[Parts 1 and 2 to which this is 3 are here and here]

I offer some concluding theoretical observations.

I could, of course, have chosen to be impolite and/or unsophisticated in response to Martin Wisse and Tim Fisken. But I decline to be. I’m not even going to say they’re both stupid. I do think that what Martin says now is as stupid as what he said before. Just as there plainly are some good things that came from the war in Iraq, so equally, if there is in the end a reasonably benign outcome there, the action of the coalition in removing the roadblock to political progress that was the Saddam Hussein regime will have played a part in that outcome. But this doesn’t mean that, because Martin says it will have been in spite of the American-led coalition, he’s a stupid person. I don’t know him, and I don’t know if he is or not. It’s a familiar insight that intelligent people can say and write stupid things – as haven’t we all done at one time or another.

In turn, Tim Fisken may just not be familiar with the distinction between endorsing what someone else thinks and publishing something of theirs – though this ignorance would slightly surprise me in a graduate in philosophy, as in fact in many other kinds of literate people. And though it’s best not to become enraged without good reason, others have been known to do so. It’s not a capital offence. So I don’t impugn the quality of Tim’s intelligence, as I don’t impugn the quality of Martin’s intelligence, although I have commented – critically, as you will have noted – on the quality of the intelligence of their two posts. Good, though, that I’ve resolved not to be impolite to either Tim or Martin.

Hey guys, I’ll buy you a beer some time. We can swap anecdotes about this and that. We can discuss our respective responses to a certain famous Marxist’s view concerning abusive language. Was it excessively rigid? Might he have had a point?

We can discuss the advice I once read from a certain blogger – sorry, whoever you are, I don’t remember which blogger – that you shouldn’t pretend to yourself that what you do on your blog is just… pretend. Sound advice? Or a bit too earnest?

And we can consider the modalities of death by irony? In wishing to dispose of people – ironically – may the various dark points of the twentieth century be used interchangeably and do they all work equally well? I mean, work equally well as apt and effective uses of irony? Or is there a ranking? Would ‘Let’s hack them to death with machetes’ be as good as the Vyshinsky call (or better, or worse) in the way of irony? How about ‘Strap them down to something metallic and pass electricity through their bodies, then throw them from helicopters into the sea’? Or what about…? No, perhaps I’ll give that one a miss; it does rather agitate people.

Looking forward to our get-together, in any case. It’ll be a blast. And, remember, I’m buying.

[Part 1, to which this is 2, is here]

Onwards then, and onwards. Tim Fisken, down at H.U.H?, after Martin Wisse but not necessarily because of him, one day thought to put forth something like this (see Part 1 for the convention we have adopted in replacing a certain familiar obscenity):

The backing Second International all over again So, I was going to write something about how being part of the pro-war left leads to endorsing strange and repugnant right-wing positions. But I’m too enraged to actually make an argument, and anyway, I think it’s a case of, if you have to ask, you’ll never know. Anyone who can link approvingly to this interview with Christopher Hitchens just Doesn’t Backing Get It. I’m with Vyshinsky here – let’s shoot the pro-war left like the mad dogs they are (Ken MacLeod is as enraged as I am, but more coherent with it).

Now, if you click through the links which Tim supplies in this carefully crafted paragraph, you will learn certain things: one of them is that the repugnant right-wing position directly in question is a qualified defence of the death penalty, argued on normblog by Matthew Kramer, and the pro-war leftist thought to be endorsing it, consequently, looks like being me. (Ken MacLeod’s enragement, by the way, came as some surprise to me, since what Ken expresses under another of Tim’s links seemed quite calm, even though it did register a disagreement between the two of us.)

