Tuesday, December 06, 2005
There are many issues in the news today that have two legitimate sides. In fact, the vast majority of them do. It is a distinct effort for your humble Bitterharvest to find issues to talk about, not because they don’t abound, but simply because I don’t like to bloviate about what is a debatable issue. Should Tookie Williams live or die? What about the Pentagon covertly publishing stories in Iraqi newspapers?
There are many issues, however, where there are not two legitimate sides. The legitimacy of torture. The “liberal” media. Into these issues I wade with a bludgeon and rhetorically beat down and humiliate opponents, hoisting the corpses of their logical fallacies on a flagpole and staking the heads of their arguments next to the path to my city as a warning to all others who would dare to voice such noxious lies in public.
My latest victim had the temerity to repeat the lie of the So Called Liberal Media, a lie they have whipped every last scrap of mileage out of in order to bully the Main Stream Media into remaining silent in the face of ridiculous lies or categorizing such lies as “opinion.”
Historically, this may have worked, though the MSM has always been cowardly, introverted, and obsequious to those in power. Whipping the MSM for the Conservatives has always been, essentially, raising the pimp hand to beat down an already beat-down whore, just in case the bitch gets any delusions of running, tear-streaked and bruised, to the local police station to file charges and escape an endless life of slobbing the GOP knob for a ten-spot a turn.
Raising the pimp hand yet again is one David Gelernter, who will, this time, face a Progressive Party police raid, complete with a Rodney King-style beating and a rendition to a warped little country Outside the Spectrum where he will be rhetorically tortured and scarred forever.
David (I’m going through the Davids this week) had the courage to publish in the L.A. Times last week, a bastion of decency and excellent investigative reporting for many years now. I guess he’s necessary so there’s a balance between liberals and frothing-at-the-mouth-and-attacking-passerby conservatives, because God knows that’s so important.
From David’s putrid article:
That’s his thesis, kids. He puts it at the front of his paper, as all good sixth-graders learn. I hear that’s the reading level of most newspapers today. But on to the pith, if you will:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I’m sorry. I momentarily lost my mind at the sight of a paragraph with nearly more lies in it than words, a freakish little journey into a writhing, slimy, Lovecraftian world of tentacled, many-eyed, anciently malevolent squid-things seeking to subvert the very laws of time and space. Much like a GOP convention.
Whoooooo. Deep breath in. Hold. Exhale. It’s over. I’m back. Must deconstruct brain-destroying paragraph.
In the words of Ace Ventura “Re-heh-eally?” I suppose he’s right. The Wall Street Journal is a bastion of liberalism and has been for generations. The New York Times was so skeptical about the war that the administration couldn’t get its point across. The Washington Times, whew, we won’t go there. And my own Chicago Tribune, well, let’s just say that just because the editors routinely write conservative tripe that I lambaste in this blog doesn’t mean that they aren’t a citadel of dreadlocked, pot-smoking, dirty-assed, barefooted 60s refugees.
As far as the Big Three TV networks being liberal, well, I refer you to David Brock’s The Right Wing Noise Machine for the only use of actual, statistical studies to refute this shit. Shit, I might add, that Fucktard makes no effort to support with, you know, evidence.
Yes, he’s right. When Dave says conservatives invented, apparently, “blogs and other Web services, and cable TV and talk radio” who can argue with the obvious truth?
I beg to differ, idiot. Your scabrous kind will never be welcome in any institution that values reason and truth. If Dave wants to scurry off into a cyber-bolt hole and make a breeding warren with other damp, poisonous things that fear the light, fine. This, however, is a far cry from storming the world of light.
David is a very special person in the Inferno of Bitterharvest’s imagination. He’s got a two-fer today. This is because he is one of the crawling, wormy creatures that lair at The Weekly Standard, much like David Tell. The Weekly Standard is a truly unique hole of decency and cleanliness, a place where the most shameless arguments find a home, as I wrote yesterday. You see, Gelernter, as Tell, wrote a filthy little piece defending torture also.
Amazing. Vileness of this caliber is truly beyond offensive. It’s breathtaking. Let’s look at a selection from this work, shall we?
I’m disappointed in the Davids. Same first name, same rhetorical technique. Muddy the waters.
