Seriousness

Atrios is the blogworld's first and foremost commentator on today's "serious". His blog post here gives a good idea of what is meant today by "serious" people. Atrios is frequently mystified by our media's attention to "serious" people and why the are taken ... well seriously. What one needs to understand is what is meant by "serious" people. Here are the main points about "serious" people:

1. "Serious" people see that the threat of Islamic extremism is an immediate, existential threat to the United States of America, all its institutions, all its people and all its property. It is a threat that transcends any threat previously seen by this nation; greater than the American Civil War, greater than the combined might of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and greater than the threat of the Soviet Union at its peak. We are all in immediate, life and death peril.
2. "Serious" people see that the population of this country is properly divided into two classes, those who, like our pundit class and "serious" politicians and major business leaders, who should be in charge of running things and making decisions, and other, different, people who are properly suited to do things like actually fight in wars, risk their lives and fortunes to defend this country from horrible existential threats (see above).
3. "Serious" people recognize that these two classes described above should never get mixed up. Trying to have members of one class perform the tasks of the other will be ruinous in the face of any existential threat (see above).
4. "Serious" people further recognize that any effort to weaken the social or economic position of the decision making class or anything which tends to remove the people currently occupying that class from their privileged positions is likewise ruinous to the nation facing dire peril (see above)

With that in mind one can now understand "How it Works" and the mystification shown by Atrios can be dispelled.

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