Letters to the Editor
Doktor Krankheit
Published Letters: 47
-
Left-wing and liberal jerks
[Read the article: Porn free]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]They exist; it's a sign that a lot of people are liberal and left-wing, and they're all human. Some of them will therefore be jerks; you'd have to believe we were all guided by some Imaginary Friend to think some of us wouldn't be.
It's also easy not to see how jerky the people on your own side are. I'd guess that this is part of M.S.'s problem: he can't see how repulsive Ms Coulter is because he's not repulsed by much of what she believes, and so her excesses seem like minor flaws compared with her basically-acceptable-to-M.S. opinions. (I know the feeling: I found it harder to dislike Clinton when he acted like a moderate Republican, which was most of the time, than I would have had his party membership been official.)
It's also easy to accept the flaws in your allies when you hate your opponents more. Mr Sanchez has a cartoonish view of liberals and left-wingers; this might partially be because he's met a few caricatures walking around Columbia, but the net effect is that he doesn't bother trying to know us at all (which increases the likelihood that he will only see caricatures). For example, I doubt we'd put him on a ticket with Obama, since his writing really is as bad as all that---I've enjoyed a lot of right-wing commentary, but this was a painful slog. I also think it unlikely that Columbia U.'s "improvements" can be credited solely to him.
And forget porn, it's nothing or de minimus. But how in the world can someone write the words "I was never good at math," as if that were acceptable---he should at least have the good grace to be ashamed of that.
-
Experimental error
[Read the article: Right-wing blogs discover massive conspiracy to hide WMDs in Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm quite willing to believe that Saddam's army had chemical, biological, or nuclear material, probably lost in the shuffle or misplaced behind the crate with the _real_ Ark of the Covenant.
Similarly, European intelligence agencies believed he had _some_ of those things---they just didn't believe there was any comfortable level of certainty that he had enough of them to make a difference. I think this an important distinction because it goes unmentioned every time I hear someone in support of the war speak of the European agencies' "also believing that Saddam had WMDs". I have bleach and ammonia in my house; I don't have a good delivery system or enough of both to make them a credible threat to the City Fathers of Centerville.
"Nuclear materials" can include everything from low-level medical waste (which would be useful in making a bunch of minorly-but-nastily dirty bombs) to big bulbous things with fins and Bohr-atom logos on.
This is all to say: I can believe that this guy saw _something_ in those bunkers, but 1.) didn't see it too well or 2.) assumed that there were a lot more of them all around the country, making the amounts he did see seem more significant.
As for taking the stuff and running, we _know_ (and we against the war have been morbidly pleased to point out) that we guarded the oil wells much better (that is to say, "at all") than we did the ammo- and explosives-dumps. Their contents were not moved en masse to Iraq or Syria with the aid of the Learned Elders of Zion*---they were moved to the back of the shed on your allotment in Sadr City, under a tarp in a garage in exurban Tikrit, or sold for food or fuel a few years back...I see no reason why a small amount of scary-looking stuff wouldn't have been looted and stored or traded.
*They're backing the insurgents just to confuse Good Christians.
-
Not limited to the Right
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've heard similar rhetoric from my own Left, and from "libert"arians, on the subject of the Stupid Drugs Laws. Rather than the excellent and reasonable case for the elimination of most, and weakening of all, of the Stupid Drugs Laws, a simple recourse to "The laws aren't working, so repeal them," is far from uncommon.
(It's a particularly bad argument in this case because, to a large extent, they _have_ worked: the only drugs to which I and my upper-middle-class professional friends seem to have easy (say, the ease for a canonical college student) and safe (as in "not liable to lose your home") access are alcohol, caffeine, and various prescriptions that for the most part aren't much fun. As we, a mostly white, higher-income, group, are the people politicians mostly like* and care about, and they don't want us having fun in particular ways, and we've stopped, that's success.
*They _love_ the rich, but there aren't enough of them to be a voting bloc before the election, though afterward.... As to the poor, politicians seem to have the same attitude that that Don had in "The Godfather": "They're animals; let them lose their souls," with the added bonus that making entire neighbourhoods arrestable-at-will is great for the police and those running them.
-
Two notes
[Read the article: Steal this comic]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"How to Draw": you fault the cover of this book for the bust-size of the woman on its cover. For shame: many comic-book artists are masters of anatomy---the anatomy of the brains of literal or figurative fifteen-year-olds.
"Last Blood": for a take on the same idea that sounds better than the description of this comic, please see: http://noahbrand.blogspot.com/2007/02/brains-and-blood.html.