The most un-aware thing I've read yet today.

[elfs]

Reihan Salam writes:

[Cory Robin's new book, The Reactionary Mind]'s ur-thesis is that the right has shrewdly employed a narrative of victimhood, victimhood for the predatory classes, as a means to win power and sympathy. I definitely think there is something to this, and I think it is an unattractive pose that the right ought to have outgrown.

Really?

I mean, seriously?

In what universe does someone give up a successful strategy that garners power, authority, and wealth, and does so within the letter of the law? I cannot name a single movement or institution, anywhere, that, having hit upon such a blockbuster meme, however grotesque, for bringing in the wealth, raising the authority, and beating back detractors like leaves in the wind, voluntarily surrendered it and took up a more ethical or aesthetically pleasing meme with which to pursue its goals.

Salam is truly in full-on head-in-the-clouds, ivory-tower mode when he writes nonsense like that.

Comments

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Countries voluntarily stopped using chemical weapons (mostly) after WWI, and nuclear weapons (offensively) after WWII, but a successful strawman is used until it falls apart.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

I could argue that the production and maintenance of a nuclear arsenal constitutes 'use', in that their presence, and the concomitant threat of their employment, is what allowed countries to step back from overt warfare. And even the countries that putatively gave up the use of various chemical agents in warfare still employ chemical weapons -- lachrymators such as CS are still chemical weapons even though they're non-lethal.