tdaxp

"Amendment Nine" is a blog that was started by "Federalist X." After FedX came Phoicon, who's second post attacked me personally:

Dan, the author of the blog TDAXP, was a favorite of Federalist X's. I have no idea why. I've visited Dan's blog often. The vast majority of what he has to say is completely incomprehensible, though there is a good deal of the Catholic guilt thrown in so it isn't all incomprehensible to me I suppose.

Now Phoicon's given up blogging, and the new guy (J Smith) attacks me in his second post:

Second, more skat, but a bigger mess. Let's call it moose skat (if you've ever seen the stuff, you know what I mean). Stepped in some over here with this post. Poor little tdaxp. Still lost in the term "race". Here's a hint big fella. Race isn't actually a "thing". Your scores and your tests talking about which race is what are worthless. They are just markers. Step out of the little world and step into the small one that you live in. Race is a concept whose time has long since past.

And now J calls me a liar, both here and there.

So what's up with the anti-tdaxp attacks from Amendment Nine? Am I really that aggrevating?

One of the reasons I believe that John Robb's work is general unhelpful is that it too easily reaches for emotionally charged appeals. If Robb used more precise and objective in his writings, he could add a good deal to the vertical domain of sub-state conflict study.

To take a recent example, Mountainrunner's recent review of Brave New War was met with an odd attack on "the 'conference crowd' guarding the walls around the counter-terrorism money-fantasy machine in Washington" (emphasis Robb's). This unfortunately set a pattern, as Mountainrunner's follow-up was met with this from Amendment Nine:

It seems the critique leveled against Robb is unfair and misplaced. I care more about that latter as fairness in critiquing works has never been a strong suit of mine. The criticism to date, if I can generalize, is thus: John Robb doesn't explain the motivation of his guerrillas, he doesn't go into what makes them tick, so therefore his theory of how to deal with them and where they are taking history is unhelpful. A few tastes of this here, here, and here.

So far, so good. AIX's Phoicon idenitifes a specific criticism he disagrees with, and cites sources relating to that disagrement. Immediately after this, though, he reaches for a simplistic and uninformed counter:

This is sad. An entire generation of Americans seems devoted to nothing but Freudian apologetics. Why do these "thinkers" care so much about the "motivations" of guerrilla warriors? Because Freud said thats important. And what Freud says is the Gospel truth, never mind the evidence to the contrary.

Its true! These neo-conservative, neo-liberal, grand world visionaries are so used to sucking off the milky tit of Freud and the thoroughly discredited academics who espouse Freud's doctrine in the quiet confines of literature departments across the US that they no longer realize Freud has infected all parts of their thought.

We care about the guerrilla's motivations less than we do Billy Budd's. Or is it more? I can't remember. You see my mommy didn't love me enough when I was a boy and so ever since then I've been attracted to the smell of ivory tower feces and a dog's ass.

Robb's writings (cannot speak for his book) are unconcerned with motivations because motivations are spiritual. They aren't really important in a historical context. What are important are the consequences of their actions.

What were the motivations for the US Civil War? The list goes on. I'm sure Sigmund would relate it all to the Lincoln's sexual attraction to negro males. Just as I'm sure Dan, Mountainrunner, and the rest of these "thinkers" would opine endlessly on the sexual aggression of suicide bombers, their orgasmic climax of climaxes, and their aspirations to make love to multiple virgins. But what of the consequences? What of the real world?