Exporting Barbarianism
It has been an axiom of wisdom for centuries. The Brits learned the hard way and now it is our turn. The best way to deal with the Middle East is to avoid it except when absolutely necessary. It is a cesspool. When you jump into a cesspool, no matter how noble your aspirations, you exit smelling like its contents. Look at us.
Hundreds of thousands of civilized people are downloading a snuff film ostensibly to “express revulsion” at it. Before we dived* into the cesspool, only a few perverts watched snuff films. Now it’s the next big thing. Look at us. We thought we could bring democracy to the Middle East.
Look at us. We can justify every Abu Ghraib indecency to within a millimeter of every obscure letter of the Geneva Conventions. This is 1A, so the electrodes are okay if they are connected to the body but not to the generator. This is 1B, so don’t tell me what you do. We don’t want to hear about that.
Whose brilliant idea was it to bring democracy to the Middle East? It was once the cradle of civilization; now it is the cradle of de-civilization. To deal with barbarians, you must become a barbarian, they say. To deal with assassins, you must become an assassin. Now we are barbarians and assassins too, exacting holy revenge for every atrocity we see or imagine and expressing outrage over outrage over outrage. Look at us.
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*USAGE NOTE: |
Either dove or dived is acceptable as the past tense of dive. Usage preferences show regional distribution, although both forms are heard throughout the United States. According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, in the North, dove is more prevalent; in the South Midland, dived. Dived is actually the earlier form, and the emergence of dove may appear anomalous in light of the general tendencies of change in English verb forms. Old English had two classes of verbs: strong verbs, whose past tense was indicated by a change in their vowel (a process that survives in such present-day English verbs as drive/drove or fling/flung); and weak verbs, whose past was formed with a suffix related to –ed in Modern English (as in present-day English live/lived and move/moved). Since the Old English period, many verbs have changed from the strong pattern to the weak one; for example, the past tense of step, formerly stop, became stepped. Over the years, in fact, the weak pattern has become so prevalent that we use the term regular to refer to verbs that form their past tense by suffixation of –ed. However, there have occasionally been changes in the other direction: the past tense of wear, now wore, was once werede, and that of spit, now spat, was once spitede. The development of dove is an additional example of the small group of verbs that have swum against the historical tide. |
2:59:45 AM 
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