Letters to the Editor
prunes
Published Letters: 784
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@shooter242
[Read the article: National Review's new tough guy, Mark Hemingway]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Heroes need not apply
Wimpiness is wonderful
Surrender is just a tool
Testosterone will make me groan
Have you ever heard the story about the flea and the elephant? The flea rides the elephant and as they cross a bridge, there's all this racket, and the flea says, "Boy, we sure made a big noise back there, huh?"
That's you and that's Hiatt and Podhoretz and all these chickenhawk no-class sleazeballs who cheer when kids get blown up and get mad when they don't. You creeps take the credit for what the armed forces do, and call them traitors if they ever disagree with your oh-so-precious opinions.
You're a drip, you're a flake, you've yet to contribute any interesting conversation to this site.
Have fun basking in your imagined glory, ya big ol' hero.
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Titles II
[Read the article: National Review's new tough guy, Mark Hemingway]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Real Men Have To Tell You About It All The Time"
"The Truest Heroes Have No Tans"
"Keyboard Machismo"
"Buy a Ranch, Wear a Hat: Becoming President In 2 Easy Steps"
"Too Manly Not To Torture"
"Crushing Children's Testicles: Lessons on Manliness from John Yoo"
"Lesions on Manliness"
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@Paul Dirks
[Read the article: National Review's new tough guy, Mark Hemingway]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When we become personally responsible for in excess of half a million needless deaths, THEN we will have reduced ourselves to our opponent's level. In the meantime the stakes are way too high to not use every tool at our disposal to pull our country back from the brink. If that means calling a warmonmger a pussy or posting a picture that calls into question a warmonger's credentials to call someone else a pussy....well imagine my fucking concern....
Good call. I don't think it's a coincidence that the same party that has gone nuts for torture and eternal pre-emptive wars is the same one that has abandoned sober discussion as a tool in the political process, preferring to mock up cartoonish, unrealistic frames for every issue.
The malevolent idiocy in the foreign and domestic policy departments has developed in a way very analogous to that of the political discourse: all strategic concerns are ignored in favor of potential immediate "wins", whether taking that option is good for our overall goals or not.
The same people who cheer for torture are the ones who have made machismo an winning tactic in politics. The meta-narratives of dominance, blind contempt, and an existentialist denial of natural values (the "relativism" they so often accuse liberals of) seem to me to be characteristic of many aspects of the modern American right.
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@Orson_
[Read the article: National Review's new tough guy, Mark Hemingway]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"ad hominem" is generally applied only to non-relevant personal attacks.
If the chief of police is a klepto, and he says "stealing is wrong," and someone says to him, "but you steal!":
Then the someone is indeed making an "ad hominem"-formed argument, but they have not comitted an ad hominem fallacy, since the subject of their objection is not the police chief as he is in himself as a being, but a particular attribute relevant to the argument which clearly demonstrates the chief has no grounds to impugn anyone else on the matter, even if he would be correct in any particular case.
The objector in the audience is denying a premise of the original argument, the chief's opinion cannot be used as a valid general rule in argument because his opinion has a pathological exception: himself.
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@Titus Pollo
[Read the article: National Review's new tough guy, Mark Hemingway]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You guys are giving the Swiftboaters way too much credit. Kerry lost because the public saw him for what he was: an elitist phony. He comes back from Vietnam and lies about his fellow veterans. He "throws away" his medals in protest, but we find out he really didn't; he threw away someone else's because he might need his some day for political reasons.
OK, now wait a second...
I'm not disagreeing with you about Kerry... but why didn't people glom onto Bush's obvious phoniness in the same way? He bought that ranch right before he ran for office, just for photo shoots. He actually is the pampered New England-educated mamma's boy that represents the liberal stereotype.
The guy has so much money he could buy and sell my family five times over and has had that much for his entire life. How does anyone in America identify with this guy?! He doesn't seem like someone "I'd like to have a beer with", he seems like the spoiled, humorless lout I'd avoid at every opportunity.
I really just don't get it.
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@nasalfiber
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Addington's "one bomb away" remark about the FISA court was a prediction about how the American people would react to such an event, not a hope/wish as Glenn contends.
So... an attack on American civilians gives Addington everything he wants... maybe he should take out monetary bets, too. Those would be equally kosher by your logic.
"Sure, another 9-11 would allow me to retire into the lap of luxury, but that doesn't mean I want it... I'm just not averse to personally benefiting when it happens. I mean 'if' it happens."
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@William Timberman
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I swear, shooter, you're dumber today than you were two years ago. Not as well-informed, either.
You noticed too?
Here's my thought: some Americans have been (hopefully temporarily) damaged in such a way that their brains do not "think" like normal peoples', but they only repeat what they hears with minor contextual variations, like a parrot or chatbot (or Fry from Futurama.)
Shooters recent apparent plunge in intellect may be the result of increasing decoherence in the RWNM: the frames are bumping into each other, the news from around the world is refusing to play ball, and the main personalities in the RW narrative are being revealed as craven, unprincipled slime.
It is hard to say what will happen to these poor souls on the day FOX News shuts its doors, they may be reduced to zombies, but hopefully the effect will be more like fog clearing.