Hindenfreude* Ad Astra

Gavin M dismantles the latest offal from John Hindraker, we begin with Hindy's premise:
We Thought they Were In Favor of Planning

One of the Democrats’ frequent talking points about Iraq is that the administration failed to plan the mission there adequately. It is ironic, then, that nearly all of the Democrats in the House of Representatives have voted to bar the administration from planning for the contingency of hostilities with Iran.

Gavin says:
That squeaking noise you hear is my brain hitting itself with a little rubber mallet. It is ironic, then, that wha…?
[...]
Hinderaker is a lawyer of the incurious Dartmouth variety, and as such, he seems unable to imagine political discourse as anything but a species of litigation, in which opposing parties are expected to craft a version of reality that favors their side. Hindy’s notion of himself as an analyst (he’s a Claremont Institute fellow) isn’t about pursuing facts and insights, but about thinking up instrumental arguments to help support his imagined client, George W. Bush.

There are a lot of right-wing commentators like that, out in the gabble-and-honkosphere, but Hindy is the most like that. He’s the type specimen. And the trouble with juridical wingnuttery is that legal debate, unlike political debate, is refereed, such that you can only get away with so much sophistry and smoke-blowing before the judge tells you to stop stinking up his or her courtroom. Here, the right-wing litigators more or less run amok. Hindy’s signature means of enjoying his free-stinking privileges — his flatus operandi, as it were — is to pretend not to know things. He rarely tells outright fibs, but instead deploys a powerful tactical stupidity that’s quite distinct from the strategic and moral one that he actually possesses.

For examp, above we find a juicy plum of a Hinderakerism. He’s pretending that he has steeped himself in politics and foreign affairs these past few years without encountering the idea that the plans for the Iraq War and the subsequent occupation were intended to produce certain specified results (e.g., peace, democracy, a functioning civil society, greater safety for America) which are different from the results that actually came to pass (e.g., spiraling death, terror, and chaos; a corrupt and teetering theocratic government, greater danger to America). That is, there were plans (X), and those plans originally specified that Iraq become something different from an ungovernable warzone with mutilated corpses dumped in ditches and things blowing up all over the place (not-X). This, for the purpose of today’s argument, is news to him.

To be precise, Hinderaker affirms that he has heard of this ‘planning not adequate’ thing as a talking point frequently used by Democrats. He merely avoids the part about it being a universally-acknowledged fact, instantly verifiable via any available media and as controversial as a sigh in a summer lilac breeze. I.e., that it is the truth.
[...]
Let’s instead translate the above Hinderakerism into rational adult discourse:

One of the [problems in] Iraq is that the administration failed to plan the mission there adequately. It is [not ironic], then, that nearly all of the Democrats in the House of Representatives have voted to bar the administration from planning [an even more crack-smokingly feckless and dangerous stunt, to wit: a sudden attack on] Iran.

Ok this I have to share

Roy at Alicublog reads Jane Galt's latest weird little treatise on how much she likes teh gay but hates liberals and finds this in the comments:

When I was in the Army there was a situation where the food that was being stored for use in case of a nuclear war was reaching it's expiration date. Instead of just throwing the food away, the Army gave it away for free.

Our post had cheese to give away. Lots of cheese. If you were so minded, you could get one or two 10lb blocks of cheese. The cheese was 35 years old.

Thousands of people stood in line for hours to get 20lbs of 35 year old cheese.

Does that sound like something you would do? I wouldn't.

My point: Just because legalizing something (gay marriage, polygamy, men doinking trees) doesn't affect you, that does not mean that it would not adversely affect society.

Parse that one, I double dog dare you! One of Roy's readers responds in the comments:

What kind of mind even thinks about "doinking" a tree? I mean, yeah, one is used to the links from gay marriage to polygamy the wingnuts trot out, but I don't know if that's sufficient room for one to get the speed to make the leap to actually having carnal relations with a goddamn tree. Fucking hell. That's just weird, man.

I wonder if this really is a problem, if there's really hordes of men and women who, without threat from penalty of law, would engage in non-stop tree buggering, thus bring America's Industrial Might to a screeching, sticky halt. I betcha an arborasexual has a frustrating lot. Not only is this really the love that dares not speak its name, I imagine finding a suitable knothole is a chore. Even upon finding one, I imagine the very best would still chaff one's willy something fierce.

And the incest thing, complete with "Oh, my God, they're gonna make you doink your sister like in Sweden or wherever" hysterics is just the cheery. Most of your anti-gay marriage types are just hateful sacks of shit, but there is that subset that's convinced that if the law was changed, they'd have no choice but to dive, dive, dive into piles of quivering manflesh morning, noon and night. You know those guys are the lives of their respective parties.

Man. Wingnuts are weird. Entertaining, though. The social implications of legalized tree doinking never would've occurred to me in a million years.
Matt T.