Today's stupidity

can't let Susan have all the fun.

The lesser of two incredibly awful evils:

a baby is better off having its throat cut than being burned to death, but this is not a good reason to kill babies.

No, we kill babies because their flesh is so very, very tasty. Little known fact: cute things are delicious.
But, that doesn't mean the babies care how they die.

What makes a terrorist?:

Islam currently ties Pakistans [sic] and Arabs together, but without Israel and America to unite them, they'd fall apart.

People like Megan make terrorists, by enabling a system that impoverishes billions so that she can publicly masturbate with a dildo lubricated by animal product free astroglide.

To Heller and Back:

I have no particular desperate longing to own a gun, but I have a big jones for more personal liberty.

Without trying to justify the developing surveillance state, what liberties, exactly, does Megan lack? What opportunities have been denied this rich white child of privilege? I grew up in similar conditions, and I feel fairly liberated, personally. True, I can't smoke a joint in public, and I wish there were coffee shops so I could socialize more easily with my own kind. Guess what? There's more important shit to worry about.
Megan likes feeling put upon, as a way of pretending she isn't who she is.

Morality is a luxury good: Holy fuck this is a stupid post, from the title on down, though she's unintentionally right that morality is generally defined by the wealthy as "things we do that poor people don't". First, the valid observation by another blogger that Megan quotes;

That ordinary people are sufficiently and securely fed, clothed, shod, and sheltered to enable some of them to devote substantial stores of their emotional energies to the care of pigeons is a sure sign of deep and widespread prosperity.

It says nothing whatsoever about Megan that she's about to compare being a vocal vegan to having pigeon snipers at tennis matches.

This sort of observation is presented as a would-be gotcha against me in my comments on veganism. I don't understand why. [my emphasis] I am sure there are some animal-welfare types who do not understand that their concerns are an artifact of wealth, but I am not among them. Of course my affluence enables me to be concerned more about animal welfare than about obtaining sufficient calories. Isn't it fantastic that I am affluent enough to care? If it were a choice between feeding my kids and letting a cow live--well, steak's on! This is one of the many, many reasons I am happy to live in a prosperous and successful society.

How the fuck do you snark something that stupid? Being rich makes Megan awesome, and so of course she loves a society that enables her being a rich, self-involved, piece of shit. Instead of, say, frequent reference to The Omnivore's Dilemma or simply a general explanation of the benefits both to a person and our environment gained by avoiding industrial, processed, food whenever possible, making locally grown vegetables the basis of your diet, and paying extra for pastured meat, Megan talks about herself. Shit, Megan is absolutely right in one sense; industrial pork is a major evil, even moreso than industrial beef, which is bad, too. It ain't about raising pigs humanely, tho that matters, it's about not doing so in ways that create massive environmental problems. Changing how Americans eat is a worthy cause, with many good arguments to back it up. Megan thinks it's about her, and how fucking awesome she wants you to think she is. Fuck you, Megan.

Wealth enables charity in the deeper, older sense of the word.

That this is true in no way undermines the decision to be charitable. Morality lies in doing the best you can with what you have. Given that I do have the luxury of finding delicious vegan food and non-leather shoes, I believe I have an obligation to do so. If that should change, I will go back to eating and wearing animal products without moral regret--though with a fair amount of digestive distress.

This makes me so angry I want to use words I've labeled verboten on this blog. Eating healthily is NOT A FUCKING CHARITABLE ACTION. It's a personal decision. To try to raise informed self-interest to the level of charity is monstrously stupid, but then Megan did try to claim going into blogging out of business school was charitable on her part, because she isn't inherently rich to fucking begin with. Jebus fuck, Megan, you are one stupid asshole.
This is why I hated the people I grew up with. They were like her. Self-involved and proud of it.

Existential threats: Dear Megan and the rest of the stupid fucking world,

Existential does not mean having to do with existing. An existential threat would not be a threat to our existence. An existential threat is something like nihilism, which is to say something that threatens to interfere with man's capacity to choose to exist.
Yes, I realize people use existential in this context. Sportscasters use ironic to mean coincidental. They're wrong, just like you.
Also, does supporting our troops really include accusing them of being potential terrorists?

Tim McVeigh-style racist scumwranglers: small in number. Their most terroristically [sic] useful members are probably in Iraq or Afghanistan right now.

People who don't support the troops should be hit with 2x4s.
Oh, wait.

I was not in any way trying to imply that the military is full of Aryan Nation types; only that such groups probably can't stage an attack without members who are ex-military, like McVeigh himself. Those members have probably been called back to the Guard and sent to Iraq. Or so I mote. I do not think that these are a sizeable portion of the military; only that the military, like any group that contains millions, is likely to have a few rotten apples scattered in there.

Mhm. And if Hillary had said this, though she wouldn't without facts and shit to back herself up, I'm sure Megan would calmly explain how Hillary was being taken out of context.
I know there's other words in this post, but they amount to a piss poor recap of shit we all heard back in 2003, so why bother.

Vegan shoes: the decidedly non-definitive buyer's guide:

I haven't attempted to order vegan shoes over the internet yet, though I may be reduced to it; right now I'm still working my way through my back stock of leather shoes, even though every once in a while I have a creepy re-realization that I'm wearing an animal's skin wrapped around my feet (something that I felt was creepy before I became a vegan, before I am accused of moralizing).

So why the fuck did you ever buy shoes with leather in the first place?
Again, notice that Megan doesn't spend a single word explaining why "vegan" shoes might be a good choice to make, she simply talks about herself. Her choices aren't about morality in the least, they're about servicing her own self-image. She doesn't want to touch on any of the potentially valid arguments in favor of some of the choices she's made, she simply wants credit for making them.

P(A|B)!=P(B|A):

As predicted by a friend over IM this morning, the remark about Timothy McVeigh wannabes probably being in Afghanistan or Iraq right now was wildly misinterpreted as an attack on our troops.

I am second to none in my admiration for the military.

Do you also have black friends?

I do not think that being in the military makes you more likely to be a nutty, militia-style potential home-grown terrorist. At a guess, there are perhaps a couple hundred people in the United States who would like to take violent action against our government in a frantic attempt to ward off the New World Order.

Outright lie. Megan has been to libertarian conventions, and gun shows. She knows this is not true. I wish she were right, but she's not.

So even though almost no one in the military is a raving nativist loon, many of the raving nativist loons may be in the military. My understanding is that many serial killers are attracted to law enforcement; similarly, people with fantasies about striking a violent blow against the forces of evil may be seeking vocational education in the armed forces. This is no more a smear against the military than it is a smear against firemen to note that many arsonists seek to join their ranks.

Gee, where have I seen Megan argue the EXACT OPPOSITE OF THIS?

Another mistake I think people make when they discuss police brutality, or war crimes, is to attribute them to some characteristic of the population that joins the military or becomes a police officer.

Megan, you're a fucking hypocrite.

No pithy close. Stupid make me too angry. She really is an asshole.