“I’d rather be brave,” he suddenly said to me. “I’d rather be brave than almost anything.  How does that strike you?”

“It’s nothing to laugh at, sir.”

-Tim O’Brien, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home


Richard Cohen inadvertantly poked a bear this week.  A self-professed bear, that is. One that goes by the name of Andrew Sullivan. 

“In the new James Bond movie, ‘Skyfall,’ Daniel Craig takes off his shirt and examines his wounds,” writes Cohen in the Washington Post. “There appear to be two of them — small holes on his skin from bullets fired at the beginning of the movie. He touches his wounds and winces. So do I. Bond is in pain from his wounds. I am in pain from all the hours he has spent in the gym.”

Sullivan’s response is, in one post, everything I love and hate about him.  It’s sharp and insightful while surprisingly obtuse.  It’s pointlessly polemical and (hate the word, but lo here I am writing a response) provocative.  And it’s a complete mess from the opening line:

As the title says, this is incomplete.  I started it in November, 2008 and fiddled with it until January, 2009.  By the early months of the Obama administration Petraeus—and his hype—had faded into the background of America’s foreign policy news. At least, enough into the background for me to think the moment for this bit had passed. 

I post this today because, in light of yesterday’s news. [EDITED MONTHS LATER TO ADD: yesterday was a while ago, so to remind you:  Petraeus  got busted for having sex with a married lady--hold on, it gets worse-- who was not the lady that he was actually married to.]

Without further ado, here’s the piece. 

PAMPHLET 69, No. 12
 
Addreffed to

THE INHABITANTS

OF

AMERICA

On the Interefting Subject of

POLITICAL PROGNOSTICATION

By Nathanial Silber

Writ Upon the Ifle of Manhattan
On the Sixth Day of January
In the Year 1789

Tomorrow, Americans will vote for the first President of our United States. Months of Campaigning are in Abeyance, and the Election shall at last be placed into the Hands the People.  However, it is fitting that, one last Time, we peer into the Entrails of this Election Season and cipher another Augury for the Future.