Matthew Miller. Gargamel. Smirkula. Dracula. Careful, Romanians take offense and don’t appreciate comparisons between Matty and Vlad Tepes, the impaler, much vilified for stubbornly fighting against the Ottomans, even when his own brother preferred their rule. Both were held as hostages at the Ottoman court and educated there, a practice already common in the days of the Romans, Arminius, a Germanic kid, who later annihilated some Roman legions in the Teutoburg forest, changing the course of Europe forever, was also raised by the Romans as a hostage. No, Matthew Miller was not raised as a hostage at an enemy court and I will soon tell you why as a Belgian I don’t like the comparison to Gargamel either, cause Gargamel is… Belgian.

Matthew was born in Texas. ‘Football, Bibles and rodeos’, says bestseller author and all round huggable gift of human niceness, Mark Manson about Texas. The author of The Subtle Art of not giving a f**k was also brought into this world in the second largest US state. His total alienation with that world set Mark on a path to write bestsellers on the creative ways humans delude themselves.

Matthew is about ten years older than Mark. As with other vampires his birth date is a mystery. See his wiki page. The same page tellingly goes out its way to state Matthew was brought into this world by a mother and a father.

Matthew, as with many villains, has some potentially redeeming qualities. He helped campaign for John Kerry. John Kerry, although a US politician, doesn’t need to be a pure power hungry douchebag. He held one of the most revealing, most intense anti-war speeches at the height of the American-Australian-Thai-South-Korean war against the Vietnamese. You can watch it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WvL8l1CVg0&ab_channel=RatiTvalavadze It had a profound impact back then, soldiers serving in Vietnam were sometimes so shocked they thought he must be lying about the atrocities some of their fellow soldiers were committing, though later they came to see it too. Someone who campaigned for an outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam gets some starting credit. But not too much, because Nancy Pelosi also spoke out against the war and went on to fight for the American people by sitting in front of her full expensive fridge urging struggling Americans to enjoy life indoors. She also saved democracy by single-handedly tearing up a Trump speech. No, she used both hands.

But back to Matthew. Matthew is the son of a pastor. Given Mark Manson’s characterisation of Texas, that was one option out of three. The other two were: football player and rodeo clown.

Matthew is well groomed and not scruffy looking like me and he knows how to tie a tie, I don’t, and couldn’t care less.

Matthew Miller may have some driblet of rebellious spirit, because he is a Texan Democrat. Texas has been as sure to go for the Republicans in presidential elections ever since 1980 as Hillary Clinton is sure to blame others for her failures. So maybe Matthew is not always the conformity seeking choir boy he seems. 

I went over Miller’s Twitter account. Halloween 2022. He openly confesses to steal candy from his kids. A real dad joke. Less cute when you know he later cheerfully deflects questions concerning Israel’s killing of children.

He also asks for more variety in the candy given to trick or treaters:

‘Two kids, two full buckets, and not a single 100 Grand. No Rolos or Nerds. A solitary box of Dots, which I’m mulling whether to eat tonight before they inventory everything in the morning. I love the big brands as much as the next dad, but come on people, mix it up.

No one is mourning the death of Boston Baked Beans or those nasty orange and black taffies, but it would it kill y’all to give out some Smarties or Sweet Tarts? (Yes I know I could just buy them for myself instead of stealing from my kids, but that’s besides the point, isn’t it?)’

It’s not clear if he had to dress up for Halloween or if he saves money by going as himself, a vampire.

Mark Manson may be on to something, because Matthew does tweet about American Football here and there. Sometimes even soccer.

There is actually nothing vile or evil about his personal tweets whatsoever. If Albert Speer would have had a Twitter account in 1940, am very, very sure, having read multiple books about Albert Speer and his own writings, that there would not have been any vile or evil tweet by Albert Speer in 1940.

Matthew Miller shows quite some modesty in his tweets. At a certain point he congratulates a lady and says she will do a better job than he did. Alround niceness and light-spirited positive masculinity, let’s say.

That doesn’t take away the fact that he has helped Israel get away with murder, that he has engaged in verbal gymnastics to avoiding assigning blame to Israel, that there was less variety in his answers to journalists than in the candy his kids got for Halloween.

Israel is always right, yes, here and there they go too far, but they were informed that they should be more careful and, yes, we are waiting for Israel to investigates its own crimes.

Now why do I not want him to be compared to Gargamel. Which is much more interesting and important and revealing than anything else in this post.

The Smurfs are Belgian and so is Gargamel.

Gargamel is responsible for the Smurfs having at least one female Smurf. 

How so?

One day Gargamel cooks up a new plan to destroy the Smurfs. He creates a female Smurf with the worst cliche qualities you could imagine.

He sends her off to the village. She does immediately lead to strife, frustration, anger and turnmoil.

The leader of the Smurfs has to work his magic on her to turn her into a fantastic, charming, caring, generous, protective, always well-intenioned Smurf, beloved by all.

So without Gargamel’s evil intentions the Smurfs would not have had this wonderful addition to their village.

I doubt any good has come out of Matthew Miller’s protection of Israel.

And all in all he strikes me as a person, who is neither good nor evil, but pleasantly and comfortably detached enough to be able to do his job well enough. All in all, he manages to brush off critical questions without allowing himself to be drawn into personal attacks and doesn’t seem to ever directly attacked anyone. This looks nice.

But trying to be everyone’s friend is the same as being nobody’s friend. Not getting into any fight is not necessarily a nice quality it can also just show apathy.

A critic who knows him has said he does what he does for the status it gives him.

If you can leave moral qualms aside I think Miller has one of the most interesting jobs in the world. It beats the hell out of work at a poultry plant, drawing up invoices at some corporation, cleaning, construction work, almost any job actually, it’s a job that is mentally challenging, it forces you to be very tactical with your words, which I can certainly see the pleasure of, it’s like playing a form of Scrabble, but with extremely high stakes where you pay heavily for the slightest slip-up. It’s like going to the Olympics for public speaking.

Again, IF you can leave moral qualms aside, many people who are passionate about communication strategy, would find Matthew’s job extremely satisfying and stimulating. The pay and perks are probably also rather enjoyable.

Am writing this with my son’s elbow leaning on my liver – he’s watching YouTube kids while using me as a couch -, so I have to cut this short.

In other circumstances I can imagine talking about the Civil War history of Texas with Matthew or playing games like The Settlers of Catan with him.

But now I can’t, because he smirks, when someone says the Lancet reports 8 percent of the population of Gaza is dead and he helps those other settlers.

The violent settlers of the West Bank.

At best Matthew has shown me once again how alluring it can be for someone who is ‘nice’, to sell their soul to the Devil, to a Mephisto, the US Hegemony in Matthew’s case, in exchange for leading a comfortable life with an ego pleasing status.

Let’s at least have something positive and re-usable born out of this man’s performance as as spokesperson.

Miller’s Law:

As long as defending something extremely morally repugnant gives us more personal perks than personal discomfort we will continue to defend it while convincing ourselves we are the goodies.