“I will concede that you are almost always right (no joke). However, I don’t agree that a year from now the “American public will have a vague idea that about a year earlier something happened sometime to someone in Syria, but what and when and where and why they are not quite sure.” When you talk like that, you sound like a condescending liberal Democrat who believes people are, by their nature, immoral and dumb, and that is why we need a gazillion laws enacted by a benevolent government run by brilliant Democrat politicians, like His Highness Obama, bolstered by even more brilliant academicians and supported by the “oh-so-much-smarter-than-everyone-else” liberal media, when you assume the American public is immoral and stupid, and will forget that chemical weapons were used on innocent civilians, including women and children. I’m a member of the American public. I won’t forget. I don’t even think my friends, many of whom are members of the American public and no dumber than I am, will forget either. So please, don’t generalize and don’t stoop to the level of a Progressive. It’s beneath you.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Reply:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Dear Angry Reader,<\/p>\n Calm down. Do not search for offense when there is nothing to be found. My observation was empirical not condemnatory. The fact is that Syria\u2014the existential crisis of the year just 3 weeks ago\u2014has disappeared from the news. It ended with a whimper not a bang. The president never mentions Syria these days. There is no grass-roots public movement to do or not do anything about it. The public has almost no idea about what the civil war is about, or who is fighting whom, and believes (rightly) that we have enough problems without blowing stuff up and killing people in Syria to prevent both sides from blowing stuff up and killing people. A year from now, Syria will be about as much on the public mind as is now the coup in Egypt, the Somaliazation of Libya, the postbellum status in Iraq, etc. Of course, the ultimate arbiter is fact, not opinion. In\u00a0September 2014, we shall see to what degree the American people are engaged with the Syria Civil War and recall the circumstances of the almost bombing of 2013 to restore the president’s credibility over a redline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “I will concede that you are almost always right (no joke). However, I don’t agree that a year from now the “American public will have a vague idea that about a year earlier something happened sometime to someone in Syria, but what and when and where and why they are not quite sure.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[127,6],"tags":[1041,1030],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Hl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10126,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10126-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":6531,"position":0},"title":"From an Angry Reader: Dear\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 25, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From an Angry Reader: Dear Continually Angry Reader Steve Faddy Hey Vic, I understand you are a historian, but please write a timely piece, maybe touching on the brilliant incoherence of the foreign policy of the Mad King Don. Obama is no longer the President. Write something relevant to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-7-a-response-to-the-liberal-aristocracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":6531,"position":1},"title":"Angry Reader #7: A Response to “The Liberal Aristocracy”","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Angry Reader #6 wrote:\u00a0\u201cMr. Hanson unfolds the conservative Procrustean hide-a-bed. If a Democratic president is wealthy, he's a hypocrite. If a Democratic president isn't, then he's guilt of envy and class warfare.\u201d VDH replied: This is a childish snark. My point is not that wealthy liberals should not enjoy the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12593,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-08-30-2020\/","url_meta":{"origin":6531,"position":2},"title":"Angry Reader 08-30-2020","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 30, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"From An Angry Reader: Hello Professor Hanson, First let me say, I am a regular reader and viewer of yours. I relish your take on the important issues. This evening on Tucker Carlson Tonight with Brian Kilmeade 7\/16\/2020 you used some imprecise language that caused both me and my bride\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6442,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/syrian-knowns-and-unknowns\/","url_meta":{"origin":6531,"position":3},"title":"Syrian Knowns and Unknowns","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media \u00a0 1)\u00a0Red lines:\u00a0Does anyone believe we would be on the eve of a war with Syria had not Barack Obama on two occasions \u2014 echoed on two others by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton \u2014\u00a0warned Bashar Assad of red lines\u00a0surrounding the use of WMD?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Syria"","block_context":{"text":"Syria","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/syria\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/syria-war_protestor_9-8-13-2-200x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10151,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-12\/","url_meta":{"origin":6531,"position":4},"title":"Angry Reader","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From an Angry Reader: Mr. Hanson, I don\u2019t know anything about Stanley Baldwin, but I\u2019ll assume your description of him is accurate. In that case, you have to stretch quite a bit to make Obama into Baldwin. For instance: You call Baldwin a pacifist. Obama is decidedly not a pacifist.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10643,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10643-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":6531,"position":5},"title":"From An Angry Reader: Dear\u2026","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"From An Angry Reader: Dear Mr. Hanson, I\u2019m a black Ivy-League educated liberal raised in NC and something in me snapped last week. Have no fear, I\u2019m still in the liberal camp, but it perturbs me greatly to see all the hoopla over Confederate memorials. This is so not important\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6531"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6533,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6531\/revisions\/6533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}