I would have shortered it slightly differently: “I was nine years old when the Berlin Wall came down, and can’t you tell?”

On the right, pundits and politicians have cultivated a persistent cold-war-style alarmism about our foreign enemies — Vladimir Putin one week, Hugo Chavez the next, Kim Jong-il the week after that.

On the left, there’s an enduring fascination with the pseudo-Marxist vision of global capitalism as an enormous Ponzi scheme, destined to be undone by peak oil, climate change, or the next financial bubble.

What a load of bullshit, false equivalence and all. We’re still in the middle of the most recent enormous-Ponzi-scheme-turned-financial-bubble, we know that oil is a finite resource that we’re using up at an incredible rate, and we still don’t know whether the consequences of man-made climate change will be catastrophic or just disastrous. Trying to do something about these things is not the same as the right’s obsession with the Hitler of the Month Club. What a stupidly written piece.

I wish Chunky Reese Witherspoon had given him scabies.

This line of Ross’s convinces me that he has gone Full Metal:

(Barack Obama couldn’t even fit a visit to Berlin into his schedule.)

Remember, according to the wingnuts, the last time he went to Germany, THAT was the worst thing he ever did.

Three monkeys and a typewriter and what do you get?

Yet Another Doubthat Abomination.

And who’s to blame when the oceans die? Pseudo-Marxist Leftists of course. But don’t worry about reality, no, hmm-umm. We can sleep at night knowing biotic methane will never run out as long as conservatives have something to say…

Yeah, the stupid, it’s highly flammable.

Occasionally, his columns have the appearance of rationality, until you read them carefully. This one screams his idiocy at the top of its lungs.

“The possibility of dissolution lends a moral shape to history: we want our empires to fall as well as rise, and we expect decadence to be rewarded with destruction.”

Jesus Christ, Rose, I was just trying to get laid. Keep dreaming about that hardon that didn’t rise, too.

Signed,

Chunky Reese Witherspoon

PS: If you won’t close Harvard, at least nationalize it and call it Cambridge Community College. And stop that Open Admission Policy for Rich White Ktds.

The possibility of dissolution lends a moral shape to history: we want our empires to fall as well as rise, and we expect decadence to be rewarded with destruction.

A conversation at an orgy, ca. 200 AD:
Marcus: What’s the matter, Lucius? You don’t seem to be enjoying the party. Maybe some more wine? Another plate of hummingbird tongues? More Persian slave girls? Boys, perhaps?

Lucius: No, Marcus, I was just thinking. Things are pretty good in Rome right now. Septimius Severus has done a great job as emperor. We’re powerful and prosperous. But. . .

Marcus: But what?

Lucius: Well, you kind of need the possibility of dissolution to lend a moral shape to history, don’t you? I mean, I want the empire to fall as well as rise. I expect decadence to be rewarded with destruction. And, I gotta tell you, Marcus, your parties are about as decadent as they get.

Marcus: I never thought of it that way, Lucius, but I see what you mean. We better get started with that decline and fall.

I think you miscounted the monkeys by plus two.

Have missed ya, bro. You are the master in putting asshat in his place.

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the snippets of the column because shorter Douthat wasn’t explicit enough. Funny, but not illuminating as to the sheer idiocy that is Douthat. What commieatheist said at #2. Fuck Douthat and his false equivalence with a rusty pitchfork eleven billionty ways of Sunday.

Because I was all of 17 at the time I can inform Ross Douthat that the Soviet Union had lost credibility with leftists a number of years before the Wall came down. I also think that Gorbachev made it less possible to believe in the gray evil empire because he was clearly sincere in what he was trying to do.

I think Ross Douthat is getting at whether liberal democracy itself is seen as adequate to deal with those catastrophes. I also think that that is a different issue from whether politicians are trusted.

Tbogg, let me save you some time each week. Just plug in this “Shorter Ross”. It covers every column he’s ever written.

First I’m going to make up some false, generalization about the left. Then I’m going to get sad about it. Then I’m going to fiercely combat it with more generalizations, because I really don’t have specific knowledge of anything, then I’m going to get out my thesaurus and change some of the words, so they’ll be big and smart.

I know it’s not that short, but it’s a hell of a lot shorter than that ridiculous column.

One thing you have to give Douchehat credit for–He didn’t mention Reagan once in connection with the fall of Communisim.

There’s no point in blaming the Republicans and their enablers for the collapse of The Economy That Isn’t a Ponzi Scheme or the eight years of war to prevent us from being killed by terrorists is there, Ross?

In the grand scheme of things neither is a big deal and besides we all do it, whatever “it” is, so we’re all equally to blame.

