Leftist, Anti-American Salon Writer Pegs Soprano's Popularity On... Hatred of Bush And Disquiet Over "War On Terror"

His use of quotes, not mine.

Why do I call him a hyperpartisan leftist America-hater? Not because he indulges in Maureen Dowd style pop-culture-as-window-into-geopolitics vapidity. That's par for the course for our frivolous, juvenile, stupid leftist commentariat.

No, I call him those things because he wrote these words after the 2003 Fall of Baghdad -- confessing he had been praying for more American deaths. This is officially the most-quoted passage on Ace of Spades HQ, and I'm going to keep quoting it every few months until I quit the blog.

I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings.

Some of this is merely the result of pettiness--ignoble resentment, partisan hackdom, the desire to be proved right and to prove the likes of Rumsfeld wrong, irritation with the sanitizing, myth-making American media. That part of it I feel guilty about, and disavow. But some of it is something trickier: It's a kind of moral bet-hedging, based on a pessimism not easy to discount, in which one's head and one's heart are at odds.

Many antiwar commentators have argued that once the war started, even those who oppose it must now wish for the quickest, least-bloody victory followed by the maximum possible liberation of the Iraqi people. But there is one argument against this: What if you are convinced that an easy victory will ultimately result in a larger moral negative--four more years of Bush, for example, with attendant disastrous policies, or the betrayal of the Palestinians to eternal occupation, or more imperialist meddling in the Middle East or elsewhere?

Wishing for things to go wrong is the logical corollary of the postulate that the better things go for Bush, the worse they will go for America and the rest of the world.

So when he claims he has ambiguous feelings about the "war on terror" -- itself a rather disgusting statement -- don't believe him. His is not ambiguous about terrorists; he's actually a fan.

And speaking of the Sopranos -- this will be my last attempt to mention a pop-culture phenomenon that never phenomonized me. Apparently it didn't phenomenonize many of you, either, because these threads don't generate many comments.

But my Mom was a big fan. So, this is for my Mom.

Patterico offers a contrarian take on the Sopranos' conclusion -- he liked it.

No word, though, on whether he detected resonances about the so-called "War on Terror" in the ambiguous conclusion.

posted by Ace at 07:10 PM

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