Friday, March 12, 2004
THERE'S A SMALL PADDED ROOM IN THE BLOGOSPHERE TOO
I had just flipped on CNN when the second plane hit the second tower. Like many, I didn't turn it off for--I don't know--months. At first I remained glued because I feared further mayhem, later because I hoped to see news of the capture of Osama bin Laden.
Yesterday, two and a half years later, I had just pulled up cnn.com when the news of a possible al Qaeda connection to the Madrid bombings broke. What Madrid bombings? This was the first I had heard of it.
I raced around the blogosophere trying to find out what happened. 10 bombs! 4 trains! 199 dead! 1,450 wounded! Terror. 9/11-scale terror.
I checked Instapundit and some of the blogs listed as commenting on the news, all of which seemed to be righty (or at least non-lefty) blogs. So, I decided to check a lefty blog.
If you've been read much of Spitbull, you might have guessed that I'm not very righty myself. I'm not very lefty either. Politics usually bores me and I usually have a hard time getting all worked up about how awful things will be if the wrong side wins. But I have lots of righty friends (although I may have more lefty friends than righty ones) and the Northern Alliance fellows are a nice enough bunch and don't seem to mind that I don't really toe the line (I guess the Warrior Monk is righty enough for them). But what I saw on the lefty blog made me angry:
I got mad, and then, I turned to other matters. Not mad enough to blog. But this morning, when I read Lileks' Bleat about Madrid, I remembered:
Yesterday, two and a half years later, I had just pulled up cnn.com when the news of a possible al Qaeda connection to the Madrid bombings broke. What Madrid bombings? This was the first I had heard of it.
I raced around the blogosophere trying to find out what happened. 10 bombs! 4 trains! 199 dead! 1,450 wounded! Terror. 9/11-scale terror.
I checked Instapundit and some of the blogs listed as commenting on the news, all of which seemed to be righty (or at least non-lefty) blogs. So, I decided to check a lefty blog.
If you've been read much of Spitbull, you might have guessed that I'm not very righty myself. I'm not very lefty either. Politics usually bores me and I usually have a hard time getting all worked up about how awful things will be if the wrong side wins. But I have lots of righty friends (although I may have more lefty friends than righty ones) and the Northern Alliance fellows are a nice enough bunch and don't seem to mind that I don't really toe the line (I guess the Warrior Monk is righty enough for them). But what I saw on the lefty blog made me angry:
... the Basques have been fighting for their existence for as long as the Celtic Irish ... have been. It doesn't make this right, but perhaps someone should start listening.Someone should start listening?!?!
I got mad, and then, I turned to other matters. Not mad enough to blog. But this morning, when I read Lileks' Bleat about Madrid, I remembered:
There’s a small padded room in my mind where I imagine the theories of the daft: OMG Bushitler did this, it’s part of a campaign to make us “afraid,” it’ll only get worse. That’s one take, from the foil-chapeau brigade, a decided minority. Then there’s the schadenfreuders: well, Spain supported the war in Iraq. Payback’s a bitch, eh? As if there was some sort of epiphany in the terrorist community: whoa, Spain is assisting the Crusaders now. I know it’s going out on a limb, but I propose adding Spain to the list of Western Christian polyglot democracies to destroy. All in favor, say aye. Of course one can say that the jihadists attacked Spain for its role, but to suggest that Spain earned this atrocity means that the two causes are morally indistinguishable.I'd go even further. Any suggestion that Spain had this coming, that she is at all to blame for this calamity, is morally reprehensible. It's like saying "it doesn't make raping her right, but perhaps that woman shouldn't have worn that super short skirt." Both examples of daft "reasoning" are more than enough to rouse me from my torpor and make me vote against the reasoners.
