Orson Scott Card vs. Smartness
Or: The Last Refuge

Whew. Here's another real stinker from the sci-fi-writer-turned-conservative-hack. It's like a parody of right-wing paranoia and nationalism-disguised-as-patriotism. There's a good deal of my-country-right-or-wrong-type stuff, a suggestion that we should suppress news stories that undermine the War on Terra, and some whining about a recent expose on Mormonism.

My favorite part, though, is his David Brooksian attempt to invent some snappy terminology that distills the essence of The Current Unpleasantness. The fruit of his efforts? Well, you see, it's all about "Smartland" vs. the Heartland. The inhabitants of Smartland are those unpatriotic media and intellectual elites who don't realize that they should STFU, support the president, salute the flag, and go to church. The inhabitants of Smartland don't realize how lucky they are to live over here, in a country where the religious right merely dreams about killin' 'em and drops hints about how they probably deserve killin', instead of over in the Middle East where it would just kill 'em...

Oh, gosh, that last bit's a little unfair to Card. He doesn't really drop any hints about killing us. That's Coulter...

But the rest is more-or-less accurate. Christ, how do people like this find an audience? Are there really that many people out there so deluded and possessed of such modest intellectual abilities that they think that this crap is insightful? Perhaps it's all about having one's predjudices reinforced...

The thing about these my-country-right-or-wrong types is that they see even the truth as a threat. They're so comitted to the claim that this is the best of all possible nations that they are willing to distort the facts in order to support the fantasy.

And, um, just for the record, let me make it clear that I think this is a damn fine country. In fact, I think I think it's a better country than I think they think it is, because I think it's good enough that it can withstand having the truth told about it. In fact, I think it'd be an even better country if rather more truths were told about it....

What we have here are two visions of how we should conduct our efforts against terrorism. Card thinks that critics of the administration should shut up, and we should all fall in line behind Dear Leader. When America does something wrong, the information should be covered up. Our opponents, he claims, are unified, and this gives them an advantage over us. We should respond by becoming more Borg-like ourselves.

I, on the other hand, think that we should appear virtuous by being virtuous, not by lying about our virtue. If we do something wrong, we should admit it and promise not to do it again. I think dissent is good, especially when there are criminals and idiots running the country. I think America will win this struggle only by being America, in all it's cacophanous glory.

But, then, I guess I'm one of the insidious denizens of "Smartland"...

One thing Orson Scott Card gets right, I think: Osama bin Laden et. al. are considerably worse than Orson Scott Card et. al. I'm fairly certain that OBL would kill people like me if he ruled the world. I'm fairly certain that people like OSC (Pat Robertson, James Dobson) would merely make our lives miserable. The nugget of truth Card's screed is that many on the left underestimate the badness of the Islamic religious right. That's a point worth keeping in mind, thin and obvious though it might be.

After reading this dreck, though, one can only hope that Card will go back to writing sci-fi and leave off the fantasy.

[O.k., that's it. I'm done picking on the worst of the worst. From now on, I'm going to focus on non-crap. But after my customary four hours of sleep, I was cranky and this really annoyed me.]

[Oh, and, to my shame, I found this on Fark.com, where it was--I'm not making this up--labeled "Hero".]