I got an instant message last night from someone who posts on a message board I used to be involved with. He was very excited about his new song ('i'm writing a protest song heh') and asked me to critique his lyrics.

I asked what he was protesting, and though I didn't get a direct response I did end up with a screen full of empty images and bad rhymes.

All that stands out now is the opening, 'This freedom isn't worth my fragile life,' or some such rot. There were nonsensical lines about avoiding 'Islamic lights' (written presumably to rhyme with 'rights' and for no meaningful purpose) and the pretense of speaking as one who had experienced war.

After I'd asked whether he'd ever been to war, and he responded that he never had and never would! (emphasis his), I told him what I thought: 'I think it's pretty lame to write about war as if you've been there.'

Now, before you throw Shakespeare at me or anyone else know there's a world of difference between fictionalizing an account of war (or anything else) and writing a protest song, the best of which has always been rooted in the experience of the folk who sing the songs. Forgetting the old masters for a moment whose songs were more meaningful in this way, the best of Bob Dylan is cerebral, or philosophical, like Only a Pawn in Their Game. The song would have been absurd and hokey had Dylan written from the perspective of the assassin and tried to tell you how 'he' felt, or had he written any of his songs as a first person emotional response to events he had never experienced. There's a world of difference between writing about an event and propagandizing an opinion in song. In the example cited Dylan is passing judgment on events, but never pretending to be a part of them.

So to return to the hack and his rambling song, he tells me that we've done what we set out to do and it's time to leave Iraq. His reason is beyond comprehension: the people who continue to fight are average citizens who don't understand what we're doing there. They're confused and think we're trying to kill them, and the Iraqi media is useless to change their misguided but well-intentioned actions. So we'd best pick up and move on, and peace will establish itself.

I'm not making this up.

Instead, he says, we should move to Sudan. At least we partially agree about something. The crisis in Sudan has been discussed on Classical Values for months: here, here, here, here, and here.

But he would doubtless cry for withdrawal in three months or whenever it seemed like the politically cool thing to do.

I tried to explain to him what the actual political situation is in Iraq, why it's necessary in the real world to undertake difficult and unpleasant military campaigns, and why Iraq is no less important than Darfur. His only response was, 'i'm sorry i brought it up ... go back to watching nascar.'

Which means he has much in common with the Democrats: he views everyone with contempt, from the 'ignorant' average Iraqi mistakenly killing American troops, to the American with differing views, whom he labels an ignorant redneck in leftist shorthand (that is, afterall, what Nascar means to the left -- it's right up there with 'thump your Bible').