For someone who's allegedly ignoring me, you keep pretty close tabs, Paul. But you'd never insult anybody, would you, Paul? We have your word on that, don't we?
Please let me know who I have insulted. It is never my intent to insult but I know that I can cross the line without knowing it. I would like to correct any insults I have made. #reply-18471049
So, all your insults are allegedly without intent, I guess. Sort of like Godwin demonstrations by the always-Right are honorable and useful, but if it ever cuts the other way, watch out.
Anyway, SI search shows local mentions of "Hitler" hitting the 80-odd post search limit on Feb. 8, three weeks ago. Last time I noted that, which was , for your benefit, in #reply-18582165, the 80-odd posts that showed up on a search also went back 3 weeks. So there seems to be some kind of Godwin constant at work around here, 25-30 Hitler posts a week.
Meanwhile, SI search shows up 36 local mentions of Godwin here, going back to Sept. 13 when the lame facility gives up. A quick glance seems to indicate that there are considerably more posts from the always-right mocking me about it than there are posts from me noting it. Funny how that works.
And just to inject an external reference into the somewhat cloistered local discussion, I will again note Fallows on the topic. Not that I'd ever say the local "debate" was "paralyzed" or anything. Tediously repetitive, maybe.
I ended up thinking that the Nazi analogy paralyzes the debate about Iraq rather than clarifying it. Like any other episode in history, today's situation is both familiar and new. In the ruthlessness of the adversary it resembles dealing with Adolf Hitler. But Iraq, unlike Germany, has no industrial base and few military allies nearby. It is split by regional, religious, and ethnic differences that are much more complicated than Nazi Germany's simple mobilization of "Aryans" against Jews. Hitler's Germany constantly expanded, but Iraq has been bottled up, by international sanctions, for more than ten years. As in the early Cold War, America faces an international ideology bent on our destruction and a country trying to develop weapons to use against us. But then we were dealing with another superpower, capable of obliterating us. Now there is a huge imbalance between the two sides in scale and power. theatlantic.com |
