{"id":708,"date":"2007-04-11T11:18:11","date_gmt":"2007-04-11T17:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/04\/11\/what-i-did-last-evening\/"},"modified":"2007-04-11T11:18:11","modified_gmt":"2007-04-11T17:18:11","slug":"what-i-did-last-evening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=708","title":{"rendered":"What I Did Last Evening"},"content":{"rendered":"

Per my post yesterday, I went to last night’s meeting of the Saint Paul School Board.\u00a0 There, I met Swiftee from “Pair O’ Dice”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mission?\u00a0 Speak out against the movement by a well-heeled pressure group to ban or hinder military recruiters from Saint Paul School property.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The actual “public response” portion of the agenda was shorter than I’d expected.\u00a0 Aside from Swiftee and I (and a woman who was there to testify about an issue that was both unrelated and deeply familiar), the only speakers were a couple of not-overly-articulate kids from “Youth Against War and Racism”, supported by a couple of rows of Volvo (or Subaru)-driving, alpaca-wearing, Whole Foods-shopping, patchouli-reeking, puerile-placard-bearing pro-dictatorship<\/strike> “anti-war” activist types.<\/p>\n

It’s always a pleasure to watch Tom Swift engage the School Board.\u00a0 What he lacks in Ciceronian polish, he makes up for in passion.\u00a0 It was – as always – a joy to watch Ann Carroll, Swiftee’s nemesis on the board, shrink down behind the desk when Tom teed up.<\/p>\n

The fun, as Tom relates<\/a>, was after the public hearing was over.\u00a0 The rows of “activists” noisily got up and stampeded for the door like a bunch of Grateful Dead fans who’d heard there was a bag of Fritos in the rest room; Tom and I quietly left via the side door.<\/p>\n

And then it got weird:<\/p>\n

After receiving a few handshakes from parents and military vets, we were accosted by a young guy with a \u201cFree Palestine\u201d button on his coat who wanted to have a little dialogue with us\u2026sure, I\u2019ll play!<\/p>\n

While we listened to his \u201cHaliburton owns the military\u201d spiel…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0Talking with “Eric” was, indeed, of a piece with a pattern I’ve observed in many attempts to engage these people in a rational debate.\u00a0 When confronted by facts, they inevitably squiggle away into bizarre conspiracy theories and fanciful self-aggrandizing victimization operas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, that’s among the ones that make some pretense of rationality, which to be fair, Eric tried.\u00a0 Others, as I noted in my coverage of the pro-terrorist<\/strike> “Anti-war” demonstration last month, have let the surly bonds of civility slip<\/a>, as Tom relates.<\/p>\n

…\u00a0a live, breathing specimen of one of Mitch\u2019s patented \u201csmug, alpaca wearing, Volvo driving, tofu and beansprout eating, prematurely grey\u201d female moonbats cruised by to spin the propeller on her tinfoil hat for us by (loudly) proclaiming that George Bush had \u201carranged\u201d the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n

As her pencil-necked life partner shuffled her quickly out of smackdown range, with her screaming incoherently<\/em> all the while (I think it had something to do with chimpyMcbushitler but I can\u2019t be sure), \u201cFree Palestine\u201d informed us that she was frustrated and felt powerless.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Swiftee is too charitable.\u00a0 The woman – a late 40-early-50-something who ooozed “college educated government\/non-profit worker”, although that’s just a first impression – had veins bulging from her face; she was howling in an ululating tone that suggested she genuinely felt horrified<\/em> to confront dissent.\u00a0 “Why don’t you go to Iraq yourself”, she snivelled as her partner shuffled her, all a-vapor, toward their Volvo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“So only the military gets to speak?” I yelled after her – but I let her go.\u00a0 Confronting actual reason would have probably given her a stroke.<\/p>\n

I turned back to “Eric”.<\/p>\n

“So”, he said, affecting a moist, unctuous, lecturing tone, “how do you rationalize the fact that our military isn’t democratic, but it’s supposedly spreading democracy around the world?”<\/p>\n

I stood, stunned.\u00a0 Swiftee, to his credit, took a whack at it.\u00a0 Finally, words came to me.<\/p>\n

“Of course the military isn’t ‘democratic’ – but it’s controlled by civilians, who are elected.\u00a0 The military isn’t controlled by a fascist dictatorship”.<\/p>\n

“Eric” affected that “gotcha” look that the rhetorically dim take on, looking a bit like a toddler that’d made a really good pants.\u00a0 “How do you know it’s not <\/em>a fascist dictatorship”.<\/p>\n

“Oh, for chrissake…”, I started, taking a deep breath, ready to lay into him.<\/p>\n

Swiftee was, well, swifter.\u00a0 “I gotta go”, he said, taking his leave.\u00a0 It was, in retrospect, the right call.<\/p>\n

I can’t wait to do it again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Per my post yesterday, I went to last night’s meeting of the Saint Paul School Board.\u00a0 There, I met Swiftee from “Pair O’ Dice”.\u00a0 The mission?\u00a0 Speak out against the movement by a well-heeled pressure group to ban or hinder military recruiters from Saint Paul School property.\u00a0 The actual “public response” portion of the agenda […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,18,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minnesota-politics","category-pc","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}