Demagogue

Adam Kotsko explains exactly how the liberals undermined the war effort and caused Iraq to be the mess it is today.

We tried and failed to get our dissentious ideas heard in the broader public sphere. Our mission of undermining the war effort through talking about it in a negative manner was failing fast, and some among us even began to wonder if perhaps the only people who have a major influence over the course of a war are those who are physically fighting it and those who command those who are fighting.

"Nonsense!" I said. "The problem isn't that words are ineffective, but rather that we are using the wrong type of words. We believed, mistakenly, that dissenting words would be adequate to affect the course of the war. We must look for words that will directly undermine the war effort by directly causing real effects in the physical world!"

The room was silent. Some hapless liberal terror-monger asked, "So are you saying we should pray that the troops fail?"

"NO!" I screamed, pulling out and waving aloft my ACLU membership card. "God is no fool -- he knows we hate him almost as much as we hate America, and he would never agree to be worshipped under false pretenses by those hungry only for political gain!"

Again, silence. "So, um..." said another storm trooper in the war on freedom, "what did you have in mind?"

"I'm glad you asked." I pulled out a large, leather-bound book. "What I have here is what you would call a 'magic book.' It's a simple item, something you can order off of Amazon. But the words inside this book hold the key to unimaginable power over the course of nature itself."

The crowd made crowd noises, and I called them to attention. "Look at these spells! Here we have a spell to cause young Iraqi men to join insurgent cells. This spell inspires its victim to plan and execute a car bombing in the Green Zone. And this -- this spell is my pride and joy. It causes its target to take pictures of his fellow soldiers abusing prison inmates and mail the photos home to his friends and family!"

And so there you have it. The conservative commentators are absolutely right. After we realized that dissenting words have absolutely no influence over the course of a war on the other side of the planet and that under the normal laws of physics, only those who physically fight in the war and command soldiers in the war can be held responsible for the conduct of a war, we turned from dissenting speech to undermining speech -- that is, we started casting magic spells to make the war go badly for America. That was the only way we evil liberals could think of to go about our daily lives here in America while simultaneously undermining a war effort thousands of miles away.