdom quite like a Nénuphar de Noix de Saint Jacques Marinés à l'Huile d'Olive d'Italie, plongées dans la Fraîcheur de la Verveine, or maybe Fraîcheur du Haddock Fumé aux herbes de Printemps, senteur de Vinaigre de Mangue et Huile d’Olive Vierge d’Italie for starters.

What are bad writers for?

Roy Edroso has been inviting us to savor the writing of James Poulos, at the Daily Caller, on the topic of "What are Women For?", a question you may never have asked yourself.

Witches at work. From A Blurred History.

Thers, whose opinions I normally revere, insists for some reason that James Poulos does not truly deserve to be called the worst writer on this or any other Internet (his italics); he thinks [jump]

All the fault of those liberal Iraqis. Redux.

Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (George Melford, 1921).

Taking advice from David Brooks on Iraq, obviously, is like taking advice from Elizabeth Taylor on keeping your marriage stable. No, wait, that's cheap, Taylor never went around posing as an expert; make that taking advice from David Brooks on keeping your marriage stable. Or on anything.

Today he goes back to a theme he first broached a year ago, that the regime installed in Iraq by the Bush administration is just too damn big-government liberal, with its insistence on centralized decision-making, and what they need is some of that federalism (meaning, as ever, anti-federalism). This time he seems to have been spurred by a report in yesterday's Times noting how the Da'esh organization in Syria exploits the rage of the Sunni majority against the Assad regime to make itself an acceptable alternative:

What are bad writers for? (addendum)

While I was preparing my effusions on the literary efforts of James Poulos, I was not alone. Hordes of bloggists leapt at Poulos's text like hounds on the umbles (actually, no; the hounds get random bits of flesh, which might be a better metaphor anyway, while the umbles are reserved for the servants, baked into umble pie; but I digress); in addition to the links given in the earlier post I should mention TBogg, SEK, Betty Cracker, and Rich Yeselson. But the most startling approach is undoubtedly that of Doctor Habilitatissimus Michael Bérubé, who laid down a claim that Poulos's writing is not merely not bad but actually in some sense—well, extraordinary; "modern," he says, "perhaps on the very cusp of the post-modern," citing as evidence the following text:

to the growing discomfort of many, that framework hasn’t come anywhere close to answering even the most basic questions about what women are for — despite pretty much universal recognition across the political spectrum that a civilization of men, for men, and by men is no civilization at all, a monstrously barbaric, bloody, and brutal enterprise. Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua [jump]

It's Retroactionary Tuesday!

Updated 10/15/2014

Image by The Daily What, via Slashfilm.

Shorter David Brooks, "The Sorting Election", New York Times, 14 October 2014:

I mean which do you prefer, the Bay Area and the quaint old backward-looking, high-regulation, walkable-neighborhood broccoli information economy of the 1990s, or Houston and the hot new forward-driving, petroleum-stained, big-freedom raw-meat energy economy of the 1980s? The country's big enough for the both of them, right?

He's in his highest-gloss nonpartisan just-sayin' mode today, calling forth wonderful peals of invective from Driftglass, who can be driven very nearly insane by that "who, me, conservative? Why I'm just an innocent bystander" pose, and the faux-barbaric yawp coming from someone who until recently believed Applebee's had a salad bar:

The Mongrel Horde

I'm having some trouble getting a grip on David Brooks's point today.

Over the past few decades, American society has been transformed in a fit of absence of mind.

Perhaps he means into a fit of absence of mind. No? [jump]

Tyrone Power in Sign of Zorro, 1940. Via Patchary's Blog.

Annals of Derp: The Paul Popenoe Story

The early ‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?’ columns have an unpleasant chiding tone. Popenoe, along with his organisation’s marriage counsellors, thought of female clients as unrealistic babies: immature, and expecting too much glitz from their marriages. There was a strong element of intergenerational critique in their counsel – a sense that young women were seduced by popular culture, and hopelessly unable to ‘keep house’ and make sacrifices. ‘Don’t expect too much romance,’ Popenoe’s counsellors said over and over again. In treating ‘Ralph’ and ‘Alice’ (February 1953), a young couple who had four children in the space of five years, the counsellor wrote that Alice needed to be convinced to stop ‘nagging’ her husband for affection: ‘Ralph’s way of pronouncing his love was not in extravagant speech but in coming home to her and the children, and displaying his willingness – indeed, his determination – to support them.’ The happy ending was for her to provide: ‘When Alice recognised this fact and acknowledged that the language of courtship and juvenile dreams is seldom the language of marriage, she started keeping household accounts and padlocking her tongue.’ (via Aeon, illustration from Redbook.)

I was kind of thinking I'd take a bye on Dinesh D'Souza's newly emitted project, The Big Lie (from Regnery, already getting remaindered at $4.95 five days after publication!), aimed at persuading us that Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism was too mild, because Jonah left out the important bit about how liberals are also Nazis, which isn't how I remembered it, but this tweet kind of called out to me to find out what it was about.

Progressive eugenicist Paul Popenoe--associate of Margaret Sanger--gave Nazis the idea for "lethal chambers" to kill the disabled & unwanted pic.twitter.com/iAjfVrOFvH

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) August 12, 2017

Question to Radio Yerevan: Is it true that the progressive eugenicist Paul Popenoe, an associate of the birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, gave the German Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei the idea of "lethal chambers" for killing the disabled and unwanted?

Answer: It's incredible how much wrong D'Souza can pack into 21 words.

What do you mean by "target"?

Image via CNN.

Well, that didn't take long. From BuzzFeed:

Zigmond Post, who told BuzzFeed News he was a neighbor of Dear’s in Hartsel, said the man once gave him anti-Obama pamphlets.

Post said he once went to Dear’s home to retrieve two dogs that had gotten loose. “We were there for a minute and the guy was already handing us anti-Obama pamphlets,” he said. According to Post, Dear said “Obama was ruining the country and needed to be impeached.”

But this certainly has no direct bearing on the question of whether Robert Dear was "targeting Planned Parenthood" when he shot his way (legally open-carrying an AK-47) into a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and killed three people and wounded many more once he got inside. Surely there are lots of Obama haters who couldn't care less about Planned Parenthood. Or used to be, anyway, before a few months ago, right? Along the lines of that guy who called them

Literary Corner: Have You Herd?

 

Protective Glow

by Donald J. Trump

I

It seems like I’m immune,
so I can go way out of a basement,
which I would have done anyway.

The president is in very good shape
to fight the battles.
I beat this crazy horrible China virus…

II

I passed the highest test,
the highest standards,
and I’m in great shape.

And I have to tell you I feel fantastically.
I really feel good.

Maybe a long time, maybe a short time.
It could be a lifetime.
Nobody really knows, but I’m immune.

III

I even feel good by the fact that, you know,
the word ‘immunity’ means something.
Having really a protective glow means something.

I think it’s very important to have that.
To have that is a very important thing.

Maybe a long time, maybe a short time.
It could be a lifetime.
Nobody really knows, but I’m immune.

I too feel good by the fact that "immunity" means something. I've always been attached to the idea of words having meaning. But "protective glow" may be taking it a little too far.