« Boots on the ground | Main | Stalinism: Not what it used to be »

Groupthink

By Al Schumann on Wednesday March 30, 2011 10:35 PM

Cruise missile liberals are willing to concede that bombing and shooting people requires supplies of munitions. They understand that the supplies of munitions come from companies that politick against the cruise missile liberals' favored domestic policies. They understand the process that gives money to the suppliers of munitions. They even understand that some of the money will be used to politick against them, that none of the money will be used for their benefit and that their advocacy for war is effectively advocacy for increases in the amount of money given to suppliers of munitions. However they bristle at the suggestion that they're fundamentally the same as the bumper sticker patriot, peckerwood jingoist Republicans, who also do everything humanly possible to sink themselves into squalor, and they meet any suggestion to that effect with accusations of groupthink.

The suggestion that they're fundamentally the same as the bumper sticker patriot, peckerwood jingoist Republicans is unfair. They're not. The bumper sticker patriots only get enthusiastic for wars started by Republicans. The cruise missile liberals maintain an impeccable, non-partisan consistency: any war will do.

Comments (12)

Al Schumann:

Thanks, Jack. To be as ruthlessly fair as possible, a tiny percentage of the Herd of Independent Minds will see some vulgar benefit from its cruise missile love. The other 99-plus percent has to be content with the moral satisfaction of cheap vigilantism. And the bumper sticker patriots also catch a smidgen of trickle down. A few thousands will hang on to jobs that put complex solvents in their groundwater.

op:

listen Al
as my daughter suggested to me on d day
of libya :"rescue by cruiser "

"hey those tomahawks were reaching
self life dead lines...good moment for a fire off ..i bet a few of em were just squibs and
at best fire works anyways "

just like green-cos and your local
food co op
the hi tech munitions industry
has its sales pinch and big nut night mares not to mention budget contraints on innovation
and beyond that something you
share the wealth types don't face

a demanding
widow and orphan enforced
bottom line too

Al,

Your going to love this, then:

http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/

(Discovered courtesy of Seaton)

By the way, "complex solvents" was an "ahah!" trigger. Thank you for that.

Al Schumann:

Owen, I'm afraid groupthink kept me from considering their vicissitudes. And to think, all this stuff about "demand side", typed on these very pages, yet no one spoke up for the implicit demand side of people who need to be bombed.

You'd think at my age I'd be able to proof the difference between "your" and "you're" before I hit "submit."

Brian M:

I am dumb...what did "complex solvents" refer to? Help me out, guys!

Al Schumann:

Jack, the doublethink of the cruise missile humanitarians reminds me of IOZ's observation that "humanitarian" and "vegetarian" carry related gustatory freight.

Al Schumann:

Brian, the manufacture and maintenance of sophisticated weapons uses lots of persistent organic solvents, like benzene.

sk:

How about them Cruise Missile Marxists? Drawing Talmudic distinctions in Lenin's screeds and subsequent Trotskyist disputation can lead to imbecility on the grand scale.

...persistent organic solvents, like benzene.

And some of them are persistently teratogenic and/or carcinogenic, eh Al?

Al Schumann:

sk, the term "useful idiot" is appropriate. There's a breed of Red that can't bear a life of always coming up short. They want to win—so badly that anything that looks like being on the winning side becomes good enough.

Charles, the outcome is so awful that I feel deeply sorry even for those who do it to themselves. I'd feel that way if it were restricted to them alone. Some punishments go too far.

Post a comment

Note also that comments with three or more links may be held for "moderation" -- a strange term to apply to the ghost in this blog's machine. Seems to be a hard-coded limitation of the blog software, unfortunately.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Wednesday March 30, 2011 10:35 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Boots on the ground.

The next post in this blog is Stalinism: Not what it used to be.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.31