You Don't Understand What They Understand, You Just Think You Do

Nothing like mindless sneering to show how ignorant a person is. Not the sneering part--that just shows they're rude. It's the mindless part that tells you how little they know. (And since they're being condescending, it makes for great irony.)

Just a couple examples (easy enough to find) over at Slate.

David Plotz is blogging the Bible. He reads the latest installment of the Torah and then tells us what he thinks.

At one point, he's unhappy with the Israelites' slaughter of the Midianites. Here's how he puts it: "Going after the Midianites to punish a Moabite crime is as nonsensical as the United States invading Iraq to teach al-Qaida a lesson. (Oh, wait. We did that.)"

Just couldn't control yourself, could you, Plotz?

We invaded Iraq to bring down a despotic regime led by a monster. We weren't there to destroy the Iraqis, we were there to liberate them. (I think we did, by the way, but that's beside the point.) In any case, we may have gone into Afghanistan to teach al-Qaida a lesson, but we went into Iraq to fight a wider war against terrorists. (We also ended up killing a lot of al-Qaida members there.)

Amy Sullivan makes an even sillier (and more ironic) swipe in her piece on Democrats and religion. Once again, it's parenthetical: "If you say anything enough times on Fox (see: Saddam Hussein, role in 9/11 attacks), you can get some people to believe it."

Both sides love to accuse the other of the Big Lie technique. It's such a common tactic I hardly notice it any more. But did Fox (News, one presumes--I doubt she's referring to The Simpsons) keep saying--or ever once say--that Saddam was behind 9/11? Rather than just repeat this "fact" you've apparently heard so many times you now believe it, how about some proof?

She's probably referring to the poll of Fox viewers (or conservatives, or people who supported the war, or whatever--who cares?) that came out not long after the war started. It showed about a third thought Saddam was behind the attack, about a third weren't sure and about a third thought he wasn't behind it. (The data are usually reported much more negatively--why let facts get in the way of a great anecdote?)

1) It wasn't Fox who claimed there was a connection between Saddam and 9/11. And it certainly wasn't the Bush administration (though they're usually the target for this piece of nonsense). What happened was for years the Clinton/Gore administration made speeches about Saddam and his WMD, and how dangerous he was to us, and how we had to do something. They were correct. The media reported all this, and noted (once again, correctly) that Saddam had WMD. Furthermore, the Democrats in the Senate sent a tearful letter to Clinton demanding he do something about Saddam's threat (which Clinton did, though it wasn't enough). Saddam was not central to Bush's first year in office, but his people certainly agreed with Clinton. It's understandable, then, that after 9/11, many jumped to the conclusion that Saddam was responsible. We didn't have a lot of information to go on and he certainly was a reasonable suspect.

2) As we've been over before, people who supported the war (Fox viewers supported it in higher numbers than CNN viewers) were more apt to have mistaken beliefs that favored the war. Just as true, those who opposed the war were more likely to have mistaken beliefs that were against it.