She blowed up REAL good!
Posted on 12/24/2001 12:41:46 AM PST by Timesink
I amuse myself by reading the editorials of the SF Chronicle, which is sort of a rest home for those afflicted with intellectual dwarfism. (They run my column from time to time, which proves my point.) And you get breath-taking pieces like today’s subject - Stephanie Salter.
I don’t read her much, because it’s a variety of columnist I can’t abide - inches and inches of miffed melancholic vague agony over . . . things. When editors decide to add a local Ellen Goodman to their pages, this is usually who they come up with. It’s never someone who writes with the crisp verve and enthusiasm of Caroline Hax (sure, she’s an advice columnist, but she can write about anything, I suspect) or the steady, sober, relentlessly empirical Kathrine Kirtsten. No, they get these worried souls whose columns always make you feel as though you’re chewing a damp blanket.
This column, however, sets a standard for all columnists to follow, and not just for its dial-tone prose. I’m not ripping her for her opposition to the war, really - fine, whatever. If some people wish to believe that we could have coralled the al Qaeda leadership, confiscated all their material and extracted a detailed list of their agents’ locations around the world just by asking politely for six months, they’re welcome to believe that. If some people think a UN police force armed only with stern looks and shrill whistles would have brought these people to tremble in the dock at Belgium, go right ahead. If people still wish to believe that the US has demolished the entire nation of Afghanistan, caused the starvation of millions and left it a shattered leaderless ruin ignored by the entire planet, then hello Mr. Chomsky! How’s tricks? I'm done with these debates. No, this piece is notable because Salter deploys the columnar equivalent of the Doomsday Machine, something you do not use even though deadline passed an hour ago and your screen is blank:
1. She writes in the voice of JESUS.
2. As if this isn’t bad enough, she not only writes as JESUS, but she accuses George Bush of not praying since 9/11 - indeed, of having turned his back on Christianity. Remember: this is JESUS talking.
I’m not kidding; here’s the piece.
A few noteworthy excerpts require a reply.
“Since Sept. 11, dear brother, I have noticed that you have turned away from me. I do not hear you ask yourself or anyone else the question you once asked all the time: ‘What would Jesus do?’”
You know, it takes hubris to speak as Jesus, but it really takes stones to lie on His behalf. How does Salter know that POTUS doesn’t have that metaphysical jingle stuck in his head l2/7? She doesn’t, if she admits that, the novel premise of her essay - I know, I’ll write in the only voice more respected than a middle-aged newspaper columnist! - would be shot.
“Some very sick, twisted and hate-filled men have inflicted great suffering upon you and your people.”
Apparently Jesus addresses everyone like we’re all four years old.
“You want not only to keep them from hurting you again, you and your nation's people want to hurt them back.”
Note how the inevitable consequences of the first become BLOOD-MAD VENGEANCE! in Saltus Christus’ mind. Keeping al Qaeda et al from “hurting” us again - and that’s an odd word choice, really; again, it makes it sound like we’re little children with a trembling lower lip and hot wet tears on our red perfect cheeks. Awww, did the bad owd tewwowist bwow up a dutty nucuwar bomb in your city? Jesus kiss make better. Anyway, keeping these people from hurting us again is hardly an illegitimate goal, and that cannot be accomplished without hurting them back. When Martin Luther threw the inkpot in the devil in the corner, he wanted it to connect. But more on that point later.
“And you are willing to rationalize all manner of destruction, waste and -- if necessary -- killing toward those ends.”
Saltus here drags out the same hoary line we’ve heard since the war began: “all manner of destruction (and) waste.” This, after the most meticulously accurate bombing campaign in the history of war. Yes, there were errors; there will always be errors, screw-ups, friendly fire, etc. But even after the air campaign was concluded, Saltus still believes we rationalized all manner of destruction - as though we have dropped a nuke every five miles and napalmed everyone who ran across the border.
“Dear brother, you are right to want to stop evil. The tricky part for humans has always been, what is the best way to stop it? My four-letter answer is written, over and over, in the Bible, but it has been ignored by potentates, peons and sometimes popes for 2,000 years”
Alliteration: the deadline writer’s friend. How about the Pep Boys? The Partridge Family? Peter Piper? You know what the four-letter answer is, of course: Luv. And while it may be written over and over in the Bible, the first half of that book contains a great deal of smiting. Whole lotta smiting going on, in fact, often against evil. But apparently Saltus forgets that part about fleeing Egypt; I guess the Pharoah’s troops must have stopped at the water's edge. Let ‘em go, boys, they’re over the county line. Nothin’ we can do.
