While the exceptionally sad and silly nature of the organized antiwar movement is of course obvious to anyone with a functional notochord, it’s not as common to see their favorite political pornographers sink to their level.  After all, said pornographers are self-aware parasites – and as such are almost required to be smarter than their victims.  But every so often you encounter one who forgets the first rule of the successful drug dealer: Don’t sample your own merchandise – and they get hooked.

So we see here with “Donald,” which is a quote-unquote satire of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s book Known and Unknown: A Memoir.  To be published by McSweeney’s, the opening is described by the Washington Post as follows:

It opens with Rumsfeld reading in a library. He is soon confronted by an angry young man that questions the way military prisoners were treated while he was secretary of defense. Two chapters later, several men break into Rumsfeld’s house and threaten to kill his sleeping wife if he opens his mouth. The intruders then wrap his head in a hood, cut off his clothes, put him in a diaper, and inject him with something that makes him pass out. He awakes handcuffed in a strange room.

Now, I know what the doofuses who wrote this – and the goofballs at McSweeney’s who are publishing them – are trying to say, here: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could arrest the Don Rumsfeld in our head and do to him all the things that we think about, late at night, when the pounding in our temples won’t let us sleep*?”  What they are actually saying is “We’re too afraid of a seventy-eight year old with shoulder and hip injuries to face him down in public.**”

And, oh yes: “This conceit of ours shows that we think that American soldiers are war criminals who will murder old women to get their way.  And so does McSweeney’s, our publisher.”

I’d say that you’ve gotta love these people, except that thankfully you don’t.  But with any luck this is a harbinger for good sales for Rumsfeld’s book.  These sorts of things often are.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Yes, that’s kind of disturbing all on its own.  Antiwar activists, remember?  These people have issues, subscriptions, and complete print runs that have been specially bound.  All self-published, of course: they’re kind of market failures that walk, talk, and theoretically think.

**Which is smart of them, because Rumsfeld wouldn’t even bother to kick their [expletive deleted].  He’d just ignore them utterly.