the timboucher experience

Yesterday, I posted about a New York Times article by Ron Suskind, titled Without A Doubt (NY Times registration required).

Without actually reading what I wrote, the ever-lovable Doc Rampage, PhD decided to post the following comments, detailing how smart I think I am, and how much of a dick he thinks I am.

You are … living in a fantasy land where all the smart people agree with you and everyone who disagrees with you must be an ignorant, superstitious coward. It must be swell to be one of the smart people all the time, even if only in your own mind.

You read that a Bush official claim they are changing the world (a claim that can hardly be disputed) and you read it as meaning that “Bush pushes aside complex analytical issues in favor of faith.”

I have news for you. Bush and many of his supporters have considered the complex analytical issues and concluded that our optimal strategy is to attack rather than defend. And we concluded that one effective point of attack is Iraq.

Reasonable people may disagree on both conclusions, but reasonable people may not just blightly assume that anyone who disagrees with them hasn’t bothered to think about it.

I don’t really hold any hard feelings over the whole thing, I just think he didn’t read what I actually wrote. Or maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I failed to explain myself fully. What I actually wrote was:

Also, the other problem I have with this article is that it basically rests on the assumption that Bush pushes aside complex analytical issues in favor of faith.

I didn’t really follow up that thought in the following paragraph… But as I recall I, at no point, say that this is what I personally think he Bush doing. I see this as the unspoken agenda of the article. And I think this not-so-subtle message downplays the importance of actual real people in Bush’s administration who are not making decisions based on such difficult to pin down issues as “faith” or “instinct”, but on hard-nosed long-term strategies of economic and geo-political gain.

I welcome the opportunity to clarify this important point. I also invite people to comment and disagree with me. I very much enjoy it, no matter how disparate our views may be, or no matter how much you decide to insult me in the process. I even sometimes enjoy being insulted, since it gives me whole news perspectives on what I’m communicating, and how I’m doing it. I do ask, however, that next time, take a minute to read what I wrote and really put your thinking cap on before you go off on a rant about how much of a prick I am.

• A couple things before I force myself to go to sleep
• New Age Embarrassment?
• Youthful Creativity
• Age of Empires
• Get your weed on