Bret Stephens on Memory and Forgetting

Shout out to Alert Reader Katherine for catching this line from from Bret Stephens at the very end of this week's New York Times' "Conversation" feature. 

Actual Bret Stephens:  And before we go, I hope our readers didn’t miss Ian Johnson’s extraordinary essay about the Chinese journalists and historians fighting to preserve the knowledge of China’s tragedies and atrocities in the face of the regime’s attempts to suppress it. It made me think of how badly our own sense of history, including events like Jan. 6, has eroded, and reminded me of my favorite Milan Kundera lines: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

driftglass:  Cool!  Hey Bret, what about remembering the deeply ugly, racist history of your Republican party and your Conservative movement prior to 2016/2017? 

 

Imaginary Bret Stephens:  Shaddap!  Shut your lousy, stinking, disrespectful Liberal pie hole! 

driftglass:  I see.  Touchy subject.  OK then, how about since you brought up the subject of "lice", maybe you could use your memory thingy to remind us why you are known throughout Christendom as "Bret Bug"?

Imaginary Bret Stephens stares icily at your 'umble scrivener.

driftglass:  Wow.  Another touchy subject?  OK then, lets let The Guardian have the last word:

NYT columnist quits Twitter after daring critic to 'call me a bedbug to my face'

Free speech advocate Bret Stephens emailed David Karpf’s boss to complain about ‘bedbug’ joke – and then quit Twitter after being widely mocked

    

Burn The Lifeboats