Classic Blogger Flame War

I found a pretty classic blogger flame war going on at Matthew Yglesias' blog at Atlantic Monthly. I won't bore you with the minutiae (you can read it if you'd like here), but here are a couple items from the comments section that caught my eye:




Post:

I dunno, Thomas, I actually was writing in 2000 that I expected Bush to be a terrible President, a yet I still voted for him twice, and might do so again if the alternative was still Gore or Kerrey, although I'm less certain with regard to Gore; if he hadn't put forth a detailed 200 page economic manifesto, I may have followed my inclination to do nothing in support of George W. Bush, and in 2000 I voted in a state which was pretty close.


How awful has Bush been? Well, domestically, every bit as bad as I expected. Internationally? Tell me what the Persian Gulf looks like in 15 years, and I'll make my judgement. To those that say things could not be any worse than what George W. Bush is likely to produce, well, you simply have very limited imaginations. If that makes me a purveyer of cynical bullshit to you, again, you need to recharge your imagination, and you really need to re-evaluate the pros and cons of cynicism.

Posted by Will Allen | September 5, 2007 5:18 PM




Reply:

I think Congress needs to pass a law requiring every single person who says or writes something like that to have I AM A FUCKIN' IDIOT branded on their foreheads. 15 years from now the Persian Gulf might be a better place. 15 years from now we may be selling cigars to the folks from Alpha Centauri. 15 years from now I may be having sex with Hillary Duff. There is no way to know what's going to be 15 years from now and defending or excusing an action with the unknowable is magical thinking at its most infatile. Mike

Posted by MBunge | September 5, 2007 5:48 PM




Post:

Well, golly, mike, given you don't know what the Persian Gulf will look like in 15 years, you really can't comment with any degree of precision as to the wisdom of removing the Baathists by force from in Iraq, since the removal of the Baathists will have inevitably changed what the Persian Gulf looks like in 2020 or so. Bush has made plenty of errors, but they'll largely be forgotten if the Persian Gulf improves markedly in ther next 15 years, even though correlation doesn't prove causation.

Posted by Will Allen | September 5, 2007 6:01 PM





Reply:

I have absolutely no patience with or sympathy for people like yourself. The notion that, "Bush sucks but Gore/Kerry would have been worse", given Bush's track record, is so incredibly pathetic, asinine, intelligence-insulting, etc. that I can barely contain myself when I encounter it. On the scale of stupidest-fucking-things-I've-ever-heard, it is on a level with creationist idiocy.

In short, you are a fucking idiot if you think Gore or Kerry would have been worse than Bush.

Posted by r€nato | September 5, 2007 6:16 PM





Reply:

Gore would have been worse than Bush? Jesus fuckin' Christ I still can't get over that.

If you can't tell the difference between Gore and Bush, I'd like you to sample my special shit-stuffed cannoli. Most people stuff their cannoli with ricotta but I swear you won't be able to taste the difference.

Posted by r€nato | September 5, 2007 6:20 PM




And so it goes.