"I am ... a prize-winnin’ historian"

Dear Dr. Bones,

One trait that makes the neocomrades so interesting for us _Geisteswissenschaftler_ is the way they push ordinary human deficiencies to militant neoëxtremes. Take the Wolnomozny Pan Radoszcz here -- take him an’ his selfocentricity.

Few roses blow down the pike from Foxcuckooland to us humble altogeher without a silver linin’, however. It seems plain [1] that whilst the Muses and thou and I are attending to such freelordly an’ kiddiemagisterial self-sorrowin’s as the present _radoshschína smútna_ nay afford us, we cannot possibly look to others the way Master Narcissus Dexter --an’ his Party an’ his AEIdeology -- look to us. At any rate, such is my latest theory of the matter. [2]

But let us get straight to work:

(A) Once past the alleged poorness of the poor devil, we observe His Freemightiness workin’ a really nifty (il)logical contraption: anybooby sufferin’ under "a torrent of verbal abuse and _ad hominem_ attacks" must be in the whight, argumentwise, an’ her adversary rong.

’Tis not worth the waste of powder and shot to blow *that* bologna straight back to H[ooverville] where it comes from, because there is no more than about a 0.000347% chance that the Wolnomozhny Pan would recur to this particular First Principle on the occasion of encounterin’ a Party neocomradess -- say, the Freedame of Coulter -- similarly belaborin’ some hapless Lieberal or Demoncrat. Fortunately, HFM possesses a plethora of First Principles, three or more to suit every occasion. ¡Never to be caught at a loss is Party Neocomrade R. X. Radosh!

On the other hoof, though, the poor devil’s conception of ‘lunacy’ needs some work: wingnutettes an’ wingnuts may, in the path of Party an’ Ideology, believe many of the same dotty things that l@@nies an’ M@@Nies do. However the causes or reasons are quite different in the two cases.

(B) Then comes _das Pivenepos_, which I guess we shall have to take the freemighty word for, or maybe Comrade Cloward’s word, not knowing a piven from a pimiento ourselves. Or even from a pivot.

Look at the dates, though, Dr. Bones. I betcha Neocomrade Radosh got into Piven back when he was still a paleo- with the Seventh (?) International. Nothin’ is more obnoxious to a neoteric than its own immediate yesterteric. Everybooby knows that! Think "Gloomy Gus of Hippo and the brand-name Manichees!"! [3]

(C) Next is a short oracular response which I have trouble grasping. Can you, sir, explain the following sentence?

I have no objection to debating Peter Dreier or anyone else on the issues, BUT I believe he is being disingenuous (&c. &c.)

The puzzle is that high-an’-freemighty ‘but’. To thunder "but I cannot be bothered to argue with liars" would make excellent sense, though not without a certain huffity-puffity of manner more acceptable to pajamatarian palates than to mine. That, however, is not what gets thundered. As the neobark stands, it might as well be "Roses are red, BUT violets are blue." I mean, only Father Zeus an’ His Freemight of Radosh can know for sure what the adversative conjunction is militatin’ against. It cannot mean that HFM refuses to argue, because if it did, the scribble would have to end right here.

Furthermore, after a thunder of my sort, there should follow a deluge or drizzle of examples of deliberate Drierite (or possibly Clowardly) misrepresentations. His Freemight rains down nothin’ of the sort upon us, instead, He just inconsequently wanders off to "[not] dealing with the serious conservative critique," -- a misdemeanour which will no doubt sound very naughty in the ears of Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie, but is scarcely what expensively educated speakers of New High Homeland™ic understand by the term ‘disingenuous’.

So I say again, "What is goin’ on here, exactly?"

(D) Best left to neospeak for itself is

I am hardly an “ultra-right wing propagandist” but a prize-winning historian who respects the truth and takes it where it leads me (...) Dreier ... writes that my article on Piven “would have had little impact outside the right-wing blogosphere,” a claim he makes because the opposite is the case.

Moving whight along, [4]

(E) "[T]he only reason I [get] up in the morning [is] so I [can] go shopping in Wal-Mart to exploit the poor" is so entertaining that I suspect it just a little. His Freemightiness gives a paraphrase rather than cite the actual e-words of Comrade Dreier, but even if we could subpoena the original ("What original?") it might be difficult or impossible to decide whether this exuberance was original-intented as a joke.

Assuming it was not, Comrade Dreier evidently entertains off-beat ideas about ideological perversion. He wrote as if His Freemightiness (as he now is) had abandoned only the notion that it is a rong and unwhight thing for the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom, LLC, to exploit the Bad Poor, while retainin’ the factual or ‘factual’ belief that such exploitation happens all the time almost everywhere you look under _Spätkapitalismo_. Surely the odds are overwhelming that HFM(ahni) ditched both the supposed fact and the negative evaluation of it simultaneousl?

