<snip>
I dimly remember a line from somewhere about two put-upon American
high-school kids expressing their disappointment with the character of
the Columbine killers. It went something like: we wanted righteous
avengers and champions of the downtrodden, and instead we got those
pea-brained fascist egomaniacs.
<snip>
I'm not sure whether the 'get real' retort is ever really an option. As the
answer to a whinge it's not quite the happy moral settlement (idealism and
realism brought nicely into balance) it might seem to be. The whinge's
positive counterpart was offered by Fred Pollack ages back: the idiots do
for Saddam and are themselves undone by having done what they've done (or,
in their terms, by what they've had to do). It's the *enemy's enemy*
principle of so much of US policy down the ages. Hence Saddam himself, of
course. Hence Karimov. As though the evildoer is the author of his own
misfortune as well as other people's.
CW
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'I might have known you'd choose the easy way'
(Franz Kline's mother)
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