Chait has some fun with Krauthammer, who somberly observed last week that "If [one] goal of the Paris massacre was to frighten France out of the air campaign in Syria … they picked the wrong country," for "France is a serious post-colonial power." So where's the fun in this? When the craven frogs refused to abet W.'s Iraq fantasy 12 years ago, Krauthammer just as somberly noted that France only "pretends to great-power status." We were better off, averred Krauthammer, without them: "Why in God's name would we want to re-empower the French in deciding the post-war settlement?"
Lucky for Charles Krauthammer, amused assaults such as Jonathan Chait's will never touch him. They will do him no harm whatsoever, nor will they injure those who hang breathlessly on Krauthammer's every word. Because the Washington Post's geopolitical strategist and Fox News commentator lives — as do his followers — completely walled off from scrutiny. He is invulnerable to attack and thus insufferably ineducable — again, as are his auditors.
This point — that of the right's total "epistemic closure" — was driven home to me yesterday in several dissociative moments of utmost folly. I almost always know better. But for reasons unknown, Sunday I twice tweeted Breibart's John Nolte to let him know that his latest policing of "Big Journalism" (how the latter, said Nolte, had maliciously distorted Trump's views on Muslim databases) was in laughable error. I provided an informative link. Twice, I heard nothing back.
In desperation, I then did something I had never done before. In Breitbart's comment section, I commented. I remarked (complete with said, informative link) that Nolte's piece was "false."
Almost instantly a Breitbart reader responded: "Ahh, How is this false. I have listened to and read the whole interview many times and sorry but I am not seeing what your talking about." I had already provided the evidence, which the reader didn't bother reading. So in my response I spelled it out. In return, I got this: "Well, the problem I see and many out there is ... Trump was busy and not paying good attention to what this reporter was asking him. Now that is bad on Trump..if your a candidate you need to be sharp and on the ball [ellipses original]" — "This reporter capitalized on the situation and you can hear him get more and more excited while he is proposing these ideas to Trump and Trump seems to be taking his bait."
It never occurred to this Breitbart reader/commenter that the point of my post wasn't really about Donald Trump and Muslim databases at all. It was about John Nolte, Breitbart's resident vigilante of wicked "Big Journalism," having distorted a story about Donald Trump and Muslim databases — and duping his readers, which is what these readers claim to detest most about the lamestream mainstream liberal media.
I'd like to believe that were I a conservative, I'd resent such treatment from the "conservative" press. The Breitbart reader? He neither noticed nor cared, and his first and second responses to my first and second comments caused to me realize the utter futility of a third. So I let the matter drop.
One simply cannot penetrate the right's exoskeletal obliviousness — from top to bottom, and bottom to top. It's invulnerable.