The real “trap for the lazy minded” is anything ever written and published in The Weekly Standard, as only the truly stupid or morally inbred could have the mental ability or motivation (respectively) to believe the unbelievable filth that this publication extrudes onto the American consciousness.
Translation: What are you going to believe, your own common sense or my tortured explanation? (Pardon the pun)
David wheels out Levin’s 1982 torture piece, and reading David explain this to me is insulting. I’ve taught Levin’s childishly simple defense of torture. I certainly don’t need some Weekly Standard thug explaining it to me.
The argument is simple: what if the government knows a terrorist knows the location of a nuke about to uncork in a populated area. He’s refusing to talk. Should we torture him? Of course, Levin argues, striking a blow for moral relativism and utilitarianism.
The depths of conservative hypocrisy revealed in this deserve explication. Levin was one of those philosophers Christian Conservatives love to hate. His kind of moral relativism was decried by the pope not too long ago. Born again fundies hate utilitarianism.
But David Gelernter is not a Fundy Conservative. He’s an East Coast Elite Conservative. His type doesn’t mix well with the unwashed masses they lead. He’s not born again. He’s probably an atheist. If he isn’t he sure argues like one. Jesus Christ wasn’t a moral relativist.
But Levin’s argument deserves refutation. It is a somewhat irritating argument. It’s like some smart-assed fifteen-year-old’s response to the Ten Commandments. “It must be OK to kill sometimes, right? God commands people to kill in the Old Testament! See, you don't have to follow the Ten Commandments!”
This is the difference between the spirit and the literal meaning of the language. Levin’s argument is flawed because the premise is flawed. The U.S. government essentially never knows what a terrorist knows. Usually, the U.S. government doesn’t even know whether or not a suspect is even a terrorist for sure. It is the rare exception when the military or CIA picks up a person they know is a terrorist with some command responsibilities. By “rare” I’m talking once a year.
Neither the U.S. nor any other nation on earth has ever faced a situation like Levin’s premise. It is an extrapolation of the most questionable kind to say that we will ever face this exact situation. As McCain himself has said, if, God forbid, we should ever face that situation, the President could authorize whatever he needed to and would take responsibility after the fact. If it averted a nuclear holocaust no one would care. He would be a hero.
Levin makes the same irritating mistake that many philosophers and economists do. They live in an airy world of ideas and mathematical models that frequently has little grounding in reality. To translate their intellectual constructs to a form that is actually efficacious you have to maul their model to such an extent that it rarely resembles its original form.
Gelernter, however, makes a mistake that is more than irritating. His adulterated argument against the McCain amendment pollutes utilitarianism with political cynicism, using a high-school argument to conceal the fact that everyone involved already knows that a singular exception could be overlooked. It is the practice of torture that Gelernter is working to defend, as he essentially says:
“Sometimes,” David? How frequently, hmmm? Whenever they suspect a captive has the needed information to avert a nuclear blast? How about when they think a suspect has information about someone who might have information about a suicide bomber who might kill a few dozen?
This is the kind of wanton use of torture the McCain Amendment is designed to avert.
Add David Gelernter’s name to the other apologists for Evil who infest the highest reaches of our government and media: David Tell, Allard (R-CO), Bond (R-MO), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Cornyn (R-TX), Inhofe (R-OK), Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL), Stevens (R-AK).
These names deserve repeating.
There are many issues, however, where there are not two legitimate sides. The legitimacy of torture. The “liberal” media. Into these issues I wade with a bludgeon and rhetorically beat down and humiliate opponents, hoisting the corpses of their logical fallacies on a flagpole and staking the heads of their arguments next to the path to my city as a warning to all others who would dare to voice such noxious lies in public.
My latest victim had the temerity to repeat the lie of the So Called Liberal Media, a lie they have whipped every last scrap of mileage out of in order to bully the Main Stream Media into remaining silent in the face of ridiculous lies or categorizing such lies as “opinion.”
Historically, this may have worked, though the MSM has always been cowardly, introverted, and obsequious to those in power. Whipping the MSM for the Conservatives has always been, essentially, raising the pimp hand to beat down an already beat-down whore, just in case the bitch gets any delusions of running, tear-streaked and bruised, to the local police station to file charges and escape an endless life of slobbing the GOP knob for a ten-spot a turn.
