Willful Stupidity

Here's my plan. I'm going to say something really stupid, and hope that you believe it too. I'm going to trust that you aren't going to subject my statement to any scrutiny whatsoever. No attempts to independently verify my statement, and no attempts to subject my statement to the rigors of common sense. I'm hoping you will just accept it at face value.

Here's my statement.

Sending Make me a Commentator!!! Money is more fun the ten trips to Disneyland.

Yes I know that this statement seems stupid, and you could probably disprove it in a moment (by say, sending me money and finding out that while it's fun for me, it's not as much fun for you). But I'm hoping you won't.

It's this kind of willful stupidity that animates much conservative discourse these days, it strikes me. Take this statement from an article by Michael Barone.

At New York University on Sept. 20, Kerry said, "We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure." There is an obvious tension between this and Kerry's statement on Aug. 9 that, knowing what he knows today, he would have voted again to authorize military action in Iraq and his statement last Dec. 17 that "those who doubt that we are safer with (Saddam Hussein's) capture don't have the judgment to be president."

Barone just hopes that his audience will be too stupid (or too filled with hatred for Kerry) to go and verify what Kerry might have meant. More and more it seems like the Conservative plan is to portray Kerry as a kind of schizophrenic, whose flip-flips are less the work of a political hack, but more the delusional fits and starts of a mental patient.

But of course, applying a little knowledge and common sense to this statement soon clears it up. I don't know that there are very many serious Conservative or Liberal politicians who didn't see Saddam Hussein as a dangerous man and a problem to be dealt with. Senator Kerry thought it was (and thinks it is) his duty to authorize the President to deal with situations like this. That said, the course President Bush took with that authorization is, in Senator Kerry's mind (and my own) a terrible, terrible mistake.

Is that hard to understand? No. But, for Mr. Barone's sake, please don't think about it too hard, and just accept it at face value. And also remember, sending me money is more fun than ten trips to Disneyland.