Saturday afternoon, I read about how the U.S. had bombed the only hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which was being staffed by the French volunteer group, Doctors without Borders. I recalled the 2004 U.S. bombings of a hospital in Fallujah. So I tossed out a tweet –
Blowing up that Kunduz hospital is a small price to pay in the greater campaign to rid the world of extremist violence.
— James Bovard (@JimBovard) October 3, 2015
Nattie Roman responded with a great quip –
https://twitter.com/TsarKastik/status/650492430249250816
Her tweet got lots of pickup – boosted after I replied, “Close enough for government work.”
Then Wick Allison, the chairman of the board of the American Ideas Institute, the publisher of the American Conservative (where I’m a contributing editor), replied with a message aimed at me and Clark Stooksbury, another American Conservative contributing editor who had retweeted (or favorite) my original line:
@JimBovard @clarkstooksbury Sorry you weren't in it. Might have introduced a different perspective.
— Wick Allison (@wickallison) October 3, 2015
Allison later clarified that he lives in an “irony-free zone” and missed my attempted humor.
After Angela Keaton @antiwar2 kindly retweeted my original line, the topic reheated. Here’s an insightful response from a twitter user named DJkilllist
https://twitter.com/djkilllist/status/651106462324781056
On Saturday Kevin McKenzie replied to my original tweet, so I tossed out another line exonerating all government killings:
.@kevinmckenz Govt. killings are never extremist because they are done for the good of the people.
— James Bovard (@JimBovard) October 4, 2015
Alas, this was not well-received by Twitter users calling themselves Anarchoantihero and Lo
https://twitter.com/anarchoantihero/status/651107178896560128
Hey, kill yourself. https://t.co/l5wzp5St9s
— Lo (@Lo_b_) October 5, 2015
Regardless, I continue to have unbounded hope that social media will cure all the ills of Attention Deficit Democracy.
If nothing else, my Twitter account will increase the number of people who dance at my funeral – or who at least do cartwheels upon hearing of my demise.
I swear – I don’t know WHY they let twat trolls have Twitter accounts.
But based on personal experience, nothing strengthens the quality of an argument like Harsh Adult Language. That’s when the other side knows to check its forebrain at the door and SOMEBODY’S gonna end up with PlayDoh in his hair by the time the dust settles!
At least nobody misspelled the F-word. But Twitter has an automatic spellcheck, so maybe that is not a silver lining in the national literacy dark cloud….
Well done sir! Well done
There so easy