Vote — for revenge... or love?

This clip neatly embodies a reason why I believe Romney will win. He feels like optimism, and Obama — who once owned the word "hope" — seems petulant, divisive, and ungrateful.

ADDED: On love and revenge, read Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech on Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize:

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

AND: Here, for comparison, is Barack Obama's speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, over which we will puzzle forever. What was it for? He didn't mention revenge, but he did mention King and he did mention love:

The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached – their fundamental faith in human progress – that must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

"The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach..."

Says The Independent.

Senior officials are increasingly convinced... that the attack was in revenge for the killing in a drone strike in Pakistan of Mohammed Hassan Qaed, an al-Qa'ida operative who was, as his nom-de-guerre Abu Yahya al-Libi suggests, from Libya, and timed for the anniversary of the 11 September attacks....

According to security sources the consulate had been given a "health check" in preparation for any violence connected to the 9/11 anniversary. In the event, the perimeter was breached within 15 minutes of an angry crowd starting to attack it at around 10pm on Tuesday night. There was, according to witnesses, little defence put up by the 30 or more local guards meant to protect the staff. Ali Fetori, a 59-year-old accountant who lives near by, said: "The security people just all ran away and the people in charge were the young men with guns and bombs."

Wissam Buhmeid, the commander of the Tripoli government-sanctioned Libya's Shield Brigade, effectively a police force for Benghazi, maintained that it was anger over the Mohamed video which made the guards abandon their post. "There were definitely people from the security forces who let the attack happen because they were themselves offended by the film; they would absolutely put their loyalty to the Prophet over the consulate. The deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet."

In this analysis, the video was used to manipulate the mob and the security forces, but the drone attack was the motivation for the killings.

"That is the head of one who toyed with my honour."

Said the rape victim, arrested near the head she severed from her attacker.

Women's racist rant on a London train goes viral... and now she's been arrested.

Here's the report of her arrest. Here's the clip, posted 2 days ago, with almost 7,000 comments.

Here's the Metafilter discussion, where one commenter says "I'm ambivalent about this in that there is a part of me that doesn't want to feel any sympathy for her at all... [b]ut there's a tinge of pitchforkery (jumped on by the usually deeply racist media) that gives me huge pause for thought" and links to this aggregration of Tweets:

[O]n Twitter, the righteous have massed. The Twitter Hunters are in favour of shooting the mother and leaving her child possibly orphaned. Some order a hit. Others want her to be sent to Africa where intolerant blacks will judge her. Others want “the slag” raped. Intolerance will not be tolerated.

"We now know and have been able to trace it back to the Perry campaign that stirred this up, in order to discredit me and slow us down."

Says Herman Cain, who if he's not sure the oppo drop came from Perry is an immense hypocrite.

By the way, who dropped the "Niggerhead" story on Perry? Did we ever find out?

"Tech-savvy disabled teen, being beaten for using a website not approved of by hyper-luddite father who's a FAMILY LAW JUDGE..."

"... films it and uses that footage as retaliation to (probably) destroy his career? If you gave me that plot as a TV movie, I'd tell you it was too much."

(NOTE: Clicking the link will not take you to the video, but you will find a link to the video. I clicked through, but instinctively turned it off after about 5 seconds, without seeing any of the beating.)

Revenge, the Wikipedia article.

A report that the wife of Dominique Strass-Kahn is seeking "revenge" got me thinking about the specific meaning of the word. Surely, it doesn't include merely remembering who kicked you when you were down.

My curiosity about the concept was sufficient to get me to Wikipedia, where I was, first, interested that there was an article at all, and second, interested that it was as short as it was. It wasn't super-short, like a dictionary definition. If you're going to purport to cover the history of revenge and its function in society and religion plus that famous saying, how do you keep the length to 2 screens?

Presumably: editing! Wikipedia is all about editing. People load crap in. That's the easy part. The miracle of Wikipedia is in the editing.

Oh, come on, Althouse. It's not a miracle. I mean, check it out:  "A miracle is an event attributed to divine intervention."

No, no. I'm not going there. The Daily News used "revenge" to portray a specific individual in a negative light for the titillation of readers. I used hyperbole, in a complimentary sense, to refer to the behind-the-scenes work of thousands of editors who deserve some extra praise and thanks.

Both miracles and revenge play a part in human storytelling, but revenge is a much better story. "Deus ex machina" is not the most admirable plot device, as Aristotle explained:

It is obvious that the solutions of plots too should come about as a result of the plot itself, and not from a contrivance... There should be nothing improbable in the incidents; otherwise, it should be outside the tragedy....

Revenge makes a good tragedy. See "Hamlet."  If you haven't seen it already.

Of the psychological, moral, and cultural foundation for revenge, philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written: "The primitive sense of the just—remarkably constant from several ancient cultures to modern institutions ...—starts from the notion that a human life ... is a vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, violated by another's act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a counter invasion, equally deliberate, equally grave. 

For this penetration.... a good image, when we're talking about rape. But what of the false accusation of rape? That too is a penetration.

"And to right the balance truly, the retribution must be exactly, strictly proportional to the original encroachment."

I think revenge asks for more.  Nussbaum explains the moral aspect of revenge, not the passionate edge that wants more than justice. There is passion, but wait...

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

That is the saying about revenge. And it doesn't suggest becoming dispassionate. You're not using your measuring spoons and cups, preparing a dish "strictly proportional to the original encroachment." The cold dish that is the best revenge is not a calibrated diet dish.

Nussbaum's Heart-Healthy Justice Salad is not revenge.