Friday, September 19, 2014

Its possible to write "I have no idea" on the internet. Who knew?

You have to know its a good day when a tweet from Glenn Greenwald sends you to one of the best things you've read on the internet in weeks.
Of course, that was enough to send me on my way to check it out! The title of the article turned out to be: "Smarter than the President? Not me. I'm too smart not to know how dumb I am." Given the source of the referral, at first I assumed that the writer was engaging in one massive snark to be revealed at any moment. But I was wrong. So I had to start over and read the whole thing again...straight this time.
I’ve said it before, it was a lot easier to be smarter than the President when the President was George W. Bush.

A major change in the tone, tenor, direction, and focus of this blog occurred sometime in the late summer of 2011 when it dawned on me that this President is smarter than me.

Way smarter.
Lance Mannion - the author - goes on from there to describe how he realized that he had been blogging "off the top of his head" prior to this awareness and knew that if he was going to continue, he had to study a little harder to keep up with this President. And then he actually types this:
Which brings me back to the President and on to ISIS.

I have no idea.
OMG - did he really just say that? On the internet?

In looking for answers, Mannion isn't finding much assistance on the lefty blogosphere.
There are others, though, who’ve based their case on the bumper sticker-profound idea that War is Never the Answer and plenty of others whose arguments are based on a vague and circular logic: “This reminds me of what George Bush did in some way I can’t put my finger on but it must be wrong because of that or else I wouldn’t be reminded of George Bush.”
He ends with some questions - which I'm sure must be illegal or something because NO ONE EVER DOES THAT in a political discussion on the internet!!!

And so I am now following Lance Mannion on twitter and I've linked his blog on my list over there ===>>>. He claims expertise on Shakespeare, Discworld and superhero movies. I'm sure to ignore what he writes on those topics because - to be totally honest - I don't care about them. But anyone who admits on the internet that they have "no idea" what to do about something as complicated as ISIS in the Middle East gets my support.

:-)

3 comments:

  1. I wish more people appreciated how difficult politics is. If there were easy answers, the problems would've been solved long ago. We have a set of new complications coming in the future. All I can say is learn to love it. We have work to do.

    Vic78

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  2. I've been reading Lance off and on for a few years now. His film reviews are very interesting. And I, too, appreciate that someone has enough integrity to admit what he/she does not know. It really provided a nice "Exhibit A" for the Charles Blow quotation in your previous post. Now I want to read Charles' book.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh, and regarding Griftwald's tweet, it's so obvious that he really thinks he does know everything (that US/Obama are evil and bad and all problems stem from that fact). I certainly hope his 15 minutes are up.

    ReplyDelete

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