James Lileks I believe it was who wrote that Paris Hilton’s primary boon to mankind was to prove that it is now evidently impossible to actually die of embarrassment. This is a lesson that has usefully been exported to the European left, which declares itself shocked! Shocked, do you hear! at the news of Tookie William’s execution
The execution of convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams sparked outrage Tuesday throughout Europe, which has a deep aversion to capital punishment sustained by the painful memory of state-organized murder during the Nazi era. The disappointment was particularly strong in Austria, native country of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, where many had hoped the former bodybuilder and film star would spare the 51-year-old Williams.
Glen Greenwald over at Unclaimed Territory ably deconstructs this generational transition from collective guilt to collective moral certitude:
This quite common theme – that the Europeans now possess some sort of enhanced historical and moral wisdom because the Holocaust happened on their continent, under their noses and/or those of their immediate ancestors – is really one of the more illogical and disgusting pieties used by the European Left and their allies to advance their agenda.
Somehow, Europeans have managed to transform the atrocities which they committed and which occurred in their countries from a badge of shame (which, arguably, it need not be any longer) into some sort of badge of moral superiority and entitlement to sit in judgment of others as the Universal Arbiters of Goodness (which it most certainly is not).
I guess they’d better use it while they can, since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who – believe it or not – is the president of an actual country, continues to insist that the whole holocaust thing was made up.
Which places the Euro-left in a rather difficult spot: Since Ahmadinejad is a representative of popular anti-colonialism, as well as being an authentic Third World class enemy to the Great Satan, (author of every evil in the world, including the death of Saint Tookie) this makes Ahmadinejad a friend to them and everything he says is “objectively” true. But if what he’s saying is true, then they have no right to claim a post-holocaust sense of heightened moral superiority with which to bludgeon Amerikkka.
Perilous, navigating the labyrinthine maze of Euro-leftist thought!
It’s hard to navigate your thoughts without a functioning moral and ethical compass.
It’s hard to navigate your thoughts without a functioning moral and ethical compass. Sorry for the double posting; I hit submit before I finished.
To paraphrase from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” if you don’t know where you’re going it doesn’t matter when you get there.
I’m not so sure that what the Euro-leftists are navigating is thought at all; it’s all about feelings these days.
There’s a mort of truth to what you say, Retread. So much of what used to pass for leftist intellectual thought has now solidified into Unchallengeable Assumption, leaving the way people “feel” about things as the only measure of authenticity.