Pickin' Sunday Brains

Compact and circular, I recommend Brain Masala / Maghaz--a delightful Pakistani dish to celebrate our ally in the War on Terror and their ingenious method of allowing Mr. Al Qaeda (who we know from Generalissimo Cheney subscribes to the Hartford Advocate and regularly calls into the Washington Journal on C-Span on the "Support Republicans" line) to gather and disseminate crucial terrorist recipes, thereby allowing us to know that they know that we know that they know. Green Chillies, Red Chillies, Garlic and Ginger paste, what' s not to like, especially when you serve it with Simone Weil's very tasty definition of force in the Iliad: "To define force--it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him."

Here's the first use of such force in Book 4 of the Iliad: "Antilochus was the first to kill a Trojan captain, / tough on the front lines, Thalysias' son Echepolus. / Antilochus thrust first, speared the horsehair helmet / right at the ridge, and the bronze spearpoint lodged / in the man's forehead, smashing through his skull / and the dark came whirling down across his eyes-- / he toppled down like a tower in the rough assault."

Note the movement of Echepolus from a son to a forehead split open by a spear to eyes covered by darkness.

The American Colossus has such force at the ready to turn anybody into an x. Many x's in Iraq. Many x's in Afghanistan. What guides the marking of an x on someone's son? We know the terrorists appear to mark anyone, what about the American Colussus? Do you think that as the American Colossus munches on it's Maghaz that it contemplates Acquinas' double effect which permits an action causing serious harm, such as the turning of a son into a corpse, as an effect of attaining a good end. And as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy goes onto explain, "This reasoning is summarized with the claim that sometimes it is permissible to bring about as a merely foreseen side effect a harmful event that it would be impermissible to bring about intentionally." How does this work with bringing down a dictator and achieving at least what in Thucydides' view would be a civil war (see 3.84.85 in The Peloponnesian War)? How does this work with civilian casulaties? Has the American Colossus puzzled this out as it washes cow brains down with a tasty beverage? What about the prudent councillors to the American Colossus?

Tomorrow--Erasmus' Tongue.