Tuesday, July 30, 2013

A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND.

Victor Davis Maximus Super Hanson tells us there were men in those days, by God! Not like the lily-livers we have now! And the only way to pay them proper tribute is in third-rate press-agent prose:
The greatest generals are tragic heroes. Take again George S. Patton — the man who was needed to instill a 19th-century martial audacity in an untrained army of conscripts reliant on superior logistics and material supply. Yet Patton was singularly inept in adjusting to the necessary politics of an allied effort, and indeed to the cultural parameters of modernism itself — thus his crackpot talk of reincarnation and manly essence.
Driven mad, nobly mad, by the tempora and the mores -- victim of the modern age, poor poor General!

To cut as much of the bullshit as is possible while still addressing the subject, Maximus has learned a few things about John Ford (from the sound of it, almost certainly from David Brooks), and sees a link to antique heroes, and their need to be obliterated in their agon for the good of all -- something Maximus would certainly consider socialistic if cowboys and Romans weren't so dead butch. Maximus says we need such a man now to save America -- from itself!
Could there be a tragic hero in the 21st century? Might a candidate reform the tax code, balance the budget, recalibrate entitlements, return the U.S. to a meritocratic and self-reliant society, and understand that he had to be hated for doing what might save us? “I shall end agricultural subsidies entirely and cut Food Stamps back to 2009 levels,” a heroic president might thunder as he welcomes a single term as the price for that defiance.
Maximus is catching on, slightly; he knows we all hate him and his fellow wingnuts. And while at first glance it might seem as if he's forgetting that you have to be elected before you can become our hated leader, I give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume he knows his preferred candidate will either steal the election or lie his way in.

But what man is fit for the laurel?
Mitch Daniels has the standoffishness...
Quit laughing! Let him finish!
...and a sense that what has to be done would be near politically intolerable for the most of the public. But does he have the spirit, over familial objections, to turn the buckboard around back to Hadleyville before High Noon?
Well, considering how quickly he crapped out back in 2012, when with the support of Maximus Super he could have saved us from the blackamoor tyrant Obama, I'd say Daniels prefers a heavily air-conditioned McMansion to any buckboard, especially one headed into battle.
Chris Christie is the antithesis of the current metrosexual president, as unconcerned with his appearance as Obama is prissy and compulsive in his manners and grooming. 
What's Latin for "faggot"?
But while Christie’s bluster shows signs of tragic unconcern, is it matched by a spiritual unconcern for what the presidency might do to him if he were to try to save the country?
Depends. Might the presidency try to make him eat a salad?
Perhaps things must become even worse to cause a tragic hero to emerge — for someone to speak the truth, offend the majority, and, when the successful effort is over, to lose.
Two thoughts: 1.) Sarah Palin isn't going to run, Maximus. When the Republic goes down in flames, she'll be running a theme park called Triggworld or some shit, and counting every penny from the moose-ear cap concession. 2.) I hate to call anyone else a drama queen, but this dream of non-consensually forcing Liberty onto America and then dying nobly downstage may be something you should share with your shrink, not yell out the windows. Some of your comrades might want to win an election someday.

97 comments:

  1. ...and when the
    successful effort is over, to lose.



    this is an excellent strategy for anyone running for political office.

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  2. Jay B.11:45 PM

    The greatest generals are tragic heroes.


    Oh, I know! Successful failures like Grant, Einsenhower and Marshall suck and are sooooooooooooo boring! Mister we could use a man like Rommel once again.

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  3. Spaghetti Lee11:49 PM

    Might a candidate reform the tax code, balance the budget, recalibrate
    entitlements, return the U.S. to a meritocratic and self-reliant
    society, and understand that he had to be hated for doing what might
    save us?


    "Endure, Master Wayne Mister President. Take it. They'll hate you for it, but that's the point of Bat...er, the President, he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice."


    Jesus, Vic. The Dark Knight was a movie, not a campaign strategy.

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  4. Budbear11:52 PM

    "Depends. Might the presidency try to make him eat a salad?"


    OK. That's just stone fucking cold, man. Funny as hell, too.

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  5. Budbear11:55 PM

    Methinks VDH would prefer Robert E. Lee in his fantasy.

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  6. He's gotta be strong and he's gotta be fast and he's gotta be fresh from the fight.

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  7. Jay B.11:56 PM

    Whiners can't be choosers.