Anyway, Tim’s post got me to thinking about why it is that, along with others on the pro-war left, I’m to be shot like a mad dog. Just for endorsing Matthew Kramer’s argument about the death penalty? Except that I haven’t. I’ve just posted it on my blog. I’ve posted Eve Garrard’s arguments about evil, knowing that I have a major disagreement with her account of evil, and I’ve posted Clive Bradley about movies because he and I had an email discussion in which he expressed a view I hadn’t previously much thought about, and so didn’t know whether I agreed with. I’ve posted Andrew Russell’s critical reflections about Rugby Union, knowing that Andrew has a more negative view of the game than I do and indeed because I knew that. In all these cases, I should add, I found much of interest and to agree with in what these friends of mine in the event wrote. But there’s a principle I’m edging towards here and it’s this: publishing something by someone else isn’t necessarily endorsing everything – or sometimes anything – of what they say.

Happily for me, however, it turns out that it’s not my supposed endorsement of Matthew Kramer’s view for which I’m to be shot like a mad dog. In a comment up at the Stoa, Tim Fisken – now ruing the startling incoherence of his own post – starts off with the clarification that he has ‘a general dislike of [my] meta-ethical position… [my] particular sort of deontological morality’. Oh no – am I to be shot like a mad dog for my meta-ethical position?

Hang on… it may not be that either which has got Tim angry. It is, rather, that left-wing supporters of the war are too tolerant of right-wing supporters of the war even though the latter hold positions which are incompatible with… left-wing ones. Tim says he’s confused but what he’s driving at, it seems, is: Can we pro-war leftists still be of the left? If so, then fraternally polite disagreement might be apt. If not – contempt. So that’s why we’re to be shot like mad dogs (if indeed we still are); it’s because we’re no longer really of the left and are now contemptible. But, finally, maybe not even that. It may just be that Tim mustn’t post ‘first thing in the morning after hard nights on the town with IndyMedia activists’.

Call me old-fashioned, call me straight-laced, but I haven’t been able to find any good reason at all in Tim’s developing reflections why I – or anyone else on the pro-liberation left – should be shot like a mad dog. Not, surely, just for endorsing a qualified defence of capital punishment written by someone else (or in fact not endorsing it); not for my meta-ethical position, real or alleged; not for being tolerant of people some of whose positions I agree with and other of whose positions I don’t agree with (which, it occurs to me, is my relationship, not only to right-wing supporters of the Iraq war, but also to left-wing opponents of the Iraq war); and not for Tim’s hard nights out with his IndyMedia friends.

Oh, oh – hold on there. Tim’s reference to Vyshinsky, he finishes by saying, was only meant as ironic. It is, after all, incompatible with his views on capital punishment.

Yay, we’re not really to be shot like mad dogs, we’re only to be shot like mad dogs ironically.

And so to something a bit different (it being a disquisition in three parts).

There are some things in life which, when you chance to come across them, it’s better just to step over or around. One such thing, within the blogosphere, is abuse. It doesn’t seem to be all that common – judging, anyway, from the blogs I mostly read – but once in a while you do come across it. Step over or step around.

However. If other bloggers than yourself happen to take it up as a talking point, making of it a topic of public reflection, so to say, and if, further, you yourself are the object of the material in question, then what the hell, you may feel free to pitch in and have your say. For ‘you’ there, people, read ‘I’ or ‘me’ as appropriate, with the proprietor and principal author of this blog in the position of speaker and referrer.

Not long ago posts at the Stoa and the Age of Waiting (see ‘We must be doing something right’, 29 January) drew attention to a couple of guys who were – dash it – being jolly unpleasant about me. Or to me. Or both. Anyway, I didn’t feel they were altogether friendly. In his post about this Chris at the Stoa had some observations on the pros and cons of politeness, and the comrades at Age of Waiting for their part diagnosed, in the item they were addressing themselves to, a certain lack of sophistication. Without wanting to dispute either of these two approaches to the phenomenological, and indeed ontological, nexus constituted by the abusive matter Stoa and Waiting were discussing, I wish to offer a complementary theoretical perspective upon it.

I take the posts which here form our object of enquiry in chronological order. In the first of them (to be read only by those possessed of a strong constitution), Martin Wisse, down at Wis[s]e Words, kicks off with a ‘What he said’ which used to link to a post shortly to be described, but which now links mostly to whiteness. As I am best able to recollect the post it used to link to, that post contained a familiar obscene admonition repeated many times, first in front of the name of George Bush, and then in front of other names – I think those of Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice amongst others, though I won’t swear to it. So much did Martin admire the string of profanities thus formed that he decided to continue with a similar string of his own.

