Strike everything I said before, and just consider this: When one reaches consensus with David Fucking Brooks, perhaps it’s a sign that one’s affinities are misplaced, or that one’s reasoning is less than rigorous. Just perhaps.
Sincerely,
Compound F
Dick Cheney “suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.”
Oh, no. That would be Julian Assange, who’s done nothing truly horrible, except try to tell us what our godforsaken governments are doing. Squeeze me. Baking powder.
Breaking news to Booman: Assange isn’t American, and no longer am I, or you, for that matter.
Being an American once felt vaguely comforting, even righteous, because legally, it stood for some things, specifically, Modern Liberalism writ large. Individual autonomy, individual civil rights, freedom from diktat, all men are created equal, equality before the law, blah, blah, blah, and, uh, free markets.
Implicit, at least, in all of this, was transparency, freedom of information that allowed individuals to make informed, individual decisions, free of Church and State propaganda. America never lived up to those ideals, but it would be wrong to say it never strived. We no longer live in that place.
Today, America is acutely discomforting, on all counts, as in hard, diamond-like edges impinging on our non-diamond-like mammalian outer surfaces and neocortical napkin-folds. “America,” the idea, is fucking Deader than Fuck. These facts hit me like a diamond bullet, a diamond bullet shot through the forehead. The genius.
Booman is worried about the diplomatic fallout over how news of fucked-up facials wreck American diplomatic efforts. America, these days, is, almost by definition, a slough of shit about things we don’t need or want to know. Responding to any revelations in this regard is like balking at buying groceries when you find out in check-out that Elvis was an alien ass-baby. I’d be more worried about my new infant’s longevity in a world dominated by utterly opaque backroom deals of murderous gangster scum and their primordial instincts to kill.
Big ticket items, Booman, Big Ticket Items!
It’s not even remotely clear why you side with the bad guys, i.e., ourselves. (Yes, it’s always clear from an evolutionary point of view why an individual sides with itself. That’s not the question tho’, is it?)
Let me spell it out: this is a case of who owns private information versus public information, publicly paid for information, information, e.g., regarding vast criminality, that has been created through public wealth. Are public officials allowed to conduct crimes against you on your dime?
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You been out riding fences for too long. You’re getting your fences confused with theirs.
…when he calls something Julian Assange wrote “a pseudo-intellectual online diatribe.”
What else did David Brooks ever write?