As I start with the pith it has been almost exactly five hours since I skim-read the part, the last, of the president's speech that I posted. Taken as a whole, we are going to depart from our usual practice of point-counterpoint commentary and take the president's speech as a whole for now since the basic components of the argument are unchanged from what he has advanced previously.
We know the argument from memory and summarize:
The "cash value," to use the nomenclature of pragmaticism, of Islam is equivalent to the cash value of the world's other great religions.
Really, there is Religion, and It is good; the cash value of religion generally is good, and the exchange rate for currencies of the individual religions is pretty close to 1-1; Islam's crescent trades pretty much even up with Christianity's cross, Judaism's star-of-david and Hinduism's emaciated cow, Islam is not is like the Italian lira or the Argentine sombrero trading at 5,000-1 to the dollar, lol. Full disclosure: these are the words of the undersigned, his summary, his understanding, of President Obama's argument, these are not the president's words apologize for any confusion why did I do this I should just have taken the speech line by line.
There is another singularity in President Obama's celestial theology, we are switching metaphors, it is the singular singularity of Extremism. No light can escape from the black hole of Extremism and it follows from the exchange rate metaphor that each of the world's religions burns with similar lux which is what the unit measuring light emittance is called betcha didn't know that. And thus, Extremism is a similar threat to each of the world's religions which emit 0 lux of Extremism. Only light.
SO...So we ought not, and President Obama does not, ever conjoin the name of a religion with extremism. The cash value, we're switching back, of that firmly held belief is that we must bomb Presbyterian State hang outs (which are called presbyteries) with the same lux we do Islamic State sites which are known as lunatic asylums. They used to be known as Jay-Vee team training sites but no more nah-hah.
AND, our goal, and we're doing a good job of it by the way is to destroy IS it used to be "degrade" but no more nah-hah our goal is to destroy IS, to lux their desert asylums so that not even a lizard can live much less a lunatic.
BUT, if we make IS sites glow with too much lux we're just going to grow more lunatics. There are baby lunatics and they grow faster and bigger in irradiated sand it's a scientific fact look it up.
AND, these proto-lunatics all over the world which includes America and if we destroy IS too much, not just destroy but destroy-destroy, it's like giving the babies milk with steroids and they're going to grow up to be full-grown lunatics.
So we have to destroy in moderation, not too much! We can't be Extremist in destroying, can't go all medieval or whatever on them.
Finally, we must continue to lift our lamp by our golden door, as beacon to those tired, those poor, those huddled masses, that wretched refuse, those homeless and tempest-tossed, and air-sick, who are escaping the lunatic asylums and zip codes adjacent thereto. Give me them! Send these!
That's about it, is it not? That's pretty much the president's argument, comme ci, comme ça? I nailed it, didn't I?
I'll read his words tomorrow and admix them with some pith as I deem appropriate but I think that's a pretty fair summary.
I'll read his words tomorrow and admix them with some pith as I deem appropriate but I think that's a pretty fair summary.
