Why I Need Nuance Instruction

The big-brained, reality-based community has its work cut for it in explaining their views to me.

Like I said, I don't fully grasp the nuance of attacking military campaigns because the enemy scatters and also because the enemy comes to fight.

But I don't understand another concept that has been criticized by the reality-based community since the period just after 9-11. Then, the President said of foreign countries that "you are either with us, or against us." I assumed it was a fine rhetorical device and never figured it was a literal choice. But the BBRBC derided the statement as simplistic and--of course--lacking in nuance. Sure, since that time the same people like to pretend they are engaged in deep thinking by asking why we invaded Iraq while we leave Saudi Arabia alone. Never mind that nuance would seem to require you to deal with each country according to its circumstances and according to our strategic needs. From the beginning, I assumed we'd take help as we can get it and indeed, that is what we have done. Any pressure is done quietly and many governments help us in one way or another in varying degrees of enthusiasm.

But really, that isn't what I'm talking about when I ask for a Nuance Instruction Teach-in (and Puppet demonstration, natch). I'm wondering why the Left is inclined to criticize that statement even if it was meant to be taken literally.

The Left in this country, prior to 9-11, liked to demonstrate its moral superiority by caring for any cause that the Leftist mind could conceive. And they insisted we all care. As they said, "If you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

I don't know about you, but that sounds an awful lot like "if you aren't with us, you're against us." And I think the Leftists who spouted this meant it far more literally than our President's version. For the Leftists, you had to follow their solution exactly and with the same level of enthusiasm to be considered part of the solution. Nuance, indeed.

And to take it a step further, with the media made up of reporters overwhelmingly liberal in their outlook, how do they square their "neutral" stand in reporting the war? One would think they have a stake in defeating Islamofascism with its embrace of all sorts of hideous practices that should horrify the Left. It horrifies me and I'm a knuckle-dragger.

Yet I bet that in the world prior to 9-11, lots of press types were able to feel immensely superior morally because they sipped organic, shade-grown, coffee picked by an indigenous person who gathered the beans on a cooperative farm while wearing a hemp-Che Guevera t-shirt while softly singing Joan Baez songs. An American humanities student would, of course, be playing a guitar in the background while on a for-credit excursion to see authentic Third World people in action. The reporter would feel superior because other people--like me--do not share their coffee shopping preference.

Yet in reporting on Iraq or any part of the struggle against Islamofascism, they detach themselves in professional neutrality treating murdering scum as just another side to write about (Hat Tip: Caerdroia).

So if the press is neutral in the great struggle of our age (and I mean Islamofascism and not the Bush presidency), can they be said to be part of the problem? Or even against us?

Like I said, I just don't fully grasp this nuance thing. From my perspective, it's awfully darn close to being just plain shameful.