At this point, Gentle Reader, I must try what I can to acquaint you with the obscenity that had been put to work here by Martin and A.N. Other, while doing as little brutality as possible to what I know to be your refined sensibilities. From his now seemingly defunct source, Martin was availing himself of a word that would rhyme with ‘back’ if, for the ‘a’ in ‘back’, you were to substitute another vowel: the vowel, in fact, which would become free for substitution were you to re-type the phrase ‘the exploitation of labour’ to conform to US spelling.

Whew. I hope we haven’t got too sullied there. I’ve tried my best. I do feel a bit sullied, but only a bit. You? No, don’t worry, you don’t look sullied.

OK, so Martin, after his emboldening ‘What he said’, wrote something like this:

And back Norm Geras, back Harry and friends and back any other member of the so[-]called reasonable prowar left too. They bought into this myth of “liberating Iraq” sold to them by a man who himself… [etc and so forth]

Now here I have to make a brief explanatory digression. Martin has put in one previous appearance on normblog. For he it was who, back in September, expressed the view:

If you… support the war on Iraq, you’re a fool. We said nothing good would come from this and indeed, nothing good has come from it.

Not long afterwards I engaged with Martin about this (see Unwise words: old site, September 27), urging him in a friendly way to reconsider. Did he really want to commit himself to the claim that nothing good had come from the war? Not even…

the closing down of the torture chambers… the eviction of Saddam and his two boys from their seats of power… the opening up of Iraq to a free press.

So, has Martin reconsidered? This I cannot say. What I can say is that, if he has, he evidently hasn’t changed his mind. For, as he now puts it:

If Iraq really becomes free, it will be in spite of the American led coal[it]on, not because of it.

I would call this the Kleinian view of things, except that it may be Martin got there before Naomi Klein. It might possibly be fairer to refer to it as a piece of Wissedom. But, as I said in connection with the Kleinian variant, it’s not my way to mock.

> Here’s a review by John Fordham of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet gig in Cambridge. My own less expert effusions on the subject are here.

> And here Matt Dellinger has the gen on the albums of Lyle Lovett. You don’t know Lyle Lovett? It’s never too late to educate yourself.

Anti-Americanism can damage people’s health:

A campaign to wipe out polio in Africa is being jeopardised by suspicions among Muslim leaders in Nigeria that the vaccination programme is an American plot to make Muslims infertile.

A boycott of the oral polio vaccine spread to two more Muslim-dominated states in northern Nigeria yesterday, after three states banned the vaccine campaign last year.
…..
The rumours are believed to have originated from American websites promoting alternative medicine, and include claims that the vaccine contains anti-fertility drugs, can cause Aids, and is linked to mad cow disease.

The World Health Organisation and Unicef launched a massive polio immunisation drive this week which aims to inoculate 63 million children in 10 African countries against the virus.

Here’s a report of an Israeli raid today on four Palestinian banks:

Israeli security forces seized millions of dollars in cash from four Palestinian bank branches Wednesday, saying much of the money was sent by Iran, Syria and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas to fund Palestinian militants.
…..
The joint operation by police, army and the Shin Bet security service marked Israel’s largest-scale effort in more than three years of fighting to stop the flow of funds to Palestinian militant groups, including from Hezbollah, Israeli officials said.
…..
The forces took the equivalent of $6.5 million to $9 million from the bank vaults, corresponding to the amount of money found in the targeted accounts, security sources said.
…..
The raids came a day after Palestinian security officials confirmed that Hezbollah helped fund the last two Jerusalem bus bombings – on Jan. 29 and on Sunday, respectively – in which 18 Israelis and a foreign worker were killed.

