Call me Hunter. Some years ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me...
I always told myself that if I were to give up blogging, or take up blogging more fully, or abandon politics forever, or embrace it as a permanent cloak, or do anything of significance at all on this disturbing and rapidly spinning planet, that would be the text I would someday use to explain my decision. I will confess that Moby Dick, though initially read on the half-serious smirking dare of a high school English teacher, is one of my favorite works, beside half of anything by Twain, and anything by Kipling twice-over. Yes, I am one of those kind of people.
And if the book itself opens a window to some of the best and worst truths of the world, that single opening paragraph describes, at one point or another, the truth of any human worth speaking to, in their times of high exasperation. It describes my frantic flight from Los Angeles to the wilds; it describes my flight from the fields of science to the fields of not-science; it describes my flight from organized religion, as a teen. It describes battles with depression, and battles of conscience.
If all of that sounds like very big philosophizing to encumber a considerably smaller and self-describedly insignificant man, you would not be wrong. I am not a titan of journalism masquerading behind an anonymous mask, or a political strategist seeking contracts, or anyone of any note or passing consequence. I have been blessed, for the moment, with a small voice, and it remains a marvel to me that it is heard, and alarming to me when it echoes in even the smallest of ways. And this site, particularly, is a voice that is heard -- in tiny, tiny ways. Journalists have let me know they read it; words I have used have appeared in small public places, in small public ways; stories that have started here, or more correctly have wound up here, have shot off again like rockets to parts known and unknown. It is both a very small thing, and a very large thing.
And yet the futility of it all is downright taunting, when it comes right down to it. The world is a large, large place, and ripples will not change its course, though the occasional tsunami makes it wobble slightly. There are days, like today, when I wonder at the landscape, and imagine the whole besotted world to be dashed up against the rocks, and wonder if any of us will ever gain our bearings again.
I should not visit right-wing websites. I should not, and yet I do it, every damn time, like the stupidest hamster in the maze. I wander into room upon room of self-proclaimed Algernons of the Internet, and it does nothing but convince me of the futility of the very arguments. [And no, J.C., I am
not referring to your site. -- H] There are, among the people of this country, seemingly no points of agreement worth having. The mere laughable premise of "battles" on the Internet is, to reclaim a word now shuttered away from its original use, deeply retarded.
We are, in this country, honestly debating the use of torture. Not as interrogative tool, since it has been declared ineffective ten times over, by this point, but by the more sanguine declaration that "they", for whatever ever-expanding definition of "they" we are now using, which now includes not just terrorists, but taxi drivers, men turned over in corrupted per-head bounty schemes, children, and literally anyone within the borders of Iraq, deserve it.
We are told, in this country, that we went to war because we are "saving the Iraqi people", despite televised speeches and interviews in which saving them was mentioned as merely a tick on the larger dog of what official after official declared proudly as preemptive war. And we are told this most eagerly by the same sites that refer to them as sand niggers, and cite post after post as evidence that so long as an Arab exists in this world, the United States is in danger from them.
We are told, in this country, that the notion itself of preemptive war is now redeemable from the foul ranks of those throughout history that have made similar darkling, guttural croaks.
We are, in this country, faced with credible reports of one hundred thousand Iraqi civilian deaths, in this war, and even among those that will entertain the notion of those numbers -- or even half those numbers -- we are left to debate what I can only describe as the Saddam Coefficient -- whether or not those deaths can be justified, regardless of incident or dark disposition, so long as they do not touch the magic number where Saddam would be worse.
We are told, to this day, that Saddam had a hand in 9/11. To this very day. There are entire legions that believe it. Legions beside them, to assert that the administration implied no such thing. Legions beside them, to shout that he would have, which is identical to did. Legions beside them, again, who say did.
And we are told all of this by men and women of supposed deep and binding religion. Christians all, to hear tell.
Christian preachers musing over assassination as passing quips.
An entire nation of Christians, burying their crosses under ever-deepening piles, page after page on each pile listing the hated, and the enemy, and the condemned.
That last one, at least, is no change.
Against all of this, then, the more passing insults to common sense, the niggling and moronic things blogs usually follow as if watching wandering moths diving into a flame, seem positively inane and pointless.
Jonah Goldberg?
BEHOLD: We have entered the Age When Dinos and Rinos Rule the Earth. See them battle each other for absolute dominion!