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  8. StringOnAStick11:58 PM

    What, doesn't VDH want to be the tragic hero who does the right thing and pays for it with his life? He would shirk such an honor? Is he not made of the self same sterner stuff that he so lovingly tongue-bathes daily?
    Oh. Right. That nice pension waiting at the end of the road. Can't be wasteful of such things you know. And it won't be recalibrated either!

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  9. Gotta love the fresh take that VDH puts on a classic tale - the tragic hero sacrifices everyone else.

    But I suppose the Hanson hero will meet the worst fate of all - he'll be forced to survive on "$5,000 a lecture at most." And forced to fly business class no doubt, the poor condemned devil.

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  10. calling all toasters12:40 AM

    "Petulance is not part of the tragic hero: He ignores both insults and praise, and expects to be hated more than loved"

    Yeah, screw Hamlet and Achilles-- what about the agonizing life of Paul Ryan?.

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  11. AGoodQuestion12:57 AM

    VDH wants someone fanatically devoted to the right wing cause, offensively asocial, who'll be widely loathed and not give a shit. John Bolton, this could be your cue. By itself, the black wig/white mustache combo satisfies just about all the criteria.

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  12. TomParmenter1:02 AM

    VDH seems to confuse Patton the Movie with Dr. Strangelove the Movie, He refers to Patton's "crackpot talk of reincarnation and manly essence".



    George C. Scott was in both movies. Perhaps that's throwing him off. Tricky historical sources, movies.

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  13. Could there be a tragic hero in the 21st century? Might a candidate reform the tax code, balance the budget, recalibrate entitlements, return the U.S. to a meritocratic and self-reliant society, and understand that he had to be hated for doing what might save us? “I shall end agricultural subsidies entirely and cut Food Stamps back to 2009 levels,” a heroic president might thunder as he welcomes a single term as the price for that defiance.

    Where, oh where, is the conservative candidate who will bravely fight for more tax cuts for the rich and less aid for the poor and middle class? Oh, howzabout, every single fucking one of them running for national office in the past six plus years? What exactly does Hanson want, anyway? After all, Romney is still defending his factually delusional "47%" remarks (although he's changed his rationale). Does Hanson want Mitch Daniels and the rest to keep spewing the same crap, but just sneer more at the poors and moochers? The tape (yes, tape) is well-worn from countless viewings on this piece of Ayn Rand porn. (Hanson's Larry-King-whatever-flit-into-my-head prose doesn't help any, either.) Perhaps, like Ajax, he's gone completely fucking bonkers.

    (The exception to Hanson's fantasy speech being a complete rerun is the idea of a presidential candidate calling to end agricultural subsidies. But there's a long tradition of "principled" conservative politicians railing against such things on the stump and then supporting them in actual practice – or at least railing against food stamps while personally collecting farm subsidies. Or then there's railing against stimulus spending and voting against it but taking credit for it in one's home district.)

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  14. Paul Ryan ran to warn the Greeks before the Battle of Marathon in a mere "two hour and fifty-something."

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  15. FlipYrWhig1:53 AM

    Philoctetes basically kvetches and mopes for an entire play.

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  16. Jaime Oria2:26 AM

    It's odd that the article, with it's stew of 'tragic' and 'heroic' western heroes (all fictitious silver screen creations btw), American generals and a hypothetical future presidential candidate, doesn't look back at the roll call of real American presidents as part of its thesis.

    Let's check the list for any former cowboys or soldiers. Let's stick with generals. Ulysses S. Grant? Nope. Dwight D. Eisenhower? Nu-uh. The only real connection to presidentin' anybody mentioned by VDH has is Curtis LeMay, with him running as vice presidential candidate on George Wallace's 1968 AIP ticket. And we all know how well that went. Now why would Hanson, being a historian 'n' all, blithely overlook that....?

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  17. montag23:02 AM

    I have the disturbing feeling that VDH's idea of a modern tragic hero is Benito Mussolini. Someone who will have old ladies beaten up to prove that, contrary to old ladies' lyin' eyes, the trains do run on time. (After all, winding up gutted and bled like a hog is tragic, in the classic sense.)

