Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Gary Kamiya: The Real Lessons of 9/11

This, to which AbjectFunk directs me, is mightily worth a read.

I don't agree with everything in it--and, in fact, my eyes roll heavenward whenever somebody comes close to talking "gender studies" gobbledygook, as Kamiya comes close to doing at one point. But overall, I think he's hitting the nail pretty much on the head.

I appreciated--painful as it was--Kamiya's clear, poignant statement of the relevant facts: the Bush administration has shamelessly used 9/11 to appeal to our worst instincts as a nation, and used them to lead us into something very much like a disaster.

If your liberal instincts are like mine, you think that you can reason with anyone. Consequently, you can easily be led into discussions in which you will find yourself acting and speaking as if defenses of the administration's actions since 9/11 are sane and serious. But they are not. An insane, nightmarish, farcical error is still an insane, nightmarish, farcical error, even if a million bloggers spend a million years creating a million baroque arguments to the contrary and confidently asserting their conclusions. It's scary, in fact, how easy it is to find people who will passionately defend the indefensible, and scary how easily such people can skew the center of gravity of a discussion. Enough passionate defenders, and even the flat Earth theory gains a veneer of respectability.

Anyway, read Kamiya's piece to remind yourself that madness is, in fact, madness, and not another thing.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Winston,

Probably more appropriately posted on your post about Dartmouth, but nevertheless here is a tale of PC polluting the academy (that's Political Conservatism):

http://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2007/09/new-uc-irvine-l.html

9:29 PM  
Blogger Tom Van Dyke said...

The chattering class of the right is up in arms about this, in defense of Prof. Chemerinsky.

Interesting.

10:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You took away a different (a more astute, although more depressing) message than I did.

The ways we (I include myself) can be manipulated, and how things can just get out of control is truly frightening. Sometimes its planned, but no evil genius could have dreamed this up...group think and common wisdom take on a scary, scary life of their own over time.

In any event, thanks for the comments. As my boss often says "It's not a conspiracy. It's stupidity." It is sad to realize how true this analysis often is.

Have a good one.

11:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great, so those chattering classes of the right can heap deserving opprobrium on whomever put the screws to UCI to reverse its decision when it comes out who it was.

2:21 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

Is it...because the right is so much more intellectually honest than the left?

4:04 PM  

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