In the Tank

Oh good Lord. I forgot about the Slate feature where they ask their gang of relentlessly contrarian spouters who they're a-gonna vote for and Surprise! everyone is all like, Obama, because, of course, their contrarianism is a posture--pose lacking content. I am occasionally told by angry Donk Syndrome sufferers that I myself am a contrarian, but that is a gross misreading: I am a drug-addicted misanthrope, sealed in a hermetic microcosmos of my own making, imperturbable and utterly feh. I actually believe some of my whack-o, outside-the-mainstream opinions, and I do not go dashing back to the fold once every four years in an electoral Pascal's Wager. But Slate? As Crispin Sartwell might say, these are people without intellectual integrity. They don't make statements skirting the hyperbolic edge of their own actual beliefs in order to challenge others to think differently. To be merely a provocateur is to be hollower than an actual ideologue.