Right-wing assholes can be tremendously entertaining. Mark Steyn is one of them. I love his TV and radio appearances; give him enough airtime and he’ll inevitably wander off into the grasslands of show tunes and life in the Theatre. I found America Alone snappy and amusing, if – and this is what we sign up for – tendentious. I have never quite understood the Kath & Kim–compliant Australian accent this U.K.-educated “Canadian” living in New Hampshire speaks in, but it sure does add to the fun.
Steyn’s new book After America: Get Ready for Armageddon pretends to be a sequel, I guess. In fact it is merely a crotchety, ill-typeset grab bag of annoyances. Nobody clutches to anecdotes as proof of moral and societal decline like right-wing assholes.
What’s Mark Steyn complaining about now? (Order shown below is almost exactly that seen in the book.)
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“The ‘stimulus’ and ObamaCare” (endlessly)
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“When the Commies take Taiwan” (joking reference)
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Wodehouse
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The Book of Daniel
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“American ruin” (not joking); “Declinism”
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“Globaloney”
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The letters in armageddon: Addiction, Redistribution, Monopoly, Arteriosclerosis (yes), Global retreat, Engineering, Decay, Disintegration, Open season, Nukes away!
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“Dopey Obamatrons of 2008” who “droned… ‘Yes, we can!’ ”
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NASA’s desire to “make Muslims ‘feel good’ about their contributions to science”
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Dams and aqueducts of yore
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Seeking “new, faster ways to live in an eternal present” instead of reproducing
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GM, Chrysler, Detroit
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De facto governmental monopolies (not actual corporate ones; “Government today has a monopoly of monopoly”)
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Statists (a word only right-wing assholes and Objectivists ever use; then again, cisgendered is a word only sworn enemies of those groups ever use, and Steyn also complains about “code language” and “code words”)
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“ ‘Rights’ to stuff”
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Human-rights commissions here, but also OSHA
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Bankers and “imaginary money”
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Eco-totalitarianism
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Infertility
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Big unions
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Public-sector salaries
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Greece, Italy, Germany
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“Celebrat[ing] diversity”
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“We are obsessed with identity, but any identity other than ‘American’ ” (written by Australian-accented U.S./Canadian binational)
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“My old pal Boris Johnson”
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Illiteracy
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“Feelings”
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Sexless, infantilized, semi-employed hipsters (males emasculated)
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“A ‘family’ is any living arrangement you happen to dig at that particular moment”
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“Procedure” (in context of cops and security guards refusing to save people during accidents or crime)
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Demise of “women and children first,” which apparently never was practised, least of all on the Titanic
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Britain (apparently in toto)
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“ ‘Human rights’ ”
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“Dependistan”
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“Almost every claim made for the benefits of mass immigration” (“is false”)
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“The jobs Americans won’t hire Americans to do”
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“Conformicrats”
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Shark and coyote attacks as proof our enemies don’t fear us anymore. (Next graf begins “After the boom in Islamic terrorism”)
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Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (“Is there a Queers Against Sharia?”)
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Genetic diseases brought on by Pakistani Brits marrying their first cousins
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A “ ‘Food Safety’ Act, among whose items was federal regulation of schoolhouse bake sales”
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“Six-figure universal college education”
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“Islamophobia”