Posted by
Citizen Carrier on Sunday, February 24, 2008 11:04:45 PM
I was thinking of a way to illustrate what it is like to read people who stubbornly insist on sticking with a candidate who has less than 30 delegates or people who claim they will simply not vote because their first choice didn't get the nomination.
Imagine it is the Korean War and I am in a trench line facing an oncoming human wave of Chicom "volunteers". My primary weapon is the Thompson [pun intended here] submachinegun. On my hip is a pistol.
Next to me is a guy armed with the Browning Automatic Rifle he's nicknamed "Pauline". He also has a back-up pistol, but he just really loves that BAR. We're ankle deep in mud and the Chinese are coming. He opens up, I open up, we manage to hold off a few successive waves of Chinese. During a lull the Chinese stop to regroup and come at us, but we have run out of ammunition and there is no chance of resupply.
Realizing my Thompson is out of ammunition, I cast it aside and sweep out the pistol. I've nicknamed the .45 caliber gun "The Maverick" [you're catching these awful puns, right?], because every once in awhile it jams. Not frequently, but just once in awhile. I'd rather have the Thompson. "The Maverick" doesn't hold as many bullets, has a shorter sight radius, shorter effective range, and yes, those occassional stovepipe jams. But I can clear those jams if I pay diligent attention.
So I'm up out of the trench and letting them have it center mass as I grimly give ground. If I can live and make it back to the next defense line, there is a quad-.50 on a half-track that will probably save me. With "The Maverick", I might get there. Unarmed, I'm a dead man.
But what do I see when I look back? My partner refuses to draw his pistol. So stubbornly attached to the BAR, he insists on pointing the empty weapon at the Chinese and loudly yelling, "BANG!"
In the instant he is bayoneted, I avert my eyes in order not to have to replay that image in my mind for years and years.
So I ask you, which one of us was the rational human being and which was the fanatic?