Friday, March 31, 2006
Keyboard Commandos
Is there anything more simultaneously infuriating and hilarious than right wing bloggers and writers playing warrior from the safety of their mothers’ basements?
Not that I’m aware of.
If you’re not fully up to speed on this (and even if you are), take a look at this golden oldie from the Smithantics archives. Read it before you read the rest of this post. It’s one of my favorites.
Then read about the latest follies of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists.
Here’s some highlights:
“. . .But I felt gradually exhausted since September 11th, 2001, [because] it's very dispiriting trying to keep going in this phase of what is a very long conflict. And the reason I do it is because I want us to win. I don't particularly like journalism. I don't particularly like writing newspaper columns. I'm sick of having to make what I think should be an obvious case again and again and again. And I'd much rather pack it in and sit on my porch in New Hampshire and enjoy the view of the mountains. But I do it because I want us to win.”
“I'm sitting in the Empire State Building. Michael, I'm sitting in the Empire State Building, which has been in the past, and could be again, a target. Because in downtown Manhattan, it's not comfortable, although it's a lot safer than where you are, people always are three miles away from where the jihadis last spoke in America. So that's...civilians have a stake in this. Although you are on the front line, this was the front line four and a half years ago.”
“[W]e're all, in a sense, we're all conscripted in this war. Those 3,000 people who died on September 11th, they weren't serving forces, they were just fellows who got up in the morning and went to work, or went to Logan Airport and got on a plane. And that's the thing. We're all conscripted in this war, whether we know it or not.”