Back before we divided off into people who think it was founded on the Bible and people who think it was a tax evasion scheme, I was taught that the United States of America was founded on rational debate. Citizens in a democracy disagree about stuff, and the only way to figure out who’s right is to put our ideas in a metaphorical marketplace and start convincing one another. Of course, the democratic process doesn’t actually determine who’s right; it just identifies the most appealing argument. This wrinkle could potentially give an unfair advantage to those unscrupulous arguers willing to employ sophistry and fallacies, but fortunately our populace is too well-educated for that to work. I’m fucking with you—our populace is home watching Man Versus Food and coming up with race-based theories of identity. The dirtiest argumentative tactics you can imagine are on proud display in contemporary discourse, so that any particular argument is now subsumed in the larger argument between Deductive Reasoning and Whatever. It’s us against them, deductive reasoners, and they’re winning. This week’s link roundup is about winning the argument, even at the expense of obvious considerations of true and false. That’s the beauty of a democracy: if you can put some destructive idea into other people’s heads—optimally one that puts the very people who believe it at a disadvantage—you become more powerful yourself. It’s like the way Renfield keeps eating spiders in Dracula. Won’t you choke down a couple of tarantulas with me?
Author: Dan Brooks
Close readings: Sarah Palin’s discandidacy announcement
"Did you just say pork burrito? It sounded like you said pork burrito."
I follow three people on Twitter: Ben Fowlkes, Iowa legislator/general nutjob Kim Lehman, and Sarah Palin. Yesterday, SarahPalinUSA directed me to Facebook for a “statement on 2012 decision.” The statement is that she isn’t running. She cites the same reasons that have been drifting through her various word-clouds for the last month: that she wants to help other conservatives get elected, that she doesn’t need a title to “restore” America, that no one who owns a TV or has heard of America would even briefly consider putting her in charge of it. That last one is implied, I guess, but the upshot is that even Sarah Palin knows Sarah Palin can’t be President. Most of her announcement is what you’d expect, except for the first paragraph. That’s actually a work of considerable nuance, or at least insinuation, and it’s the subject of today’s Close Reading. Primary source after the jump.
You should listen to Das Racist
I had not heard of RapGenius.com until I listened to the new Das Racist album Relax, which contains the following quatrain:
Rap Genius dot com is white devil sophistry
Urban Dictionary is for demons with college degrees
Google ad technology is artificial karma, B
Rick Ross on the radio at the pharmacy
That’s from “The Middle of the Cake,” whose lyrics you can find interpreted on the aforesaid RG-dot-C right here. Das Racist you remember, of course, from like 40 Friday links ago, when they delivered an extremely satisfying interview to Deborah Solomon of the New York Times. They’re the band of one Punjabi guy and one Latin guy who met at Wesleyan, plus one questionably employed hype man. They had a jokey internet hit with “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” in 2009, and now they have a less jokey, more hooky bunch of songs in Relax, which I personally consider the best hip hop album of 2011. You should listen to it. Song after the jump.
Hank III now second-best Williams
Hank Williams, Jr. comports himself with the dignity of his office.
Hank Williams, Jr. appeared on Fox and Friends yesterday morning to offer his opinion of the 2012 GOP field and managed to compare President Obama to Hitler within the first 90 seconds. To be fair, he was explaining why it was a bad idea for John Boehner and Obama to play golf together—a move he called “the biggest political mistake of all time.” Those of you familiar with his hit song “Don’t Talk to Me About FDR’s 1937 Court-Packing Plan” know that it’s futile to argue with Bocephus about such matters. Hank Jr. did not directly compare Obama to Hitler; he merely said that the joint outing between the Speaker of the House and the President was like “Netanyahu playing golf with Hitler.” Then he added that “they’re the enemy.” When asked who, exactly, he shouted “Obama!” and then immediately endorsed Herman Cain. It makes sense that Hank Williams, Jr. is a Republican. His dad did make him a millionaire. Video after the jump.
Not cool, United States government
Anwar al-Awlaki, alleged terrorist and certain dick/corpse
On Friday, the CIA successfully executed a drone attack against Anwar Al-Awlaki, killing him and fellow Al Qaeda operative Samir Khan as they rode through Yemen in a car. Khan was the editor of Al Qaeda’s weird English-language magazine Inspire, which is like US Weekly if US Weekly were entirely about murdering people. “Make a Bomb In the Kitchen of Your Mom” was the headline of one recent Inspire feature. Awlaki is a radical preacher whose anti-American rhetoric was believed to inspire numerous acts of terrorism. Both men are American citizens. Awlaki was born in New Mexico, and Khan—raised in Queens and North Carolina—is of Pakistani origin. If you believe that Elvis was an accident, the two men are now the first American citizens to have been assassinated by the CIA. Khan appears to have been a bonus, but President Obama put Awlaki on a kill list at the beginning of last year.