Ted Rall sometimes makes me appreciate the benefits of a Taliban-style approach to literary criticism. His political cartoons and columns are often so deliberately and profoundly offensive that I can imagine his home being stormed by a righteous mob, which drags him to the local execution venue where ululations of joy are heard as he is dispatched to his horrible, painful, virgin-less fate.

That fantasy — and yeah, it’s a sweet dream for me — usually fades within moments. I’m one of those naive, foolish, trusting souls who actually believe that American values are worth honoring, and that freedom of expression is an important one of those values. But when I saw this cartoon, that fantasy didn’t fade quite as quickly. Truth be told, it lingers still.

Rall hilariously imagines an America of the future that has become a “Mensatocracy,” thanks to having our military people stay in Iraq for centuries, and having as many of them as possible die there. Once a sufficient number of the “idiots” in uniform have been killed, the average American IQ soars and the country becomes “an intellectual utopia of creativity and pragmatism.”

Yeah, that’s a knee-slapper, all right. That scamp Ted Rall. He’s so daring and edgy.

In addition to being a cartoonist, Rall also writes columns, a recent one of which indicates that the cartoon linked to above isn’t a case of exaggerating for effect. Rall really believes that we’d be better off without military personnel, who apparently created the war in Iraq and are unworthy of any sympathy:

I’m a news junkie. And even I flip the page past the same old “2 Dead, 7 Wounded in IED Blast” headline.

But hey, soldier, you volunteered. If not for you, there wouldn’t be a war in the first place.

Here’s the strange thing, though: The more I pondered Rall’s latest foray into what his own web site generously and forgivingly calls “caustic humor,” the more my fantasy of Taliban-style retribution was displaced by something else. Eventually, I realized what I was feeling. It was compassion.

What other ultimate reaction could I have to someone whose soul is so corroded?

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