My Contribution

Virtually every classical music-related list which I either monitor or participate in bans political discussion of any kind. And for good reason, too. Always off-topic, political discussion is boringly silly; political partisans, annoyingly silly; and political junkies, insufferably silly. Nevertheless, this election is so contentious that political talk has, to greater or lesser degree, infected all these lists, as I notice it has as well the cultural blogosphere.

So, here's my contribution to the, um, conversation.

On one of the aforementioned classical music lists, one passionately Rightist partisan wrote that "a vote against Bush is a vote for the terrorists," which predictably brought the following passionately Leftist partisan response:

How someone on this list can espouse such a morally and intellectually suspect position eludes me. To argue that "a vote against Bush is a vote for the terrorists" is absurd and anti-democratic. I think a certain maestro [the Rightist is a conductor] should go see "Team America," though I fear its subtleties may be lost on him.

And the subtleties of the Arab Islamist collective mind seem to be lost on a certain lefty.

A win for Kerry in this election will be seen by those Islamist pigs precisely as a repudiation of the Bush administration's terrorist policies, and worse, be seen by them as further confirmation of their thinking that, at bottom, Americans are nothing but irresolute and nervous women who blanche and recoil at getting involved in or pursuing anything where their hair might really get mussed. It's exactly that sort of Arab Islamist thinking that encouraged, even provoked, the pigs to undertake and carry out the 9/11 mass murder as all our actions, or rather non-actions, in the Mideast, beginning with the ignominious and disastrous ending of the first Gulf War, convinced them we'd never take any meaningful retaliatory action. The Bush- and neocon-directed invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq — even though the latter was carried out a critical year too late and too gently by half to make the point — made the pigs think for a moment they might have been wrong about Americans, but a win for Kerry in this election will instantly remove that doubt for them.

I'm no friend or admirer of the incompetent Bush administration, but were I voting next week it's Bush I'd be voting for simply because under current conditions there's no other prudent choice.

That is all.

As you were.