Petty fearmongering-R-US

Rat Spleen’s attempted fisking goes horribly awry:


It was bound to happen sooner or later. Vox has abandoned his principles and partaken of the koolaid quagmire of fearmongering and situational ethics. To wit:

Then again, if one considers how TV shows such as “Law and Order” see fit to preach that homeschooled children are malnourished and abused little freaks, it seems only reasonable to point out in like manner that public schooled children are brainwashed, quasi-illiterate savages, with targets painted on their chests to boot.

The finest situational ethics one could hope to uphold, and perfect delivery to boot. In no uncertain terms Vox should quit his luvrative writing career and pursue career advancement as a political advisor (truth and sarcasm at once). Look at the impeccable logic. The nuance. The spin. Because a TV show makes fautuos accusations, I will to… Nice glass house there Vox, perfect for nurutring the indoor greenery.

Of course, if my column was facetious, which its over-the-top language from beginning to end should have made perfectly obvious, Rat Spleen’s entire point about my abandonment of principle is incorrect. I was simply mocking the other side’s typical argumentation by using its methods. A tad below the belt? Probably. I found the whole thing quite amusing, myself.


The terrorists have raised the stakes once again, targeting children to demonstrate how much they envy our freedom or whatever highly implausible motivation the Bush administration is imputing to the enemy today.

Hi, ho Silver! Away! The Religion of Peace (TM) has only ever had one target – the most emotionally expedient. No stakes were raised. The world didn’t change on 9/11. It is as it always has been. Without a doubt, as someone with Vox’s impeccable knowledge of history and current affairs, knows children have always been on the buffet table. It is truly a shame to watch this great luminary of Truth fall afoul of his own damnations.

Nothing changed on 9/11? You’d better tell the entire punditocracy that, not to mention the “we are at war” crowd. Have we been giving up our civil liberties for nothing, then? The possibility of children being targeted has always been there, but the reality was that only Jewish children had hitherto been actively targeted. Breslan and the South Baghdad bombings demonstrated that this possibility had become an actuality. There is a difference.


I’m just curious to know what the FBI has concluded that an Iraqi man was doing with the information in the first place, given that it is so sure that the thought of attacking a school had not even begun to consider the merest possibility of thinking about the prospect of crossing the man’s mind. Perhaps it was an innocent coincidence, the gentleman simply happens to be in charge of crisis planning for the local madrassah and only wanted to be sure that its emergency plans were up to date and in line with those belonging to schools run by the Great Satan.

The final nail. (I believe this makes three – for the symmetry) This was public information you feckless dolt. What the heck were you doing with information on the wonders of war time production so recently? If you want to cry foul, cry foul at the fact that this information was public in the first place. In other words, suck it up and plainly state that the government should censor this information from the parents themselves – relieving them of full disclosure and input on the State’s for the children – or stuff it.

That’s nonsense, which Rat Spleen admits in the very next sentence that he does not believe. You have a perfect right to possess a butcher knife, but if you happen to possess a butcher knife while sneaking in your neighbor’s window, you will likely be charged with far more than simple breaking-and-entering, especially if you have previously announced that you want to kill him.


In truth, I believe in my paranoid core that this cavedweller had purchase of the information for nefarious purpose, but it is the height of ignorance to condemn him for perusing public documents. It is no less the equivalent than supposing that an Iraqi with a copy of the Bill of Rights in his possession was looking for ways to undermine it to his advantage in overthrowing the Great Satan.

It doesn’t mean you have to like the circumstance, but you have to acknowledge it with honesty. Doubly so, if you set yourself up as the paragon of The Truth and then engage in petty hysterical fearmongering. Three nails it is – the gauntlet is thrown – and your up on your cross, Pal. I hope you have enough integrity to state your position clearly – whether it be that of reason or of situational ethics.

My position on the public schools is quite clear. Liberate the students, demolish the buildings and send the teachers to Cuba. Perhaps if Rat Spleen’s ability to identify sarcasm and black humor was not as limited as his ability to utilize proper punctuation, he would have realized that my column last week was nothing more than a wake-up jab at public school parents in the vein of the notorious ode to the Yellow Bus of Doom.