{"id":29605,"date":"2015-01-09T03:00:55","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T08:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29605"},"modified":"2015-01-07T21:52:37","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T02:52:37","slug":"time-is-running-out-to-do-something-stupid-and-irreversible-act-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/09\/time-is-running-out-to-do-something-stupid-and-irreversible-act-now\/","title":{"rendered":"“Time is running out to do something stupid and irreversible. Act now!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin D. Williamson<\/a> on the childish cry of “Now!”<\/p>\n

\u201cNow!\u201d is a rhetorical short circuit, a way to preempt anyone\u2019s thinking too deeply about a proposition. In Bill de Blasio\u2019s New York, the streets are full of idiotic riff-raff chanting: \u201cWhat do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it [sic]? Now!\u201d When the country is convulsed by the shooting of a petty criminal in the suburbs of St. Louis, the answer, according to the sort of people who made de Blasio mayor, is dead cops in New York. Don\u2019t bother pointing out how little sense that makes \u2014 the \u201cNow!\u201d punctuating that murderous sentiment is all you need to know. Not that killing police in Missouri is any more sensible, but I was puzzled about why New York City had become the locus of anti-police protests until I tightened in and asked further why within New York it is the site around Union Square, rather than One Police Plaza or Staten Island, the scene of Eric Garner\u2019s death at the hands of the NYPD, that is the center of the scene. The answer, so near as I can tell, is: better bars.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do we want? Craft beers! When do we want them? Now!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow!\u201d is the eternal cry of the infantile \u2014 \u201cWhat does baby want? Diaper change! When does baby want it? Now!\u201d \u2014 and Barack Obama, who has a keen appreciation of that fact, has made immediacy the hallmark of his style. Executive amnesty, minimum wage, climate change \u2014 these are all within the realm of the holy Now!, the sort of thing that cannot wait. (Wait for what? Democracy.) The president does his stentorian best to beat some meaning into \u201cthe fierce urgency of now,\u201d the phrase from Martin Luther King Jr. around which he once organized a famous speech almost entirely devoid of content. That this is so effective a strategy is despair-inducing. Grown men, and facsimiles thereof, are routinely taken in by this sort of thing; consider Andrew Sullivan\u2019s soft spot for Obama\u2019s dopey \u201cfierce urgency of now\u201d shtick, taking it as evidence that the empty suit from Chicago \u201cmeets a moment in history.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin D. Williamson on the childish cry of “Now!” \u201cNow!\u201d is a rhetorical short circuit, a way to preempt anyone\u2019s thinking too deeply about a proposition. In Bill de Blasio\u2019s New York, the streets are full of idiotic riff-raff chanting: \u201cWhat do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it [sic]? Now!\u201d When the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,13],"tags":[343,456,720],"class_list":["post-29605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-usa","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-hysteria","tag-protest"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7Hv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29606,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29605\/revisions\/29606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}