re: #135 Varek Raith

And the today’s Pretentious Windbag Award goes to … me!

Here’s what I wrote last night, about Sarah Palin:

She’s a fad. It’s a variant of Rep. Bachmann’s “blood oath” nonsense. Or joining an organization called Oath Keepers - to take an oath, forswearing something you wouldn’t do anyway. “I solemnly swear I won’t stick a knitting needle in my ear, and push hard.”

The idea seems to be, that by collectively pretending that the woman is something she is manifestly not, a form of bonding occurs. The Perpetually Aggrieved Right will fasten upon her, until the next opportunity for obligatory suspension of disbelief comes along.

Portions of the so-called Left perform the same ritual with certain figures, such as Noam Chomsky. Let’s all pretend that the U.S. does whatever it does - it’s all bad, you know - for filthy lucre. This extends, insofar as I can tell, to pretending to believe in academic circles that his hypothetical, non-falsifiable, ever-expanding General Theory of Language with Explains Nothing is just … so … incredibly … deep. Three days after he’s dead, people will be falling all over themselves to disavow it. Like what happened with B. F. Skinner.

What’s my point? It’s this. There’s a thing going around. Today it affects the ranting right. The idea is to take an arguable point, and insist that it’s obviously true. Those who object “just don’t get it” - or worse. Today’s little spectacle is that we’re all supposed to line up and pretend that Revkin said some awful thing - he didn’t; and that R. Limbaugh is a misunderstood entertainer - misunderstanding him is a sign of possessing a weak character or “bias” or being an extremist, etc.

And this happens every day. Every day there’s some new horrible thought crime committed by “liberals,” “leftists” and other Unreal Americans. The thought crime is not lining up and dutifully regurgitating today’s party line.