Derision

Let's be clear about this from the start: derision is impolitic. Derision does not win friends and influence people. Derision feeds the festering resentment of people too insecure to want a president any smarter than they are. If John Kerry had openly mocked George Bush in the debates, he'd have lost the election. By, um, more.

And derision is no substitute for policy. We need weighty thinkers thinking weighty thoughts about how we'd do things if we ran the zoo. We need cunning strategists telling us how to tailor our message to appeal to people too feeble to distinguish the difference between Bush and reality, and well-connected political insiders telling us when and in what order the next 25 Republicans are going to be indicted. Derision accomplishes none of these.

And yet derision has value. Derision is necessary, and here's why: to respond to Bush supporters with sober and well-reasoned argument, to treat them as if they were serious people with serious ideas serious about governing, is to be complicit in a lie. It is to argue that the Emperor's suit is ugly, or that its stitching is imperfect, or that its finery is a wasteful extravagance--when in fact the Emperor is naked. Buck bare-ass jaybird September-Morn birthday-suit let-it-all-hang-out totally-nude naked.

Which is why sites like tbogg and Sadly, No!, The Poorman and World O'Crap, are so very necessary: not because they make us feel better (which they do, because as long as we laugh we aren't crying, most of the time anyway), but because they are true. Because when Brad DeLong tells us that only Fafblog can deal with the Bush administration on the appropriate level, he's not being facetious; he's reporting incontrovertible fact.

And because, as a wiser man than I once said, ridicule is the best disinfectant.