Raising the pimp hand yet again is one David Gelernter, who will, this time, face a Progressive Party police raid, complete with a Rodney King-style beating and a rendition to a warped little country Outside the Spectrum where he will be rhetorically tortured and scarred forever.
David (I’m going through the Davids this week) had the courage to publish in the L.A. Times last week, a bastion of decency and excellent investigative reporting for many years now. I guess he’s necessary so there’s a balance between liberals and frothing-at-the-mouth-and-attacking-passerby conservatives, because God knows that’s so important.
From David’s putrid article:
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, conservatives saw a country that was split about 50-50 between the left and the right, as it is today and will continue to be for a long time. But the country's main cultural institutions were nearly all liberal — making conservatives rage and despair. Things have now changed for the better, and technology has been the main enabler.
That’s his thesis, kids. He puts it at the front of his paper, as all good sixth-graders learn. I hear that’s the reading level of most newspapers today. But on to the pith, if you will:
Take the news. Most major newspapers and hundreds of local ones, as well as the Big Three TV networks, remain liberal bastions. But blogs and other Web services, and cable TV and talk radio, have expanded the news. Conservatives were unable to take over existing institutions, so they invented new ones using groundbreaking techniques.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I’m sorry. I momentarily lost my mind at the sight of a paragraph with nearly more lies in it than words, a freakish little journey into a writhing, slimy, Lovecraftian world of tentacled, many-eyed, anciently malevolent squid-things seeking to subvert the very laws of time and space. Much like a GOP convention.
Whoooooo. Deep breath in. Hold. Exhale. It’s over. I’m back. Must deconstruct brain-destroying paragraph.
Most major newspapers and hundreds of local ones, as well as the Big Three TV networks, remain liberal bastions.
In the words of Ace Ventura “Re-heh-eally?” I suppose he’s right. The Wall Street Journal is a bastion of liberalism and has been for generations. The New York Times was so skeptical about the war that the administration couldn’t get its point across. The Washington Times, whew, we won’t go there. And my own Chicago Tribune, well, let’s just say that just because the editors routinely write conservative tripe that I lambaste in this blog doesn’t mean that they aren’t a citadel of dreadlocked, pot-smoking, dirty-assed, barefooted 60s refugees.
As far as the Big Three TV networks being liberal, well, I refer you to David Brock’s The Right Wing Noise Machine for the only use of actual, statistical studies to refute this shit. Shit, I might add, that Fucktard makes no effort to support with, you know, evidence.
But blogs and other Web services, and cable TV and talk radio, have expanded the news. Conservatives were unable to take over existing institutions, so they invented new ones using groundbreaking techniques.
Yes, he’s right. When Dave says conservatives invented, apparently, “blogs and other Web services, and cable TV and talk radio” who can argue with the obvious truth?
Important conservative scholars are scattered all over the country, like rhinos in zoos. Most universities have one or two. But sometime soon, a conservative think tank will offer a new type of Web service. (I say so because it's inevitable, not because I have inside information.) This new service will help those professors create high-quality online courses so that lots of conservative scholars can come together for the first time, electronically. The result will be a cyber university that presents an integrated, conservative world view.
It only took a few smooth operators to reveal the vast, untapped market for conservative talk radio. The same thing will happen with conservative cyber universities. When it does, watch out. The culture war will no longer be a liberal walkover.
I beg to differ, idiot. Your scabrous kind will never be welcome in any institution that values reason and truth. If Dave wants to scurry off into a cyber-bolt hole and make a breeding warren with other damp, poisonous things that fear the light, fine. This, however, is a far cry from storming the world of light.
David is a very special person in the Inferno of Bitterharvest’s imagination. He’s got a two-fer today. This is because he is one of the crawling, wormy creatures that lair at The Weekly Standard, much like David Tell. The Weekly Standard is a truly unique hole of decency and cleanliness, a place where the most shameless arguments find a home, as I wrote yesterday. You see, Gelernter, as Tell, wrote a filthy little piece defending torture also.
Amazing. Vileness of this caliber is truly beyond offensive. It’s breathtaking. Let’s look at a selection from this work, shall we?
