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February 18, 2003
I noticed this entry on the Weekly James about the protestors marching against the war on Iraq at a moment when James THOUGHT BRIEFLY OF HEADING DOWNTOWN. James said:
'I even ran into a neighbor from up the street, his wife and three children in tow - a nice guy with whom I've shared an after-work beer over the fence.
"You going to The Walk?" he asked hopefully.
"Hell no! I'm going to Cole's!" I replied, laughing, having misread his question and assuming we would have a laugh about the great unwashed heading downtown.
"Oh, that's right! You're American!" he said, a roll of pennies clattering behind his eyes.
As if that explained the whole thing, and that my accent automatically meant that I was like some grinning, bloody-fanged Jewish caricature in an Arab newspaper gleefully eating Muslim children.'
No James, wrong call. Its calling those Australian citizens exercising their political rights ' the great unwashed' that is the issue. That language refers back to the dirty, uneducated proles of the nineteenth century. They were seen as the dangerous classes but they won their political rights through political struggle. The language indicates a resignation to that political reality of democracy, but it dismisses them as uneducated and ruled by emotion and instinct.
And the iconoclastic Tim Blair, who gets his rocks off deflating left triumphalism, quotes the above passage on his Monday post here without comment. So neo-con Tim thinks the protestors as the great unwashed. Tim, we are waiting for you to push things a bit. Why not call them the enemy within? Why not accuse those who marched against a war with Iraq of committing treason.
O, c-mon Tim. Don't disappoint us. Push that envelop beyond 'peace-lovin' idealists', 'Peace Mooks', 'chicken shits' etc. Transgress the boundaries by moving beyond comments like its the '' Iraqi people the crazy Left doesn't care about.' Move beyond being entertained by the absurdities of lefty life----the capering of the love pixies-----to scorning democracy. Let us see the neo-con snarl behind the entertainer.
We want to be entertained.
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It's the smugness that really appalls about you people. Last weekend's rallies have shocked and disgusted decent people all over the world. There is nothing very amusing about it.
Oddly enough, old china, though it may not seem like it now, you are in a minority. A grubby, irresponsible minority. Read a little more widely, old son.
Ignorance is bliss. Enjoy! When Saddam is destroyed, as he certainly will be, your disgusting and bankrupt position will go down the toilet as well.