“Our Father said, "Vengeance is mine," George, not, "Vengeance belongs to those who have been wronged." Vengeance is never the answer to "What would Jesus do?" Especially vengeance that masquerades as "justice." “
Saltus has spoken: dismantle the legal system! Let out the baby-diddlers, the murderers, the grifters who prey on old men and the pervs who force themselves on brittle-hipped spinsters. We have no business usurping God’s job. To paraphrase the redneck bumpersticker: Free ‘em all, and let God sort them out.
“This is why I came, remember? Why I grew from Baby Jesus to Christ who suffered humiliation, unspeakable physical pain and a heart that was broken more times than there are stars in the skies.”
With lines this mawkish I am actually tempted to do the math - # of stars in sky into # of seconds in 33 years - I would probably find that Saltus’ heart had been broken 178 times a second, or more if the recent Hubble shots reveal that what we thought were star nurseries were, in fact, extremely large and mature galactic structures.
It’s a sign of the author’s failure at this point that I don’t feel the least bit sacreligious posing that question.
Now comes the meat.
“Following me means forsaking the desire to hurt back, to rob your enemies of their humanness, even when their inhuman acts aim to rob you of yours.” (Emphasis added.)
I wasn’t aware that Christianity had chosen “Suicide as Painless” as its showcase hymm for the 21st century. And I have to confess that I am not sure what it means to rob someone of their humanness, or where one would pawn such a thing if you could do it.
“ . . .It means refusing to buy the Great Lie of evil -- that true peace and justice can be achieved through deliberate and systematic violence.”
It is doubtful that I will see “true peace and justice” in my lifetime, especially since no two people can define it the same way. “True peace and justice” is just rote cant, empty words intended to portray your opponants as morally deficient because they seek the possible instead of the perfect.
In an imperfect world, you do the best you can. Sometimes you are morally obligated to use deliberate and systematic violence to defeat deliberate and systematic violence whose objectives are a hundredfold more hideous than the force you employ to stop them. Sometimes when a man holds police at bay by putting a gun to his infant son, we have to put a sniper on the roof. And this is very unfair, because he's a better shot with a better weapon. If you regard the hostage-taker and the sniper as morally equal - as does, say, Saltus’ colleague in moral surrender, Colman McCarthy - then you believe that God prefers we stand by and let innocent children get their brains blown out.
If I could make a theological argument: perhaps God gave man free will so he could choose to stop those who had chosen evil.
Just a thought. But a relevant one today. There’s a plane in Logan Airport that is on the ground in one piece, and a couple hundred people still drawing breath, because a few people had the sense and the courage to use deliberate and systematic violence - i.e., beat, subdue, hogtie and shoot up a man who was trying to light the fuses in his shoes. Who gets the stern look on Judgment Day, then? Sure not the Salters of the world - no, God will frown on the burly men who used deliberate violence to buy a ration of peace. If we buy the whole “cycle of violence” idea, then those passengers participated in an escalation of violence which will lead to more surly men with C4 in their Nikes. (Conversely, if the plane had been destroyed because no one did anything, and the cycle of violence had been broken, would terrorists have called it a day?)
“To borrow from our holy brother Mahatma Gandhi, following me means donning the heavy cloak of peace and wearing it forever -- not just when it is convenient, or when you are watching someone else's war.”
You know, Gandhi’s ideas worked because he was up against the British; if he’d been up against Nazis or Sovs, he would have been dead in a local police station basement in the first few weeks. That non-violent stuff works only when your enemy is disinclined to kill you in substantial numbers. Sad, but true.
Of course, let us all remember the parable of the Moneychangers in the temple, who all got up and left meekly after Jesus asked them to go.
