House of Eratosthenes

We live in a “Daily Show” age, one chock full of silly arguments constructed to offer a semblance of durability without being the slightest bit workable or structurally sound. These are the ideas so confounding and absurd, that whenever you hear them they’re packaged inseparably with a thick layer of obfuscating sarcasm. They can’t be uttered without the requisite bitterly ironic humor. There’s ALWAYS a chuckle at the end. If the idea is taken seriously for even a fraction of a second, it crumbles.

I’m not at all surprised to see ideas like this.

But I’m a little bit taken aback seeing a website dedicated to one of them.

Of course, even there, the idea is never expressed seriously even for a moment without the requisite above-mentioned thick layer of confounding sarcasm. So…out of necessity…and this is always the case…I shall have to do my best to extrapolate it.

My support for the war is revealed to be…

a. Morally tenuous
b. Hypocritical
c. Craven and cowardly
d. Prohibited by law
e. Insincere
f. Worthy of a rap across the knuckles with a ruler by an angry nun
g. Shenanigans!
h. Dumb and stupid, and I’m a big ol’ dopey pie-head
i. All of the above

…because I…
a. Don’t serve
b. Have never served
c. Haven’t personally killed anyone
d. Haven’t been in a fist fight lately
e. Haven’t donated blood
f. Haven’t donated food
g. Haven’t donated money
h. Haven’t been to Iraq or Afghanistan
i. Any of the above

Part of the reason I’m surprised to see this idea enshrined in a blog of its own, is that it seemed to me its glory days had already passed. I’m actually relieved to see this is not the case, because I was never able to dissect this. Maybe this is a great second-chance.

First — we need to find out what’s supposed to happen to me. The nice folks who push this idea, I’m sure, would be righteously indignant at any insinuation that they’re opposed to freedom of speech or expression of ideas contrary to theirs, but you see, it’s impossible to tell that for sure. Their beloved idea is so consistently propagated with that all-important thick enveloping of dark humor and sarcasm, that I’m not sure what they want done and neither is anyone else. Should I be fined $100 for supporting this war in which I’m not fighting? Or should we get rid of our “all-volunteer” military and force people like me to go to the recruiting station?

No, I’m not one of the guys who volunteered. But I understand why they did. I think they were raised the way I was, in a series of rituals that might seem at the time to be unimportant, but when you grow up change the way you look at everything. Like taking the garbage out. What little kid hasn’t complained about having to do that…and yet, if I used the “Operation Yellow Elephant” argument on my mother, which would boil down to the time-honored outburst of “why is it MY job…I don’t see YOU taking out the garbage”…I would have received a stern lecture about we all have to do our part, your father works to support this family and I cook and clean so that you have food to eat and clothes to wear. So, no, you don’t have to see us taking out the garbage. We’ve done our part, you have yours, they’re all important and they’re all appreciated.

But I’ll be damned if I’m going to see you sitting around doing what you want all day while everyone else does all the work, just because you fancy yourself to be a brilliant savant of irittating, snotty protestations.

Not that I see our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan as being on par with taking out the garbage…

…well, wait, actually I do. Garbage men are worthy of appreciation. If you don’t have any garbage men, the garbage piles up and pretty soon you’re buried in it; seems to me with the peace dividend of a decade ago, that’s exactly what we had been doing.

But I digress. I think, with this evidence there are people still peddling the thoroughly discredited “you can’t support the war if you don’t fight in it” argument, what I’m seeing are people who were raised by that other kind of Mom. The no-spank-em, Dr.-Benjamin-Spock Mom. The lowercase-m mom.

She said, “you’re absolutely right, sweetie, I shouldn’t be asking you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself” and cheerfully took the garbage out. Hugs!

And so we have a bunch of people walking around, with the same privileges as you and me, who think — but won’t say outright, not without that all-important thick enveloping of obfuscating sarcasm — nobody should do anything. About anything. They’d like to package their message as “you can’t appreciate what anybody does if you aren’t doing that yourself” — as if that were any more legitimate. But their message really is that you can’t appreciate anybody…period. They were raised from infancy, not having to.

The time came for their lowercase-m moms to educate them about the things they enjoy that are connected to the efforts of others, and the lowercase-m moms took a pass. Why do I say this? Because if you simply accept that most basic of truths, that the staples of our lives — nevermind the luxuries — involve such a diversification and disparity of specialized efforts, that simply going about our daily routines involves a dependence on the beneficial actions of others and we’d better damn well be thankful for them…just incorporating that truism, you inflict such a devastating assault on the ramshackle argument that it dissolves like a sugarcube canoe.

If, on the other hand, you accept the O.Y.E. argument — and nobody’s saying you should, without that little sarcastic chuckle on the end — what a busy life you have now! Because you need to get those coffee beans picked and roasted for tomorrow’s brew. And then you need to pump some crude oil out of the ground and refine it into gasoline for your car. And slaughter that cow, which of course you raised from calf-hood, for your next roast beef sandwich.

Because you aren’t allowed to appreciate anything, or by extension to make any kind of use of it, unless you participate in it personally. Or, to look at it a more direct way, if you don’t participate in anything personally, you are obligated to condemn and deplore it.

Now pardon me, I’m off to take out the garbage. And go build some keyboards while I’m at it.

Yep. And these are the same people that say you can’t weigh in on sexism or abortion if you’re not a woman (hey, I was a fetus, does that count? Apparently not.) And you can’t weigh in on racism if you’re white. You can’t weigh in on anything if you’re not “that”.

(obscure song reference warning)

I am that, thou art that, all this is that.

200 points to whoever comes up with the artist and title for that one. 🙂

The whole “conventional wisdom thickly wrapped in dark sarcasm” bit is particularly vexing because it is how the virus of bad “facts” spreads. It sounds all smarty-pantsed, and if anybody challenges it they can brush you off whit a “hey, dude, I was joking, man.”

It’s like the Gen-Xers and probably even the next generation ending every declaration they make with ” -er somthin'” … see, that covers everything. I got to take my stand and say what I think I think … and if you agree then I feel great but if you don’t, well, I said ” -er somethin'” … which could mean anything. Which is probably why these kids are so hep on Obama.
- philmon | 02/18/2008 @ 11:10
I do despise the bigotry masquerading as nonjudgmentalism typical of the left. You can’t “judge” someone else because you don’t know what it’s like to be in their shoes. This is simply because liberals believe that disagreement leads to war. War is bad, so disagreement is bad. Disagreement can be prevented by blind acceptance.

The funny thing is how those who disagree are judged as evil.
- JohnJ | 02/18/2008 @ 15:08

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Operation Yellow ElephantMonday, February 18th, 2008

Operation Yellow Elephant
Monday, February 18th, 2008