Eyekicking style toward clarity and grace

Just when you've gotten used to James Lileks' addictable daily product, ignoring the medium for the message in the daily inquiry to the state of the Gnat - he offers up gems like the following:

Had a horrible thought today: how long until Al-Aqsa sends pregnant women to commit suicide bombings? There’s certainly nothing in their moral construct that would prohibit it. They’re canny enough to know that many Westerners would find this Horribly Symbolic - not the act itself, of course; we’ve digested (and excreted) the concept of female suicide bombers and the attendant carnage. No, many would insist that we regard anew how horrible the situation must be, that women would kill their unborn babies in protest. The inhumanity of the act - the unspeakable atrocity of the act - would be taken up by some as proof of a greater atrocity visited on the Palestinian people. The symbolic denial of a collective Palestian future by the occupation would be equated with the actual denial of the future of an individual Palestinian child. Mind you, no one would support it . . . but.

Always a but.

The men who send these children out to kill know their enemy, which is to say us. They know well that some in the West wouldn’t even consider a Manichean stance unless the name was changed to Personchean - and even then, it’s too simplistic. Some in the West insist on a complex approach to moral inquiry, as if they want an innoculation against uncomfortable truths. Stupid people are full of cerrtainty - why, Yeats said as much. Smart people, wise people, nuanced people are more comfortable analyzing evil than confronting it - as if understanding the history of handgun development will keep the one pointed at your head from firing.

They know well that some in the West wouldn’t even consider a Manichean stance unless the name was changed to Personchean . What a turn of phrase. This is why they pay him the big bucks.