Just Took a Break [Blasting a MeFi Troll]

I had been describing my reaction to the men who’d kill my daughter for the glory of Allah: give me the gun, show me the cave. The author of the piece suggested I would be perfect for the role of the WW2 black-out warden who scolds people for half-closed windowshades.

Why, it’s almost as if I thought we were at war, or something.

Obviously the guy had no kids. I’m not saying childless people can’t have a visceral reaction to terrorists, or that parenthood has imbued me with a special glowing Field of Righteousness – but until you have children you can’t quite realize what you’d do to defend them, because the emotion comes from a place you didn’t know too much about. The weeks after 9/11 we all thought that we were in for more of this – more planes, more bombs, and come the winter, Smallpox. I would jerk awake from nightmares where Gnat had the pox. You do everything you can to keep them safe – then this.

— James Lileks
—Just Took a Break [Blasting a MeFi Troll] (Lileks/Bleat)

I saw this Lileks column working its way through Blogdex. It started with a rant against Sony products. I just this afternoon got a business card from a Sony saleswoman who was also volunteering at St. Emma Monastery, so I was feeling a little conflicted. Could a woman who volunteers at a monastery actually sell crappy products?

I was about to skip blogging this one, but then Lileks got around to his main point: some poser on MetaFilter tried to pick on Lileks, and Lileks is firing back with both barrels. The troller wasn’t even worth a preliminary fisking — Lileks just blasted off on his own trajectory. Masterfully done — Lileks knows how to channel his rage into his pen. As a father, I can’t disagree with a word he writes here.

Yet this rage is exactly the rage that sets generations of Arabs and Jews against one another — exactly the kind of tribal rage that terrorist groups draw upon when they recruit angry young men to fight their holy battles.