Milton the Monster

Dennis the Peasant, who has been accused of knowing a thing to two about economics, reads the riot act to one of John Edwards' Two Chosen Bloggers (and, via her, Naomi Klein):

You would do well to never forget the greatest of all Leftist Canons: All the Evil in the World can be traced back to the death of Salvador Allende and the destruction of that greatest of Leftist Shangri-Las, Allende's Chile. And never mind that Allende was a paid Soviet agent while serving as Chile's President, or that his Reforms for Justice and Equality™ did little more than wreck whole sectors of his country's economy. That doesn't matter. Just like the fact that Che Guevara executed hundreds, including 14 year old boys, in cold blood doesn't matter. We're not talking Real World here, we're talking Shangri-La: It is what you want it to be… Therefore, the destruction of Allende's Chile has to be the fault of [insert name here]. Yesterday it was Henry Kissinger. Today, it just so happens it's Milton Friedman. Tomorrow? Who knows?

My bet is on Bush.

And ultimately, that's what makes Amanda Marcotte's embrace of Naomi Klein's thesis stupid enough to mock. Marcotte notes that "Klein was a Milliband Fellow at the London School of Economics and as such, can piece together economic information that might be very confusing to those of us who aren’t as well-versed." Well, in theory, that would be correct. But Naomi Klein isn't interested in writing a work of substance about the economics of wealth distribution. Not in the least. What Naomi Klein is interested in writing a book that takes a difficult and complex phenomenon and twists into the sort of fiction that panders to the intellectual conceits and personal prejudices of folks like Amanda Marcotte.

Ass, meet hand. Lesson for all: If you're going to cite sources to prove your fantasies are real, it helps if you've first read said sources.