Smarter racists, please

In my attempt to cope with the retardness of RTG, I am reminded the "prayer of the true reformer" mentioned by John Stewart Mill:

Lord, enlighten thou our enemies ... Sharpen their wits, give acuteness to their perceptions, and consecutiveness and clearness to their reasoning powers. We are in danger from their folly, not from their wisdom: their weakness is what fills us with apprehension, not their strength.

I'm going to have to start becoming more religious, because her latest post literally made me bang my head on my table in a vain attempt to stop the dumbness from hurting me. Her reasoning makes me want to be dumber, to silence the shrill screeching of sheer airhead bigotry, to avoid comprehending the degree of careless stupefaction displayed. However, I consider it my duty to lampoon her posts, if for no other reason than to demonstrate the logical consequence of politics as a fashion statement.

Her post is concerned with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Dutch MP who is outspoken against extremist Islam. Note the word, "extremist". The WSJ article by Bret Stephens in which Ali is quoted explains the concern that liberals have when criticizing Islam:

Liberals especially are reluctant to criticize the content of Islam because they fear that it is tantamount to criticizing Muslims as a group, and is therefore almost a species of racism.

The point being that one should take care to criticize the institution and people's participation in distasteful acts without unnecessarily condemning a whole group through guilt by association. This is a distinction that liberals are careful to make. Islam is only dangerous insofar as some of its adherents are violent, not because it is composed of people who may have skin darker than standard Aryan flesh tone.

Of course, RTG misses the point completely. First, she equates liberal opposition to Israeli policies with racism. Naturally, she accomplishes this by blurring the distinction that Stephens just made - a distinction that liberals do make all the time:

Racism should be denounced at every turn (even when done by liberals directed at, say, Israel).

That begs the motherfucking question, doesn't it, RTG: are liberals racist towards Israel because they oppose Israeli political policies? The implications of such a stance are curious: does that then imply that RTG is racist towards Iraq, North Korea, and Iran because she is opposed their policies? I certainly hope not, and I don't think one can accuse her of racism simply because of those foreign policy stances - just as opposing any foreign policy of a country is not in and of itself racist.

You can, however, accuse her of racism for completely disregarding the nuance of the argument to which she appeals:

But when one's culture or religion or race is defined by killing and torture of innocents, all right thinking people have the obligation to stand up and denounce that race/culture/religion.

Did you not just argue that one cannot tie race to religion? So basically, you said liberals must be racist towards Israel for the very reason that you're racist towards Muslims (who, earth to RTG, are not all one convenient brown race)? I can just picture her twirling her hair and writing this screed to prove to herself that she's no bigot.

Lord, please make RTG smarter. Or, at the very least, make her writing more sensible.

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Written on Sunday, January 14, 2007