If that analysis be not quite sure, ’tis only because it seems so unlikley that many ideoperverts distinguish anywhere near as nicely as all that. Very likely HFM(ahni) has never thought about the whole business beyond that he used to be a foe to _le Oualmartisme en Amérique_ whereas now he is become a neobuddy thereof. _¡Et voilà tout!_

For practical purposes -- an’ for as long as the Wolnomozhny Pan Doktor Profesor abstains from scribblin’ us a prizeworthy History of Wal-Mart "in three volumes boxed, suitable for throwing purposes" [5] -- that really *is* toot. Or close ’nuf.

And I wish you, sir, as ever,
¡Happy days! (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM
.

__
[1] The "it seems plain" sort of throw-away is a potential problem, a big one. Doubtless every whimper that His Freemightiness (_wolnomoznosc_ -- context makes clear that ‘slowmightiness’ cannot be the whight translation) emits strikes HFM Radošch himself as better grounded than "2 + 2 = 4."

And there, but for the favour of Father Zeus, . . . !

Oh, well! On the practical side, call me up Thursday or Friday and we will consult M. Pascal via the E-dja board and ask him to weigh this brainwave on the _Bien Penser_ Scale..

Meanwhile, I think tolerably _bien_ of oneself already for having just now discovered that the "There, but for the grace of [Chemosh, or such fabled deities]" formula is a (not very) subtle form of verbal self-stimulation. There is a large, probably on most occasions a preponderant, element of "Don’t let’s talk about her, let’s talk about ME!" in the TB4TGOG soundbark.

Once a noticer has noticed that, she will not find it puzzling, or even especially sarky by Rio Limbaugh standards, that His Freemight should buckle down to his self-whimperin’ with the words "Poor Peter Dreier." Whoever P. D. may be.
(As if HFM were about to whimper for somebody else!)

But I beg your pardon: the point is precisely that it does not much matter to anybooby, His Freemight preëminently included, who P. D. is. One might as well expand the initials "Poor Devil" in the sure and certain hope that the Kindermeister von Radoschtsch will incidentally explain enough about the deviltry in question to avoid unintelligibilty in the course of the self-censin’ process. Which indeed he does.

[2] As usual, a rash or premature generalisation risks making oneself look rather like Billy Blake, so I shall mention, but not positively recommend, the conjecture that all public exhibitions by Master Narky are _eo ipso_ occasions for the rest of us to polish up our altruism skills.

[3] (3a) The ‘immediate’ is required to cover a case like Gloomy Gus eventually discovering that Mizz Monnica had been whight all along.

(3b) Exactly what the neocriterion may be for the _argumentum ad homunculum_ is not a topic I can recite on with any confidence. So probably I had better play safe and assume that Pajama Junction NJ would be displeased to hear me wondering out loud whether any wild oats sown by the _na tym punkcie czasu Wolnomozhny Pan Radoszcz might have included such doo-doo and boo-boo as a subjectively sincere wish to "bring the system down."


[4] All contents of the freemighty trophy case notwithstandin’, there may be a middle-school-level misunderstandin’ here. I cannot tell with certainty, but it looks _primâ facie_ as if the Wolnomozhny Pan assumes that Truth, _prawda_, is an adequate defense against imputations of ‘propaganda’ the same way it is with libel and slander in the Holyhomeland™ic legal system.

One glance at where the dread P-word came from historically stops that clock in its silly tracks: The Protoratzingerites of A. R. 1031/1622/5383 were by no means implictly announcing that their own stuff "ain’t necessarily so"!

His Freemightiness, bein’ a congenital member of The Greatest Demographic™, may have been reared in such a way as to render most references to specifically Christian Christojudæanity almost as obscure to him as if they had been about Mahayana or Mormonism. ( I assume you remember Joel Whatzamovitch, the learnèd Turcologue, who seemed genuinely flabbergasted to run across "_Sic enim dilexit D*us mundum" &c., Ev. Joh._ III:16? )

From his own palæocomradely youth, however, the Wolnomozhny Pan (as he now is) might be expected to remember that the agitprop artists of International III were not shaking things up verbally because they disbelieved in _Bolschewismus_. Considered in that light, indeed, it is more a kindergarten mistake that we are discussing than anything that had to wait for Little Ronnie Rad. to reach seventh grade.

(( But St. John Dewey knows best about levels of educationalism. ))


[5] Can you name that tune, Dr. Bones?