Monday, 29 March 2010

A Response of Sorts

“The suicide bombers’ targeting was deliberately provocative — and the Russian authorities’ response is equally predictable”. [1]

If predictability is a problem, then the Russian authorities could respond with a parade of jugglers and dwarf-acrobats, also helping to surprise and delight all those bourgeois liberals whose insanity makes every normal, sane, rational, or traditional response appear to them to be grossly unsophisticated.

[1] Editorial tagline to Irina Filatova’s “Moscow metro bombing: the backlash begins”, Comment is Free (The Guardian’s weblog), 29th March 2010.

6 comments:

dearieme said...

The American use of "liberalism" refers to a particular sort of illiberalism.

dearieme said...

And now, re this post - what a wonderful Nurdgaia word "backlash" is. The Second World War - "backlash" against Austrian painter. Life sentence - "backlash" against Myra Hindley.

xlbrl said...

I am thinking the Guardian can only predict they will not like the response, and not predict what Vlad has in mind. The Russians have had a lot of time to consider their next move, and have less reason to care what anybody thinks since Stalin.

Deogolwulf said...

Xlbrl,

"The Russians have had a lot of time to consider their next move, and have less reason to care what anybody thinks since Stalin."

Indeed Russia almost counts as a sovereign country!

TGGP said...

Some egghead claims that the attack is actually evidence of the success of Russia's handling of Chechnya.

Felix said...

great comment!

another idiocy is calling suicide bombers "cowardly" (as George W did). They're many nasty things, but cowardly is a knee jerk nonsense

but the worst reaction is to reach for the moral equivalence.

So Jihadi terrorists are balanced against Christian fundamentalism. And Moscow bombers are balanced against "predictable" Russian reactions.

This enables the commentators to sit in lordly eminence, perceiving themselves superior to both sides