    But, shit, c'mon, the jig's up when he starts nattering on about speaking "the truth," and "offend[ing] the majority." (Hell, maybe he's got Douglas Niedermeyer in mind: "you're all worthless and weak!") Doesn't he understand that there's even less truth on the campaign trail than there is in the NSA leadership, and that offending the majority (a GOP specialty) is a surefire way to lose elections? Or that that same majority thinks Mitch Daniels is a twerp in short pants? Or that that same majority is pretty fuckin' sick and tired of being told it has to suffer to keep the 300-ft. yacht and private jet businesses healthy?

    Paraphrasing the classics, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves,/ And in our stupid fucking grifts,/ And in our Overweening Love/ Of Crackpots, Fakes, Feebs and Fraudsters."

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  18. montag23:10 AM

    `Cause maybe the combination of Theodore Bilbo and Gen. Jack D. Ripper doesn't exactly cause one's patriotic heartstrings to throb?

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  19. Jeffrey_Kramer5:08 AM

    OK, we want a fierce opponent of cultural modernism, no friend of degenerate modern art, a "standoffish" figure with no real friends or at least a proven ability to discard old comrades, someone good at "bluster," essentially careless of personal appearance (messy hair would be a plus), who has a strong devotion to rescuing the Nation from the decay into which it has fallen, and ready to have himself thrown on the pyre when his usefulness as leader is over.


    Mister, we could use a man like [Godwin Godwin] again.

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  20. Jeffrey_Kramer5:10 AM

    And Antigone is the whiniest bitch. Vote Creon 2016!

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  21. Am I alone in thinking that the manly tragic hero David Hanson really yearns for is an American Pinochet?

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  22. Another Kiwi6:24 AM

    I didn't think that I would ever see one of these Conservative whiners come right out and ask to be spanked but there it is.

    Gonna be some hot times down at the old Hansen place when the neighbours figger out who got their agricultural subsidies canned.

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  23. mortimer6:36 AM

    Curtis LeMay a tragic hero? Christ, if the General had his way, World War III would have been one more thing for VDH to blame on the Sixties.

    Might a candidate reform the tax code, balance the budget, recalibrate entitlements, return the U.S. to a meritocratic [sic] and self-reliant [sic] society, and understand that he had to be hated for doing what might save us? “I shall end agricultural subsidies entirely and cut Food Stamps back to 2009 levels,” a heroic president might thunder...

    What VDH and his fellow Republi-cons really lament is that the U.S. is a liberal democracy and a constitutional republic in which all the thunder in the world still wouldn't endow President Winston Santorum with the power to "end agricultural subsidies entirely" or cut Food Stamps or balance the budget or reform the tax code, or anything else on his fantasy wish list without Congress and that "We The People" thing. Given the rampant obstruction and destruction of their current legislative insurgency, this is something he and his fellow Gooper fascists know full well .

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  24. You know who else was hated for making the trains run on time...


    People just never know what's good for them, eh?

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  25. Hey...Obama is hated by Real Murkins. Might he be this tragic hero VDSandM Hanson is pining for? Epiphany, anyone?

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  26. well, it's an excellent strategy for republicans to explain their trail of broken things.

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  27. I'm sure he sees himself in the role of Chronicler of Things That Went Before.

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  28. Ding ding

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  29. redoubt7:17 AM

    Needed: A Tragic Hero


    VDH, this sounds like a perfect description of. . . John Wilkes Booth.

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  30. What exactly does Hanson want, anyway?


    What he wants is the same thing every fucking whiny wingnut and self-serving glibertarian wants--they want to eat their cake and have it, too.


    Be the Big Badass Take No Prisoners Manly Man Father Knows Best God-King, but be loved for it after all. The good ole days when dirt folks felt really, really bad that they caused their betters to have ride over them in their chariots. Modern Man just can't understand how terrible the poor aristos must have felt being forced to slaughter and trample.


    His whole spiel is to try to persuade us to recognize the selfless sacrifices the Hero has made for us, so that we don't hate him for real but only pretend to hate him, or something like that.

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  31. As long as he likes dogs, I'm in.

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  32. Fats Durston7:43 AM

    "Now, like all great plans, my strategy is so simple an idiot could have
    devised it. On my command all ships will line up and file directly into
    the alien death cannons, clogging them with wreckage."

    "Men, you're lucky men. Soon, you'll all be fighting for your planet.
    many of you will be dying for your planet. A few of you will be put
    through a fine mesh screen for your planet. They will be the luckiest of
    all."

