I finally figured it out: Being ass stupid is addictive. No, really, trust me on this. They key feature of addiction is the compulsion to continue behaviors despite severely adverse life outcomes. Usually, addiction refers to compulsive behaviors surrounding drug abuse, gambling, or sex, behaviors that consistently arouse and reinforce central "wanting" pathways. Although the addictive behavior usually also begins by arousing "liking" and "pleasure" pathways, at some point, liking and pleasure can completely fade away, leaving only persistently recurrent states of pure wanting. An alcoholic, for example, may lose his job, health, marriage, family, self-respect, engage in completely unnecessary violence, get in trouble with the law, and so forth, all self-admittedly due to excessive drinking that is no longer even pleasurable, but the compulsion to drink remains as strong as ever, despite the plethora of adverse, and worsening outcomes
Likewise, wingnuts appear to be addicted to the stupid. After years and years of self-defeating behaviors—carelessly ignoring pre-9/11 warnings, heedlessly starting war in Afghanistan, criminally starting war in Iraq, negligently ignoring Katrina warnings, and recklessly destroying the global economy in high-risk gambling-- they continue to feel compelled to engage in high-risk, sensation-seeking, and dangerous binges. For example, take their reactions to the recent terrorist activity in Mumbai.
Despite the cosmic disaster that has been the Bush administration’s wild-eyed responses to crises, Mumbai caused Victor Davis Hanson’s relapse into stupid faster than Bush could down his Pisco Sour.
There are a number of things to take away from the Mumbai atrocities.
First was the welcome re-emergence of concerned discussion of the dangers of global Islamist violence. President Bush apparently was not fabricating a global terrorist bogeyman - as was sometimes alleged over the last years of calm - when he sought support for his war in Iraq and domestic security measures.
In fact, caricatured efforts like the Patriot Act, the FISA accords, the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, the fostering of Middle East constitutional government, and the killing of violent insurgents abroad in Afghanistan and Iraq might seem once again understandable in the context of preventing another major violent terrorist attack of the sort we just saw at Mumbai.
It is by now well understood that there are multiple paths to relapse in addictive behavior. In Hanson’s case, it appears that the terrorist activity acted like a euphoric priming dose of cocaine in a rat that had formerly extinguished its lever-pressing when the cocaine was no longer available, but is now back on that lever full-time at asymptotic responding.
Stress is another well-known pathway to reinstatement of addictive behaviors. A rat that has ceased responding on a lever that no longer produces intracranial injections of drugs can be reliably caused to lever-press robustly again simply by giving it a single foot-shock. In the case of Ben Shapiro, it seems that the Mumbai electrode was attached directly to his testicles:
So enough. No more empty talk. No more idle promises. No more happy ignorance, half measures, or appeasement-minded platitudes. The time for hard-nosed, uncompromising action hasn't merely come — it's been overdue by seven years. The voice of our brothers' blood cries out from the ground.
Read the whole "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" thing. You’ll clearly see a man who after wrapping his car around the light-pole and prior to resisting arrest, goes all Bjarney of Hof on any innocent bystander who rushes to his aid. For Ben, the thrill is gone, but the binges continue.
To round things out, I give you the conflated, obsessive-compulsive ideations of Roger Simon:
Does Mumbai give the Israelis license to bomb Iranian nuclear installations? That thought certainly want [sic] through my head in the last few days. And I imagine I am not the only one.
Yes, Mumbai gives Israelis the license to bomb Iran in the same way that the WalMart trampling gives me license to throw Molotov cocktails at Sears Roebuck. That thought certainly went through my head. And I imagine that I am Daffy Duck. I’m not advocating the "Barbara Ann" solution, but suffering succotash, you gotta admit that’s one catchy riff bomping around on my auditory cortex.
Without even establishing the evidence around the Mumbai attacks, and regardless of the consequences and adverse outcomes of previously lashing out blindly and violently, these guys inexorably want to lash out blindly and violently. It is, by definition, an addiction to stupid.