Ahahaha. Now, we already knew Hamilton Nolan is a goddamned moron, and we already knew that Gawker’s brand of progressive woo-girl politics is as superficial as its audience, but shut my mouth and palm my face, this do beat all. Apparently, it never occurred to our progressive heroes while agitating for the overturn of DADT that they were, in fact, agitating for people to have the opportunity to be psychologically broken down in order to be rebuilt as perfect, unquestioning killing machines. Tugging uncomfortably at the collar, a strained expression, a finger held aloft: “This seems a bit, well, retrograde.” You don’t say.
It’s always amusing to see naïve campus progressivism run face-first into a reality-based brick wall; it tickles my slapstick funny bone. But there’s also an unpleasant dissonance in considering the kind of person who can blithely accept the idea of humans being shaped into lethal weapons while blanching at the thought that the process of shaping them thusly might involve some impolitic language. Like George Carlin said about rules of combat, it seems just a way to reassure ourselves that we’re quite civilized even as we devote our efforts to signing up as many people as possible to this institution of mass killing. Faced with the grave significance of war, presented with a pile of corpses, what kind of procedural mindset massages away the cramps of conscience by consulting a properly ticked-off checklist? Well, let’s see — proper declaration of hostilities, signed in the right place, mm-hmm; official uniform, name tag clearly displayed, yep; cause of death: regulation military weaponry, legally obtained, properly registered, good; aaaaand….nope, doesn’t appear anyone was called a faggot or a raghead in the process. All righty, everything looks good here, carry on.
One of the things that nauseated me during those wasted years spent reading the political blogosphere was the presence of so many amateur spin doctors, those process-minded moral homunculi who only thought in terms of optics and marketing, divorced from considerations of value. The Democrats were the brand, and achieving maximum market share was the goal. Repealing the ban on gays in the military looks to be polling well, so let’s go with it! Meta-questions about the worthiness of any such goals would only confuse them, like a Roomba stuck in the corner between the bookcase and the nightstand. Vroom, bonk. Vroom, bonk. Should gays or anyone else care about being discriminated against by such an institution? What about the implications of seeing the world’s mightiest death-dealing colossus as first and foremost a vehicle for job training and career advancement? Vroom, extending civil rights, bonk. Vroom, the most important election of our time, bonk.
People who can overlook gruesome reality with the help of sanitized language are not to be trusted.