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  33. I didn't think that I would ever see one of these Conservative whiners come right out and ask to be spanked.../



    You mean like Paul Johnson? (Trivial, trivial. But you guys already did such justice to VDH's protofascism that I had nothing serious to add.)

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  34. Holy shit, I think you're right. Patton did believe in reincarnation, but I don't recall any talk of "essence" in the movie. I think he really is getting General Ripper and Patton confused.

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  35. Petulance is not part of the tragic hero


    Well that disqualifies pretty much any modern Republican or rightblogger right there.

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  36. Bill Hicks8:07 AM

    Hanson is a remarkably stupid man, as you have pointed out many times, but underneath the gibberish you are citing is a code, and the code is a military figure modelled on Mussolini. All America requires to achieve this ghastly fate is some spark such as 9/11 to reduce rationality and objectivity to minority status, plus the right character, ruthless enough to seize the day. The Republicans are already fascists. This is their dream of our future.

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  37. Bingo. All this bluster about wanting an unpopular hero is complete bullshit, because when a Republican president really does become deeply unpopular, they toss him overboard so fast he gets whiplash. See: Nixon, Bush Jr.

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  38. Halloween_Jack8:12 AM

    Sarah Palin isn't going to run, Maximus. When the Republic goes down in flames, she'll be running a theme park called Triggworld or some shit, and counting every penny from the moose-ear cap concession.


    She's making noises about running for a Senate seat in Alaska, and I know I really shouldn't pay attention to her, but I can't help but gawk at the spectacle of people still giving her money, despite everything that she's done. I can now believe (if not really understand) Moloch worshippers throwing their babies into the insatiable furnace.

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  39. Mention of Mitch Daniels automatically leads me to seek out a Doghouse Riley post.

    And there's some sad news on that front.

    http://world-o-crap.blogspot.com/2013/07/farewell-doghouse-riley.html
    ~

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  40. Jaime Oria8:17 AM

    And being a vegetarian he might could pull in the DFH vote!

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  41. BigHank538:32 AM

    Tricky historical sources, movies.


    Right. Next you'll be telling me that 300 had some details exaggerated.

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  42. Fats Durston8:37 AM

    Yet in those rare times of existential crisis, civil or global, the tragic hero is our only salvation. ... without Yul Brynner the Mexican villagers of The Magnificent Sevenremain Caldera’s sheep to be sheared.


    Yes, the tragic hero, one single man is the only solution to a global crisis. Talk about reasoning turned to mush by thousands of years of fiction.


    And the desperate Mexican village from Magnificent Seven, that was a place of over-reliance on entitlements and high tax rates?


    Who else looks forward to being rescued by squads of Zimmermans?

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  43. BigHank538:37 AM

    Chris Christie is the antithesis of the current metrosexual president, as unconcerned with his appearance...


    Gee, why'd he get the lap-band surgery and start losing weight? Nice own-goal, Hanson.

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  44. cleter8:47 AM

    Did he plagiarize most of that from some 1864 editorial endorsing George McClellan?

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  45. Jeffrey_Kramer9:02 AM

    Remember, though: it's the liberals who see government as the savior, while the conservatives shake their wise heads sadly at such folly. David Fucking Brooks says so.

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  46. tigrismus9:03 AM

    Aw, man.

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  47. Derelict9:06 AM

    Well, what can you expect from a "noted historian" like VDH? As he discovered so long ago that it's ancient history, intellectual rigor and paying attention to details are both incompatible with making rightwing talking points.

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  48. Jeffrey_Kramer9:11 AM

    Damn.

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  49. catclub9:22 AM

    Also George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt.
    How could he miss Andrew Jackson?

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  50. catclub9:26 AM

    Let me think, what would the republicans be doing right now if Obama had lost? Sitting back after Repealing every single thing he did!
    Recent events are even more mysterious than ancient history.

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  51. Mitch Daniels has the standoffishness...

    This is actually accurate.


    ...and a sense that what has to be done would be near politically intolerable for the most of the public.

    Once you realize how "done for whom" has been so briskly glossed over, this one manages to be accurate as well. So congratulations, Victor Davis Maximus Super Hanson Brutus Sesquiculus, you got something right for a change.

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  52. BigHank539:28 AM

    If you don't finish up by losing how can you spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for yourself? Don't forget that self-pity is, and always has been, Hanson's goal.

