Slightly off topic, but not

The New Criterion's weblog ARMAVIRUMQUE can't resist a little nasty fun.

"In pursuit of their ideals, the mistakes that some of those bright young people made included armed robbery, widespread kidnap, assassination and random murder. By the time the army carried out its coup in 1976, over 3,000 people had been killed in the political violence unleashed by the young idealists. The dirty war, terrible and unforgivable as it was, did not arise by spontaneous generation."

This gratuitous 'blame the victim' excuse for Argentine thuggery and criminality is beastly. Between the ignorant cant of The Nation and the pompous ignorance of The New Criterion I realize how empty I find the political wings. As to the built environment as well, to a large degree I find myself swimming between the Scylla and Charybdis of the so-called left and right, each of whose intellectual underpinning has as much solidity as those "Black" and "White" parties of Florentine politics, which themselves always reminded me of teams organized to play "steal the flag" at summer camp.

UPDATE: I probably should not have ascribed "ignorance" to The New Criterion. They are learned people there, indeed, which of course makes matters all the worse. The New Criterion is not the Fox Network and I expected grace and civility rather striving for "points." So perhaps, and this would have been better reflective of my initial disgust, the better term would have been "pompous callousness."

UPDATE here.