Growing Up Hurts Sometimes.

I’m sure that Joel Stein’s column in today’s Los Angeles Times is going to get all sorts of blogospheric attention.

It probably ought to. I find it hard to believe that a major US newspaper would print a column that’s the newspaper equivalent of a Twinkie: nutrient free, but irresistable to the kids.

I just can’t find the energy to get angry at Mr. Stein or what he writes. His first two paragraphs tell me that he’s not doing anything but indulging his inner feces-flinger and, folks, that’s a battle I just don’t feel like fighting. I mean, how can you argue with someone who thinks good newspaper copy looks like this?

I understand the guilt. We know we’re sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.

After we’ve decided that we made a mistake, we don’t want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they’re following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff’s pet name for the House of Representatives.

Ah ho ho. Ah har har! I have been pierced, sir, by your rapier-like wit!

Really, folks like Stein believe that any thought that doesn’t jive with theirs is worthy of no more than a sophomoric quip. After all, they’re right. How do they know they’re right? Never mind that, you braying jackass, they just are. Now sit down and enjoy the cutting humor.

Oh, and put on the hip-waders. The condescention here is deep though the currents aren’t particularly tricky.

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I’m tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you’re not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you’re willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it’s Vietnam.

And sometimes, for reasons I don’t understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.

I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn’t so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it’s really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I’m listed in the phone book.

I’m not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn’t be celebrating people for doing something we don’t think was a good idea. All I’m asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.

Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

Oh those poor stupid soldiers. Let’s not actually spit on them. Just don’t cheer them or anything because, you know, that would discomfit the most important person in Joel Stein’s world, Joel Stein.

Did we mention that Stein is the victim here? Really. He’s the one beset on all sides by liars and idiots and troglodytes and oh wouldn’t this world be better if everyone just thought like him? Look how brave he is for speaking his truth to power against those moronic soldiers who can barely control the raging Nelson Muntz inside them and not drive right to his house and beat him. How much a travail it must be for an educated, clear-thinking, traffic-averse mensch like him to live among the rabble.

You parents might recognize what Stein is doing here. It’s called acting out and while we indulge it a bit when it’s done by a 3 year-old, we can do little but pity it when it’s done by an adult. I can’t get angry at what Stein has written any more than I could get angry at any other child who is reluctant to give up his immature illusions of the world. It’s pitiable that Stein is an adult and has this happening to him now, though. Most of us got over our egocentrism by the time we stopped eating Elmer’s Glue. Unfortunately, some folks hold onto their illusions longer which makes it all the more painful when they’re ripped away by reality.

Yeah, Joel Stein needs to be pitied, but not because he made himself the target of ire but because only now is he growing up. And it hurts.

(h/t: Instapundit, who questions Stein’s patriotism)

UNDRESSED ON THE RADIO UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt invited Stein to be on his radio show yesterday for an interview. He should never have accepted the invitation. You’ll have to look a long time before you see a subject dissected so thoroughly and embarassingly by an interviewer. Hewitt carved him up like Emeril denuding a Thanksgiving turkey and when he was done, there wasn’t a scrap of meat on the carcass.

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Category: Fighting the Islamists, Moonbat Nonsense