But of course you don't have to be "pro-torture" to oppose the McCain amendment. That naive misunderstanding summarizes the threat posed by this good-hearted, wrong-headed legislation. Those who oppose the amendment don't think the CIA should be permitted to use torture or other rough interrogation techniques. What they think is that sometimes the CIA should be required to squeeze the truth out of prisoners. Not because the CIA wants to torture people, but because it may be the only option we've got.
McCain's amendment is a trap for the lazy minded. Whenever a position seems so obvious that you don't even have to stop and think — stop and think.
I’m disappointed in the Davids. Same first name, same rhetorical technique. Muddy the waters.
The real “trap for the lazy minded” is anything ever written and published in The Weekly Standard, as only the truly stupid or morally inbred could have the mental ability or motivation (respectively) to believe the unbelievable filth that this publication extrudes onto the American consciousness.
Whenever a position seems so obvious that you don't even have to stop and think — stop and think.
Translation: What are you going to believe, your own common sense or my tortured explanation? (Pardon the pun)
David wheels out Levin’s 1982 torture piece, and reading David explain this to me is insulting. I’ve taught Levin’s childishly simple defense of torture. I certainly don’t need some Weekly Standard thug explaining it to me.
The argument is simple: what if the government knows a terrorist knows the location of a nuke about to uncork in a populated area. He’s refusing to talk. Should we torture him? Of course, Levin argues, striking a blow for moral relativism and utilitarianism.
The depths of conservative hypocrisy revealed in this deserve explication. Levin was one of those philosophers Christian Conservatives love to hate. His kind of moral relativism was decried by the pope not too long ago. Born again fundies hate utilitarianism.
But David Gelernter is not a Fundy Conservative. He’s an East Coast Elite Conservative. His type doesn’t mix well with the unwashed masses they lead. He’s not born again. He’s probably an atheist. If he isn’t he sure argues like one. Jesus Christ wasn’t a moral relativist.
But Levin’s argument deserves refutation. It is a somewhat irritating argument. It’s like some smart-assed fifteen-year-old’s response to the Ten Commandments. “It must be OK to kill sometimes, right? God commands people to kill in the Old Testament! See, you don't have to follow the Ten Commandments!”
This is the difference between the spirit and the literal meaning of the language. Levin’s argument is flawed because the premise is flawed. The U.S. government essentially never knows what a terrorist knows. Usually, the U.S. government doesn’t even know whether or not a suspect is even a terrorist for sure. It is the rare exception when the military or CIA picks up a person they know is a terrorist with some command responsibilities. By “rare” I’m talking once a year.
Neither the U.S. nor any other nation on earth has ever faced a situation like Levin’s premise. It is an extrapolation of the most questionable kind to say that we will ever face this exact situation. As McCain himself has said, if, God forbid, we should ever face that situation, the President could authorize whatever he needed to and would take responsibility after the fact. If it averted a nuclear holocaust no one would care. He would be a hero.
Levin makes the same irritating mistake that many philosophers and economists do. They live in an airy world of ideas and mathematical models that frequently has little grounding in reality. To translate their intellectual constructs to a form that is actually efficacious you have to maul their model to such an extent that it rarely resembles its original form.
Gelernter, however, makes a mistake that is more than irritating. His adulterated argument against the McCain amendment pollutes utilitarianism with political cynicism, using a high-school argument to conceal the fact that everyone involved already knows that a singular exception could be overlooked. It is the practice of torture that Gelernter is working to defend, as he essentially says:
…sometimes the CIA should be required to squeeze the truth out of prisoners. Not because the CIA wants to torture people, but because it may be the only option we've got.
“Sometimes,” David? How frequently, hmmm? Whenever they suspect a captive has the needed information to avert a nuclear blast? How about when they think a suspect has information about someone who might have information about a suicide bomber who might kill a few dozen?
This is the kind of wanton use of torture the McCain Amendment is designed to avert.
Add David Gelernter’s name to the other apologists for Evil who infest the highest reaches of our government and media: David Tell, Allard (R-CO), Bond (R-MO), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Cornyn (R-TX), Inhofe (R-OK), Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL), Stevens (R-AK).
These names deserve repeating.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 8:17 PM 
