Groucho Marx once said that he would never want to be a member of a club that would accept him as a member. In an analogous kind of way the Left never truly admires someone stupid enough to believe them. Desert raiders are liked exactly because they aren’t timid souls living in council housing staring down at their shoes waiting desperately for the community policeman whenever ‘youths’ come to rob them.

Boot says “Mad Men is a testament to … a consensus that the unpleasant parts of the past ought to be enthusiastically buried. There’s no monster of the deep so fearsome that it can’t be chased away for a moment or two with a pitcher of martinis.” Yes there is if there’s a lingering suspicion that we might need something like these monsters back one day. The problem with September 11 and the global financial crisis aren’t that they happened, but that they happened where they couldn’t be hidden; couldn’t be waved away with a pitcher of martinis and a TV remote. Not everyone wants to be reminded that fantasy doesn’t work forever and that maybe the politically correct man won’t be able to cope when the day comes.

Ah, that’s great stuff. Forgive the long quote of your own words, wretchard, but you do this kind of prose poetry of modern politics better than anyone else I’ve seen on the planet, when the muse takes you you’re the James Joyce of current events!