July 28, 2006
Screedblog Has it ALL!!!
James Lileks is one of the more popular bloggers out there, and with damned good reason. I love his blogging on matchbooks, his uncanny ability to find illustrations from the golden age of advertising in the 50's and his ability to nail down a good and popular screed. This one in particular is awesome:
The energetic head of the DNC had this to say:“If you think what’s going on in the Middle East today would be going on if the Democrats were in control, it wouldn’t, because we would have worked day after day after day to make sure we didn’t get where we are today. We would have had the moral authority that Bill Clinton had when brought together the Israelis and the Palestinians.â€
The problem with Moral Authority is its antonym, the Palestinian Authority. Does Dean mean the Oslo accords? President Clinton had been in office less than a year. There‘s a reason they’re not the Little Rock Accords: Norwegian diplomats did all the heavy lifting. (Specifically, suspending disbelief about Arafat’s motives, which can throw your back out if you’re not careful.) Does Dean mean the Camp David negotiations, which ended in the bloody second intifada? Details, details. Moral authority, that’s what counts. Doesn’t stop wars, but it makes the bad guys look extra guilty. Ingrates!
Be sure and read the whole thing here
Here again the belief that because it would be better if something other than war worked, therefore something other than war does work. With a complete lack of evidence (for the simple reason that history cannot be replayed with different variables), Dean knows that Something Else, so long as there was a lot of it and people really, really worked hard, would have brought peace.
Moral Authority is sort of like "intangibles" in sports. It sounds like it's everything if you listen to its proponents long enough.
I'd rather have an RBI man, myself.
Posted by Assistant Village Idiot at July 30, 2006 05:46 PM