Though this might sound like a cool monster mash of the "Mechagodzilla versus Godzilla" variety, it's a good deal less exciting and more depressing, like a taste test between 2% milk and soy milk.
I simply can't even critique that. It's in one of the leading newspapers of this country, as an editorial opinion, and it sounds like a middling example of some high schooler's SAT essay, or some high school teacher's hidden bane, one pinprick out of thirty per day in every such teacher's wounded heart. Dear sweet Jesus, I can even see it being read aloud at the head of the class.
Powerline?
It's an interesting question why "leaders" of pretty much any group, defined as Pew instinctively (and not necessarily unreasonably) thinks of them, will turn out to be liberals. Pew didn't survey lawyers, but if it had, it no doubt would have talked to officers of the American Bar Association. Had it done so, it would have concluded that American's lawyers are even more antiwar than its engineers. And the results would have been little different, I'm sure, if Pew had selected officers of the American Medical Association as representative leaders of the medical profession.
Why are "leaders" so predictably liberal? I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with O'Sullivan's Law, promulgated years ago by John O'Sullivan, the former editor of National Review: All organizations that are not self-consciously conservative become liberal over time.
It's so painful, it burns. Perhaps "leaders of any group will turn out to be liberals" is indeed true, and perhaps there are a hundred perfect reasons for it to be true that are not part of an insidious secret plot by All Those That Oppose Us. Jesus McCracker McBain, it has been shown time and time again that liberalism is directly correlated to knowledge. I'm going to tattoo it onto my forehead, or paint it on my car: It's not a conspiracy, you're just stupid.
All organizations that are not self-consciously conservative become liberal over time? I'm willing to accept it as basic fact, even considering the source, for the same reason that all organizations not specifically founded to crap in their own hands tend to shy away from crapping in their own hands, and all those organizations not specifically founded to promote man-boy love tend to trend away from the practice as a matter of course.
Or maybe, just maybe, what is being called rampant liberalism is merely the natural inclination towards progress over time displayed by all but those specifically and preternaturally disposed to oppose it at every turn.
Pajamas Media? Previously known as Springtime for Hitler, previously known as OSM, previously known as Open Source Media, previously known as Pajamas Media, previously known as Several Frothing Racists Plus A Dozen People Who Don't Mind Hanging Out With Racists... I'm at a loss. I'm at a complete loss to determine how the media will be transformed by linking to media reports and opining on them. We have that now. We have that by the bucketful, the poundful, the cartful, and the stomachful. We had that, in somewhat drunken form, in bars across the country dating back to the first time when some enterprising bar owner posted newspaper sheets above the urinals to give sorry, drunken sots something to look at other than their own alcohol-shrunken manhood. And so in the spirit of the holiday I am thankful that James Wolcott and Roger Ailes and TBogg are on the case for me and in spite of me; they have surely saved my life.
And all of it, all of the insults both large and small, point to a time when there is simply no rational basis for argument, or fundamental rock of even the smallest agreement, or one leader among hundreds who can possibly take the wheel, because there is no "wheel" -- of objective fact, of unquestionable source, of deeply held principle -- to take. We are a divided country, and we are divided for very good reasons, and we will, apparently, remain divided, and there is no website, or newspaper, or leader, or partisan hack, or luminous expert, or sodden git, or secret plan, or political operation, or Truth of God that will mend the breach.
We simply do not believe the same truths anymore. And I, for one, have no patience left. With every injury, passing or substantial, deserved or unexpected, on the Bush administration -- which is, to hear tell of it, our everlasting bane, and their savior -- the Algernons revert more and more into descending, primal states. And I, in truth, among them.
I have no patience for this nonsense. I do not wish to know any person not exasperated by these times, or any man that will defend them. I do not wish to discuss morality with fans of addicts, or legality with clans led by criminals, or intellectual conundrums with wandering herds of thundering morons.
I will say it with pride, in case I were to die in the night and leave it unsaid, and if necessary I will make it my epitaph:
George W. Bush is simply an idiot, an incompetent, and a hollow fart of a man. He's not deceiving us all by doing the exact wrong thing at every opportunity in some sort of master plan revealed only to the Chosen People.
The Iraq War was Wrong.
You are not Christians.
This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. I cannot even contemplate what awaits us next.