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  53. glennisw9:29 AM

    Obama is prissy and compulsive in his manners and grooming.


    Fascinated by the right wing's ability to just say shit with absolutely no grounding in facts or reality. Of course, depending on the point he's trying to make Maximus could just as assuredly allude to Obama's personal habit of letting his baggy pants hang low, grinning with his gold grill, and wearing his baseball cap sideways, because he's a "thug."


    Ah, what a chameleon is the President, who shape shifts to suit any wingnut whim!

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  54. Ethics Gradient9:32 AM

    What's Latin for "faggot"?


    It's fasces, which I'm sure was the real reason for Jonah's "Liberal Fascism" obsession.

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  55. sharculese9:33 AM

    Remember when right after he was first inaugurated, there was that photo of him in the Oval Office in shirts sleeves, and all the wingnuts were furious because under bush you Did Not Enter the Inner Sanctum Without a Jacket and Tie. Yes, Obama is the one who is compulsive about his grooming.

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  56. glennisw9:35 AM

    How's Chris Christie's lap-band things working out these days, anyway?

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  57. Here's a fine Doghouse post, re: Mitch Daniels.

    http://doghouseriley.blogspot.com/2013/07/little-man.html
    ~

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  58. coozledad10:18 AM

    We all know Von Kluge would have broken out of the Falaise pocket, if it hadn't been for that small group of black men loitering at the crossroads.

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  59. XeckyGilchrist10:34 AM

    Oh, how terrible! RIP, DR.

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  60. DocAmazing10:37 AM

    In pace requiescat, Doghouse.

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  61. DocAmazing10:39 AM

    The mention of Patton was no accident. His politics were...retrograde.

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  62. The sad part is, Zapp Brannagan may well be the "Great Man" David Brooks has been waiting for all these years.

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  63. DocAmazing10:44 AM

    My eye initially picked that up as "rented historian", which just shows you that my retinas are smarter than my brain.

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  64. whetstone10:45 AM

    In fairness to Victor Davis Fresnovious Hanson, this is no less useless than the usual horse race offal. "Doth the Fates favor Tim Pawlenty with their fairest winds?" Let's see Nate Silver plug that into his calculator.

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  65. Mr. Wonderful10:59 AM

    Not only that, but Scott's dialogue about "essence" consists of his quoting Robert Ryan's Jack D. Ripper's communique. Scott says the word once, as I recall. Purity of essence is Ryan's schtik.

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  66. Mr. Wonderful11:09 AM

    As David Bowie says, You're NOT alone. I was going to haltingly suggest that VDH's fantasy is one of pure fascism--or did it just slip his mind that all the benefits he calls on his Prez to bestow upon us, have to actually be legislated by what I call "Congress"?

    Man, we say these people are "authoritarians," but isn't their pining for the Strong Man supposed to be disguised at least a little?

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  67. Mr. Wonderful11:11 AM

    Damn, I should have read one more comment before writing what mortimer wrote five hours earlier. I blame society.

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  68. whetstone11:11 AM

    Oh, no... what a great loss. I just went to his site last night to see if he'd weighed in on the latest Indiana charter school hustle. One of my favorite writers on all the internet. In the throes of insomnia, I've spent time just reading his archives. RIP, Doghouse, and my wishes to his Poor Wife. His writing brought me a lot of pleasure over the years.

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  69. Jaime Oria11:12 AM

    Yipes! How could I have overlooked the Father of Our Country in an off-hand list of generals what were also presidents. I blame it on the fact I am not a noted historian, nor do I play one on the Internets...and if we broaden the category to presidents who were mere officers, throw in Harry Truman while we're at it.

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  70. Aaron Evan Baker11:15 AM

    "What's Latin for 'faggot'?"

    Cinaedus.

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  71. dstatton11:28 AM

    Embedded in his fantasy is the one comparing tax reform, the deficit, and entitlements to the Civil War & WWII They are not only not existential crises, they are mostly bullshit issues important only to wingnuts.


    BTW, whatever happened to their complaint that Obama forced health care reform on an unwilling public?

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  72. whetstone11:43 AM

    Sherman? Might not go over too well with the audience, though.

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  73. Mooser11:48 AM

    "When the Republic goes down in flames, she'll be running a theme park called Triggworld or some shit, and counting every penny from the moose-ear cap concession."
    I understand you probably didn't do it on purpose, but you ruined my day.

