In the Middle Ages, at least the flagellants used to use real whips on themselves; at least they provided non-participants with an entertaining spectacle. Modern day wielders of the holy scourge prefer to take the leather strap to others rather than themselves. Today's target is Americans -- excepting, of course, those citizens of that nation who have Removed Their Blindfolds™ and have therefore been able to see The Truth™ that the rest of us still deny:
We subscribe to nothing. We have no attention span, no sense of history, no sense of posterity.
Arrogant, indifferent, disconnected, aimless, self-absorbed, our lives are arranged around familiar pastimes ... and the occasional search for new pastimes.
Can you feel the love? Favorite quote from the comment thread, from someone fakenamed 'M. Aurelius': "Imagine, a nice warm cup of coffee in one hand, and in the other a joystick with a trigger being pulled to send hot metal shrapnel through the bodies of little brown people half a world away."
I'm not sure that the original M. Aurelius would have put it that way.
(Via Marduk's Babylonian Musings.)
Posted by Andrea Harris at July 27, 2003 09:39 PM"We subscribe to nothing. We have no attention span, no sense of history, no sense of posterity."
Agreed. That's what makes you idiots.
The rest of us can pay attention, respect history, and care about the world our children will inherit.
Posted by: Ken Summers at July 27, 2003 at 11:45 PMI've noticed, in my perambulations around the internet, that many posters of the Left will say the most remarkable things and ascribe it to history.
"h" at Anti-idiotarian Rottweiler, frex, claimed that guerilla movements always won since the 1950s.
Some feller at Little Green Footballs claimed that the Israelis learned urban warfare tactics from the Nazis, and specifically from the Warsaw Ghetto.
And Lord knows how many times Vietnam, and even Tet'68, is cited as an example of guerilla victories and American defeats.
Military history, in particular, is clearly beyond these people, other than a few (often mistaken) events that are parrotted.
In this regard, I'm not sure conservatives, by and large, are necessarily better? But the number of outright laughable mistakes seem to be more from the Left than the Right.
But when you CITE the history to them (sometimes even providing references), there's never a response. I can't tell if they read the corrections and note them, or just ignore them.
Posted by: Dean at July 28, 2003 at 01:01 PM