Cole vs. Cole
August 10, 2012 7 Comments
On the subject of Mitt Romney apparently killing someone with cancer (I don’t know the details but I’m pretty sure he killed someone with cancer, presumably with the same technology the Cigarette-Smoking Man used on Scully in the X-Files), I was reading a Juan Cole post that was actually making some sensible points. He’s a Professor, you see. A full-on Professor:
…all presidents get people killed. They fight wars, authorize covert actions, and pursue wrong-headed policies. It isn’t useful in my view to engage in a Utilitarian argument about which presidents kill more people and which less. These things are hard to quantify, anyway.
Indeed, such an argument is not useful at all, and hard to quantify anyway. Good, sane points Professor. Thank goodness we have the Academy.
But just when there was this consensus building between myself and Professor Juan Cole, however, along comes Professor Juan Cole to burst my (our) bubble:
If Romney repeals Obamacare, he will raise the infant mortality rate compared to what it would be under the Affordable Care Act, and so will be a child-killer. It is probably even possible to calculate exactly how many infants he intends to murder.
Well, there you have it – not only will Romney kill infants, but it’s ‘probably even possible to calculate exactly how many’, says the Professor. Exactly [sic] how many.
And then there’s global warming:
Romney intends to remove subsidies for wind and solar energy and to promote burning hydrocarbons. (Note that Big Oil and Gas have received hundreds of billions in tax credits over the years). Romney may as well just line people up and machine gun them down.
Yup, he may as well. It’s exactly the same thing, and just as easy to calculate, for people like the Professor, the direct and easily-calculable linkage between 1. wind and solar energy subsidies to 2. global warming is reduced to 3. fewer ‘heat waves, water shortages, declining fish populations, and extreme weather events such as floods and storms’. Take away wind/solar subsidies = kill people. So says the Professor. He figured it out. He calculated this stuff.
So take that, Juan Cole, you dumbass.
What a fine contribution to humanity Professor Juan Cole makes with his important intellectual output.
UPDATE: Perhaps you’ll call me bold for saying so, but it’s Probably Even Possible To Calculate Exactly How Many lives he has saved with that post.
Well, what do you expect from a man whose name is a homophone for a global-warming-causing, Earth-destroying hydrocarbon.
Shouldn’t then the right left-wing candidate promise to prohibit car-driving?
That would save so many lives it wouldn’t even be funny (+ inhibit deaths due to global warming obviously). In fact, any candidate opposing him and allowing people to drive would be ‘intending to murder’ people.
… and think of the CHILDREN!!!
You guys, didn’t you hear Professor Cole, it’s not useful to pursue this line of inquiry. Unless, of course, you decide that it is, and therefore to write a Romney-kills-infants blog post. Then it’s useful. It all depends.
So you want to kill people by using cars, is that it?
Are you being paid by the oil lobby to maintain that position? How much per person you kill do you charge them?
I don’t get money for it, since killing people with cars is its own reward. I’m not sure how many people I have killed with my advocacy for cars, but it’s probably possible to calculate exactly how many. I’ll ask the Professor to do it.
So basically, Sonic with his anti car-prohibition advocacy intends to murder an unknown but probably possible to exactly calculate number of infants (and adults), which – as we know thanks to the professor – means Sonic may as well just line people up and machine gun them down. Except Sonic wouldn’t find that as much fun as killing people with cars. To each killer his favorite weapon.