The Philosophy of "On the Other Hand"
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“Two months and a day before 9/11, terrorism expert Larry C. Johnson published “The Declining Terrorist Threat,” a New York Times op-ed decrying the fact that “Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism,” when, in reality, “the decade beginning in 2000 will continue the downward trend” in lethal terrorism. Not quite. A decade later, Osama bin Laden is dead and the old chorus of pre-9/11 complacency has returned. The war on terror is over — yet again, it seems. Bin Laden was but “a distraction,” writes Peter Beinart, and the war on terror “a mistake from the start.” 9/11 was nothing more than “an isolated case,” argues Ross Douthat. And “bin Laden was always the weak horse.” The new post-bin Laden dispensation is that the entire decade-long war on terror was an overreaction — as shown by the bin Laden operation itself, which, noted one critic, looks a lot like police work, the kind of law enforcement John Kerry insisted in 2004 was the proper prism through which to address the terror threat. […] ”
— By Charles Krauthammer, Published: May 5 (washingtonpost.com)
I think I am beginning to comprehend what makes the Left tick. I've been trying to understand their mentality by assuming they have a rational basis for their worldview, and their goals stemmed from their philosophical views, which presumably became unrealistic because of faulty logic or false premises or both. But I am no longer treating the Left's agenda as a rational, albeit unrealistic, alternative to that of their political opponents.
The Left's objective is simply to be in opposition to anything a non-Leftist says or does. That is it in a nutshell. Theirs is the philosophy of "on the other hand". It's a great strategy if your goal is merely to be a gigantic pain in the ass. It is easy to do. Simply note what rational people say or do, figure out what the obvious objective is that motivates such statements or actions, and then concoct a diametrically opposed position. If they are called out for their frequently incoherent positions, they simply manufacture any old assertions that presume to support their positions.
Their ultimate goal is to gain enough support from the naive, the ignorant, the illegal, and the malevolent so as to acquire positions of power and wealth. That is the only single stratagem that has the potential to explain every disagreement between leftists and everyone else.
Post 1,627 The Insufferable Contrariness of Being Liberal
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