So, they are going to indict Dave Petraeus, the General who arguably won the Afghan war before we decided to lose it, and whose dalliance with an Army reservist who was writing an adoring biography of him was revealed by the FBI poking around in his email accounts.

I certainly would resent anyone from the Government messing around with my personal email accounts, and I am not sure that anyone’s dalliances are the business of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But the G-men allegedly found classified information on the computer of the General’s lover, and there could be a felony trial in store for the former Director of the CIA.

I remember another DCI who was found to be processing all sorts of classified information on his home computer, accessible by his spouse and kids, and all that happened to him was the embarrassment of losing his security clearance.

I am not privy to all the details in the alleged case against the General, but it certainly seems like there is something more in play here, perhaps political. I shouldn’t say ‘perhaps.’ We are all politics all the time these days, and I have found it all curious since the lurid details of the affair first circulated in 2012.

There are a lot of other things these days that don’t appear to be what they seem. The television yesterday was spewing the amazing events from France as I tried to figure out exactly what was what about some of them.

Like most of the Western world, I stand with Free Speech, which is what the jihadis attempted to murder along with the staff of the Charlie Hebdo. Some are arguing they succeeded, when the New York Times, and others, would not run the cartoons that incited the bloody rampage.

I would have pointed out that the same newspaper that pronounced it was only good taste and an unwillingness to offend “a Muslim family in Brooklyn,” as to why they didn’t.

Executive Editor Dean Baquet explained his decision not to display the images to let people make up their own minds about their relevancy to the story in this prim statement:

“We have a standard that is pretty simple. We don’t run things that are designed to gratuitously offend. That’s what the French cartoons were actually designed to do. That was their purpose, and for that publication it is a fine purpose. But it isn’t ours. So I had to decide whether it was so important to the story to show the drawings, important enough to drop the standard. And the answer was they were not. We could describe them. And anyone who wanted to see them could easily do so.”

True enough, but I think that is bullshit. The scandalous images of the desecration of the symbols of other religions the Times has published in the name of Free Speech and Artistic License seem to support the contention that there is something else going on here.

Like cowardice.

I think it is unlikely that Christians objecting to an image of a crucifix dipped in urine are unlikely to burst into the editorial suite of the Times with rocket propelled grenades.

The Times apparently like to punch people who won’t punch back. But that is the Gray Lady for you, along with several fellow travelers in the media circus.

Dean’s feathers were apparently ruffled when a lot of other people told him exactly that. Apparently the Times decided not to look like milquetoasts this morning, since they posted a 2006 film interview with the staff of Charlie that showed them drawing images of the Prophet, praised be his name. But it comes down to the basic issue of Freedom of Speech, you know?

In the Bill of Rights, there are several of them that the Founders considered to pre-date the founding of this Republic. To keep and bear arms, to not have foreign troops billeted in your house. Have the ability to worship- or not worship- the god of your choice. That sort of thing. You know, like saying what you think without worrying about someone is going to lock you up.

Which I think is the basic problem with the Dean’s decision about the cartoons. I believe in being civil and polite. That is just good manners. But Freedom of speech is an absolute right, and that right is under assault along with all the other ones that pre-date the Republic, and which were termed inalienable.

Wait, you say. Isn’t this Charlie business poking fun at Islam more like “yelling ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater?”

Yeah, I remember the paraphrasing of the Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes opinion in Schenk v. United States. In that 1919 case, the good judge held that the defendant’s speech in opposition to the WW1 Draft was not protected free speech under the First Amendment. The shorthand version of the phrase does not normally include the word “falsely,” which was the original wording contained in the opinion.

Speech that is dangerous and false is not protected, as opposed to speech that is truthful but also dangerous. So, on its face, Dean’s decision is certainly his own, and protected, but running the cartoons would also be protected speech by any measure.

But that brings us around to some really weird ideas that seem to have a lot of currency these days. Micro-aggression is one I find fascinating, as is the concept of “Triggers.” Hate speech is another one of them. That is what had me going yesterday morning on a search for truth.

I was pouring over some of the vast array of sources to try to understand what happened to Charlie and why. I ran across one that was so hypnotic that it literally stopped me in my tracks. There are two articles on the subject by a woman named Tanya Cohen that were both fascinating and horrifying. Here is a link to one of them.

So, that was going to be the topic yesterday as the rattle of gunfire and the pop of flash grenades started to come in from France. As I tried to absorb what was happening, I realized Tanya’s article might be too good, and actually a brilliant bit of parody. I ransacked the web to see what else might be around to encompass the corpus of Ms Cohen’s work. She appears to be a will o’ the wisp. There is a Twitter account, but less than a hundred posts. No other links, pictures, web sites or anything else I could find.

It occurred to me that “Tanya Cohen” might be an alias, and the prose might have been nothing but satire. I read it again to sample that idea, and I still don’t know.

But I do know this. Even if some of the more preposterous assertions in the article are overblown, all of them are actually around, and spoken in some manner by earnest people who want to impose their will on others to shut them up.

It is interesting, don’t you think? Charlie Hebdo would certainly never be permitted on any modern college campus in America, you know? Maybe the jihadis are on to something here. If we are going to start self-censoring in the interest of avoiding triggers and micro-aggressions, we have lost something really significant.

And I must have missed the Amendment in the Constitution that enshrined my right not to be offended by anything. I shouldn’t have cut so many classes.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303