Sunday, July 23, 2006

Sunday Funnies



We must have David Brooks for that section, don't we? He has written a column about the multiculturalism of the wingnuts; how all sorts of different types of lunatics all fit neatly under the same patriarchal roof, but how some types of lunatics, his own type, for example, aren't given the honor and kowtowing that's just their proper due. His type is called a neoincrementalist, by the way, the type that moves forwards very slowly and imperceptibly, in the middle of bombs and such.

Here is a delicious morsel from that column:

In short, the administration approach embodies a few principles we neoincrementalists hold dear. First, you create policies in accord with your basic values while fully understanding the downside risks — the downside risk in this case being that terrorists may have developed methods that make it nearly impossible for superior military forces to uproot them given the global media environment.

Second, you go to war with the world you have. Right now unilateral actions are politically unsustainable, so everything has to be done through a coalition. And third, statecraft is soulcraft. If you can create circumstances in which democrats win, you can change perceptions and create the momentum for future victories — incrementally.

Slowlee, slowlee, catchee monkey. Or something similar. But spend a moment with that sentence I have bolded. Do you, too, wonder if it's nostalgia about those far-gone days when killing lots of people could be done discreetly?

From now on I'm going to call the incrementalist neocons the inchworms.