Now, the end:
“Dear brother, as you celebrate my birth and reflect upon my life, I beg you, reverse the course. Pursue peace with the fervor, and resources, with which you now pursue our damaged and insane brother Osama bin Laden ‘“
Brother? Brother? Fine, Saltus, he stays on your couch next time he visits. If bin Laden and Gandhi are both my brothers, then so are Hitler, Stalin, Martin Luther King, Pol Pot, John Paul 2, Caligula, St. Augustine, Voltaire and John Wayne Gacy. One big happy family. Lucretia Borgia and Mother Theresa might both be my sisters, but I know who I’m letting make the drinks next time they come over for brunch.
“ - and the infested souls who follow his malicious path. They may be beyond reason and love, but millions more are not. For God's sake, George, for the sake of your nation's future, face me again and ask what I would do.” The end.
Okay, Saltus - you have the floor. TELL US WHAT YOU WOULD DO. If she believes it is possible to dismantle al Qaeda and, say, remove Iraq’s nuclear program in a way that does not involve deliberate and systemic violence, tell us how.
I don’t know Salter’s work in toto, but I have the nagging suspicion she would be appalled if the POTUS had constantly mentioned his prayers in this matter, and stated that he believed Jesus was on his side. In her sort of world, there is nothing more frightening than certainty in the wrong people. Especially in matters of religion. (Haven’t we learned anything from bin Laden?) People who profess faith and fail to live up to it - say, a charming rogue who attends Easter service with his family then nips back to the office so the intern can roll away the stone and make little Elvis rise from the dead - are much more interesting, because they are flawed, and thus human, and some folks regard damaged people as more genuine than those with a handle on themselves.
Salter’s message is quite clear: when the guy in the seat next to you starts lighting his sneakers, whistle a happy Psalm. Tell him you love him. Seek peace, and as you hurtle down into the cold cold ocean, wrap yourself in your heavy Ghandi cloak for warmth. The cycle of violence has been stopped!
Granted, two hundred people are dead. But at least they didn’t die angry. Fighting makes baby Jesus cry.
“But now,” he said, “take your money and a traveler’s bag. And if you don’t have a sword, sell your clothes and buy one!"
Reckon she could expand on this a little more??
We of the Right tend -- I say tend -- to adopt a rational approach to the things that interest us. We amass evidence, propound theories, look for test cases, and so forth. The left slathers you with emotional appeals. It shows you maimed civilians, blasted villages, the sorrowing eyes of starving orphans. It asks you to go no farther, no who-what-when-where, and especially no why. It just lets the gruesome images work on you -- and here's the awful truth, friends: they do work.
Lileks's column is a perfect dissection of the drippy, hubristic Salter piece. It's in his best style. And it shows the two assets that conservative op-ed writers bring to their trade: rational facility and the ability to use sarcasm. But I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that the typical reader, presented with both, would be more strongly affected by the Salter column. If he were "on the fence" about the war effort, it might well sway him.
It must be possible for the Right to harness this powerful persuasive force -- but very few Right-inclined opinion writers have tried, and still fewer have succeeded. Perhaps they feel it's beneath them. What a pity.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com
ROFLMAO! This guy is great! Of course, the San Frantic Chronicle is easy to mock, but this guy totally reams this stupid bim. I'll bet she's hardly even cracked a bible, yet she can speak for Jesus, huh...I love idiots who relegate defending oneself with vengeance...what do these people think happens when you run out of cheeks to turn? It's a "3 strikes you're out" parable, and the islamo-fascist terrorists' batting average has just fallen to .000! Thanks, funny stuff....
And I will wager that had "W" quoted Jesus as this stupid bim wants him to, she would then be raising holy heck accusing him of being "one of those crazy right-wing religious fanatics."
Merry Christmas
LOL and bump.
I'll second that! All the nay-sayers can do is point out problems--they never offer solutions; that is, they never offer real world solutions.
But what never ceases to astound me is how leftists shamelessly invoke the name of Jesus Christ, then turn around without missing a beat and denounce Christianity.
, a charming rogue who attends Easter service with his family then nips back to the office so the intern can roll away the stone and make little Elvis rise from the dead - are much more interesting, because they are flawed, and thus human, and some folks regard damaged people as more genuine than those with a handle on themselves.
Excellent rebuttal (wasn't needed for rational thinking people, but every day I'm afraid there are fewer and fewer of us) worthty of a bump.
Stupid keyboard!
She blowed up REAL good!
Bleeehhhh. Perfect.
The Newark Star Ledger used to carry his column years ago.
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