The Brendan O’Neill piece casting doubt on the plastic shredder story, and which first appeared in the Spectator, is reprinted in today’s Guardian. I gave my reaction to O’Neill’s article a few days ago. Tim Blair has also posted a reaction which is sharper than mine, though our two reactions have something in common. Some of Tim’s greater sharpness is expressed thus:

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that this person from northern Iraq was lying, for whatever reason; we pro-liberation types now find ourselves in the utterly humiliating position of having supported the removal of a tyrant who tortured and killed tens of thousands of people (at least), but who didn’t use a plastic shredder.

What Chris Brooke says (see post immediately below) about the songs from Nashville reminded me of two great numbers from that movie, both written and sung by Ronee Blakley: ‘Idaho Home’ and ‘Tapedeck’. I have them both on a 1975 vinyl album of Blakley’s – Welcome – which, these two tracks aside, is not great. It took me a while to track down the lyric for ‘Idaho Home’ on the internet but here it is, as corrected by me:

Momma and Daddy raised me with love and care [lovin’ care?]
They sacrificed, so I could have a better share
They fed me and nursed me and sent me to school
Momma taught me how to sing, Daddy lived the Golden Rule
When I think of the people alone and afraid
Abandoned and wild like a fatherless child
I think of my Momma and how she could sing
Harmony with my Daddy, our laughter would ring.

(chorus)
Down the highway, on the beaches
As far as memory reaches
I still hear Daddy singin’ his old Army songs
We’d laugh and count horses as we rode along.
We were young then, we were together
We could bear floods and fire and bad weather
And now that I’m older, grown up on my own
I still love Momma and Daddy best in my Idaho home.

Momma grew up on the prairies of Kansas
She was tender and sweet.
The dust and tornadoes blew round her
But they left her straight up on her feet.
My Daddy grew up on his own, more or less
His Momma died when he was just eleven.
He had seven sisters to raise him.
But he dreamed of his Momma in heaven.
His Daddy drank whiskey and had a sharp eye.
He sold chicken medicine farmers would buy.
Together they hunted the fields and the farms
When his daddy died, my Daddy rested in my Momma’s arms.

(repeat chorus)
Down the highway, on the beaches
As far as memory reaches
I still hear Daddy singin’ his old Army songs
We’d laugh and count horses as we drove along.
We were young then, we were together
We could bear floods and fire and bad weather
And now that I’m older, grown up on my own
I still love Momma and Daddy best in my Idaho home.

And now that I’m older, grown up on my own
I still love my Mom and Daddy best in my Id-a-ho ho-o-ome.

Don’t mock. Or, at least, wait until you’ve actually heard it before you mock.

I asked Chris, of the stoical Stoa, about A Mighty Wind which he saw a couple of weeks ago (he has the link to the site). And he said:

A Mighty Wind is a film by the people who made This is Spinal Tap all those years ago. I think it’s no longer on general release, but it’ll keep coming back in repertory cinemas for, I hope, a long time to come. The film is one of those mock documentaries, the premise being that following the death of Irving Steinbloom, the bands that he worked with in the early 1960s re-form in order to play a final memorial concert. Most of the film is taken up with telling the story of how three different folk acts – The Folksmen, Mitch and Mickey and the New Main Street Singers – get back together again and relearn their old songs. It’s very funny indeed, a gentle, affectionate satire of the very early sixties moment in American folk music, just before Bob Dylan came along and changed if not everything then quite a lot. And the dozen or so songs that were written for the film are very cleverly done – in some ways like the songs written for Robert Altman’s Nashville: songs that aren’t quite out and out parodies of the genre. It’s great fun. And the film’s engaging and (I thought) idiosyncratic linking of American folk music and Jewishness made me think it’d be a film you’d enjoy.

Certainly sounds like it.

From Anne Tyler’s The Amateur Marriage:

“She was always doing things like that,” Sally said… “Once when we were downtown she gave a dollar to a homeless person, except he wasn’t homeless after all; he was a tenured professor. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I’m a tenured professor,’ but Pauline waved a hand and said, ‘Oh, well, keep it anyhow,’ and I said, ‘Pauline…!‘”