The Dumbest Thing You’ll Read This Month

By: Mr. Wilson on February 2, 2009
1 comment
In a piece so ridiculous I couldn't believe there wasn't a punchline at the end, Richard Sullivan argued in Saturday's Journal Star that the red state / blue state divide is a "modern civil war", and that the lead-up to last year's presidential election was just like the Battle of Gettysburg. Let that sink in a moment. He equated the sputterings of a bunch of goofy bloggers with a battle which claimed over 50,000 casualties. The whole red/blue "culture war" is something the U.S. needs to deal with, yes. But a civil war? No. And certainly not a civil war on par with the Civil War. The notion is absurd. I can't wait for Mr. Sullivan's next piece equating a peaceful protest with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fairness, I do respect Mr. Sullivan -- and all of the Journal Star's "community columnists" -- for publishing their work. It takes guts to put your thoughts in the newspaper for the entire community to see. I just wish somebody would have urged Mr. Sullivan to come up with a more appropriate analogy.

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Neal
February 2, 2009 at 5:45PM

I think to oversimplify his comparison expecting some kind of literal reflection is to kind of miss the point, as several of the commenters do. (By devoting nearly half the column to descriptions of wounds, I don’t think he does himself any favors, though.)

The Red state / Blue state projection is your own; Sullivan doesn’t say that political disagreement is the problem, but the venom behind the disagreements. To many people with an expanding platform for expression, political opposition is grounds for hate.

This is what I took to be his main point, buried about 3/4 of the way in:

Is this hatred how we wish to define our country and people? Has this become acceptable? Is this now the conventional standard, where people are classified only by their political views?

The first commenter says “Characterizing legitimate policy debates as ‘civil wars’ only unnecessarily elevates the debate into a ‘war.’”

I don’t know if “stu” was just feeling left out, but I think it’s pretty clear that Mr. Sullivan isn’t talking about “legitimate policy debates.” I don’t know Mr. Sullivan, but I bet he’d be thrilled if the country were engaged in “legitimate policy debates.”

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