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  74. mortimer12:00 PM

    A great loss indeed... See, a good man isn't that hard to find after all. (How could anyone not immediately think of him when VDH suggested The Bantam Menace [© Doghouse Riley] as a tragic hero president?) Among other things, he was the anti-Brooks, and one of the funniest writers on the Internets.



    And for denying us access to his smart, astute, and witty comments on alicublog (some of the best ever), here's one last FJSK!

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  75. Gromet12:04 PM

    Can't wait till the Republic has a chance to vote for national tragedy.


    I'll be the guy in the aging foreign car with the bumpersticker "Don't Blame Me, I Voted For MacDuff."

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  76. Budbear12:21 PM

    Were they wearing hoodies?

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  77. Uncle Kvetch12:23 PM

    Am I alone in thinking that the manly tragic hero Davis Hanson really yearns for is an American Pinochet?



    I keep thinking it's more a Putin that they're yearning for. A virile, manly man they can all fap look up to -- an oligarchic kleptocracy where them's that got keep gettin' -- just enough of a veneer of fake democracy to keep up appearances -- and faggots and dykes getting bloodied in the streets by skinheads (sorry, "patriots") while the police either look away or join in the fun.


    Wingnut utopia.

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  78. gocart mozart12:50 PM

    "current metrosexual president, as unconcerned with his appearance as Obama is prissy and compulsive in his manners and grooming."


    Well, that's Chicago style politics for ya.

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  79. gocart mozart12:56 PM

    The MSM made you do it.

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  80. This is a common shtick I've seen among wingnuts. Seems to go back to Ayn Rand, who managed to convince these people that a man who says, "I am fighting for my property," sounds heroic rather than pathetic.


    Also, too, if they're daydreaming about themselves as the great hero, perhaps they have just barely enough self-awareness to realize that they would never be a hero who performs acts of martial greatness.

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  81. "Whatever it is, I'm willing to put wave after wave of men at your disposal."

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  82. Not to mention the crunchy conservative vote, so that's, what, four or five more votes right there?

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  83. dstatton1:26 PM

    Self awareness? Perhaps, but I believe the fantasy is internalized, to borrow a cliche.

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  84. "Lincoln excelled as a tragic hero — to the point of his strange premonitions about his early and violent death."
    Well, Hanson certainly nailed that:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-FGfyEwVXM

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  85. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard5:27 PM

    Chris Christie is the antithesis of the current metrosexual president, as unconcerned with his appearance as Obama is prissy and compulsive in his manners and grooming.


    So, being a slob is a virtue?

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  86. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard5:28 PM

    Nah, that's chic stylish politics for ya.

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  87. Of course, it's perfectly natural for a man like Reagan to have dark red hair into his late '70s.

    Damn, I miss DR already.

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  88. parsec5:38 PM

    Not Ryan, but Sterling Hayden. Hayden also played the crooked cop in "The Godfather," the one Michael shoots in the restaurant. Maybe VDH is confusing his hero with Don Corleone.

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  89. parsec6:12 PM

    I'm stunned. His disassembling of Mitch Daniels and "school reform" were some of the best things on the net. I'll miss looking for him off Roy's blogroll. R. I. P.

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  90. TomParmenter6:52 PM

    Coming soon, VDH on whether a president should be hard-bitten like Robert Ryan or expansively great like Sterling Hayden.

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  91. ADHDJ7:30 PM

    I also would've accepted "he's gotta be fresh-faced and white."

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  92. MatthewMikell9:25 PM

    Men want to be him, women want to be with him.

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  93. Tehanu10:02 PM

    "Obama is prissy and compulsive in his manners and grooming."


    And if he weren't neat and well-dressed, they'd be bitching about droopy trousers evincing thug life. Wait a minute, they already are. Cognitive dissonance much?

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  94. AGoodQuestion11:56 PM

    He can't tell George C Scott from Sterling Hayden, so maybe all white guys look alike to him as well.

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  95. Halloween_Jack7:44 AM

    There was some alleged tell-all book about the Obamas a few years ago that talked about the president watching TV in the White House private quarters; I'm not sure if it said that he put his feet on the coffee table or it was just implied.

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  96. let alone acts of heroic sacrifice.

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  97. derrick_jay6:31 AM

    Really, the greatest generals are tragic heroes...

    ____________________________
    Excel
    Consultants

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