The Trouble with Scapegoats

[posted by Callimachus]

Mary Eberstadt also notices the illogic at the heart of BDS:

The trouble with putting Bush personally at the center of what ails us is much like the related trouble of relocating the illegal [immigrants] or the theocrats there instead: i.e., it tries to explain too much. In this, too, the parallelism of the scapegoats can be seen. He is a child of privilege who believes in nothing. No, he is an ideological Christian possessed of an unwavering and therefore dangerous faith. Which is it? He is a tool of the oil interests, of the neoconservatives, of the Christians; no, he is a puppet master of them all; no again, he is himself a puppet of Karl Rove. He is "someone who likes to compete and win at all costs" (Frank Rich); he is someone who has had everything handed to him and doesn't know what it is like to struggle (also Rich). And so on.

And so on, and so on.

[Hat tip: Spinning Clio]