Epistemic Snapshot

Over the past two days, this little creep has been subject to rather more attention than he might have bargained for. Making a play for "viability" (in the common political calculus), he offers his typically left-handed apology.

No big deal, really. It's outright crap of the most common sort. The only thing of halfway serious note is in this, on the matter of Pat Tillman:

"I felt that his celebrity had been a factor in American society calling him a 'hero,' and I felt American society had arrived at that conclusion without much thinking, but rather as some sort of patriotic 'knee-jerk' into hero worship."

Pay close attention: here, we have two explicit confessions of emotion over reason (he "felt"), and they fill him with the nerve to -- in the very same sentence -- indict "American society" on a charge of "not much thinking".

Now, of course, the charge is true. I want you, dear reader, to shake the goddamned beans out of your ears and start listening for the frequency with which Americans choose the word "feel" over the word "think" in their daily mewlings & maulings. What is perfectly apt is that word selection. What is perfectly horrifying is the aptitude of the word selection. It's exactly what they do: they "feel" instead of thought.

What's remarkable is the charge arriving as it does in the words of a confessed feelie, with all the attitude, no less.