McConnell Objects to Bill for Military Pay

[_Res Ipsa]

Kevin, gotta' admire your chutzpah in trying to pass off an accusation of intentional misconstruction as a compliment. It's not. It's an accusation of dishonesty. And, yes, that's a hill I'll pick to die on any day.

My response to your charge of "I never said this" is to point out that I never said you "said" that. I think it's very clear from what I said in context that I wasn't trying to quote or paraphrase anyone, even you. When I purport to be trying to say what you said, I'll do my best to make it clear that that's what I'm doing.

I know you're a smart guy who understands both metaphor and hyperbole. Did you really interpret what I said as claiming that the military is actually a chunk of wood, and that you literally picked that chunk of wood up and hit republicans with it, and that the club left an actual imprint on said Republicans that said "I hate the military?" I don't think so. I think it was unfair of you to take what was on its face clearly meant to be literal, interpret a piece of it as literal, and then attack my integrity based on your faulty interpretation.

Now, it very well may be that my attempt at hyperbolic metaphor or metaphoric hyperbole or whatever simply sucked. Wouldn't be the first time. If that's the case, I'm happy to strip away the analogy and the hyperbole and write just a plain old boring sentence in place of the offending one: "Both both sides are willing to use support for the military (or lack thereof) as a political weapon to politically damage or discredit the other side." Had you not been so eager to find some reason to counterattack, I think would you would have understood exactly what I was saying.

As to backing up my claim, Exhibit 1 is this retweet by the Senate Democrats. https://Twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/ ... 3572726784 In that tweet, they do exactly what you original headline did: portray McConnell as denying the military their paychecks. That's using the military as a political weapon -- and in quite a cynical manner. Here's Tammy Duckworth doing the same: Here's Tammy Duckworth: https://Twitter.com/SenDuckworth/status ... 3723075584. And here's the newest Democratic Senator, Doug Jones: https://patch.com/alabama/birmingham-al ... g-shutdown. So, it's actually true that "both sides do it" -- with the sides including elected representatives and supporters like you.

With respect to your nefarious interpretation of my use of "many" instead of "most," the actual reason is faulty memory on my part. If you go back and read what I wrote, you'll see that the difference between "many" and "most" is completely irrelevant to my point. As for your claim that my intent was to mock you, that's your personal paranoid fantasy.

TL/DR

1. Folks on both sides of the political spectrum are happy to use the military as a political weapon to politically damage or discredit the other side.
2. You did it in this post. The Senate Democrats and Doug Jones did the same thing.
3. Your claim that I intentionally misconstrued your words was a dick move without any basis in fact.
4. Note to self: Don't bother with metaphor, hyperbole, etc. with Kevin. Stick to subject, object, verb.