If you took all of the right wing bullshit from Tailgunner Joe McCarthy to Rush Limbaugh, put it in a vast alembic, and then distilled it to its essence you’d have this Douthat op-ed.

Right. And just who would be the people ginning up such nonsensical existential threats? Own a mirror, Ross?

“On the right, pundits and politicians have cultivated a persistent cold-war-style alarmism about our foreign enemies — Vladimir Putin one week, Hugo Chavez the next, Kim Jong-il the week after that.”

“On the left, there’s an enduring fascination with the pseudo-Marxist vision of global capitalism as an enormous Ponzi scheme, destined to be undone by peak oil, climate change, or the next financial bubble.”

Interesting comparison. Of course, Ross is correct about conservatives. Their entire political strategy is based on inventing boogeymen: fascists, communists, blacks, gays, women, Obama, etc. All their other policies-environmental, financial, social-are hopeless failures.

Of liberals, Ross is completely clueless so he just chose to make some shit up and hope it sounds smart (lookatme, I write for the New York Times! Whee!). If anything the line should read: “On the left, there’s an enduring fascination with the notion that society can do better; hopeless romantics defeated over and over by their own idealism.”

And regarding the rise and fall of empires, as I was saying the other day to my friend, biggus dickus…

hatmandu, methinks you’ll find that the Goldilocks Community College Correspondence Course in Journamalism & Punditry has the “Commentary 101″ textbook copyrighted. Don’t go ripping them off by wantonly publishing the lesson apparently taught to most mainstream pseudo-pundits as the essence of insightfulness.

Mrs Rose Douthat, the ci-devant Abinormal Tucker, has a relatively recent apercu respecting tusks rising and falling:

What surprised you the most about narwhals?

I hadn’t realized how immensely valuable their tusks had been. I was in Greenland as the world economy really began to slide, and it made me think about how we assign worth to certain objects, and why.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Abigail-Tucker-on-In-Search-of-the-Mysterious-Narwhal.html

Hm, they were married September 29, 2007, interview’s April this year…

Without TBogg’s snark and y’all’s grace note additions, all we’d be left (heh heh) with is a mathematical reduction: R-wing ‘analysis’ = concern + Obama*(DIID^2)^n.

Another week, another excuse to trot out this stolen line:

This is exactly the sort of desperate, irrational column that says more about the columnist than the topic he pretends to write about.

The Soviet Union was wholly discredited with leftists by the time the wall came down and had been for at least a decade. In fact, Reagan’s ferocity about the USSR was very nearly anachronistic when he started his attacks. Bush the Elder missed (ignored) the signals completely of the fall of the USSR and was stuck in Evil Empire mode even as the pickaxes started breaking up the bricks.

So, basically, after a year and a half of marriage, Mrs. Douthat needed to go off to the vast uncharted wastelands of ice in order to find something that was long and hard, and stayed that way for more than a couple of minutes…

Of course, Douthat is full of shit there too: although Obama didn’t personally visit, he did make an appearance:

http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=3879217

Just observing and reporting. He said, she said. She went, he stayed.

I don’t judge.

How much does this cretin get paid to write this drivel? I think I need to go watch TV.

Because this is really bugging me, at least in my day there were a number of schools which deserved “Open Admission for Rich Kids” more than Harvard. One was Denison University and one I believe to be Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, because I vaguely remember a reference to a sailing team. Now, if you go to Rollins’s web site, they will proudly tell you that they are the masters-level institution with the most Fulbright scholars.

And Zack de la Rocha, of all people, spoke very highly of the diversity he encountered at Harvard, so there.

Ross Douthat’s father is an attorney? In New Haven? Another stereotype dies.

I’ve been too busy to get to the computer lately, so I didn’t read all the comments. Has anyone pointed out that Ross Douthat is a dumbass? A politically, historically and personally ignorant dumbass? A trite, pointless dumbass?

Well, whatever happened there, I’m sure that at least the narwhal had a happy ending:

But a team of scientists from Harvard and the National Institute of Standards and Technology has now made a startling discovery: the tusk, it turns out, forms a sensory organ of exceptional size and sensitivity, making the living appendage one of the planet’s most remarkable, and one that in some ways outdoes its own mythology.

snip

Dr. Nweeia noted that the discovery does not eliminate some early theories of the whale’s behavior. Tusks acting as sophisticated sensors, he said, may still play a role in mating rituals or determining male hierarchies.

He added that the nerve endings, in addition to other readings, undoubtedly produce tactile sensations when the tusk is rubbed or touched, and that these might be interpreted as pleasurable.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/science/13narw.html