Inspired by several discussions here and elsewhere, I started to reply to some comments, the replies got long, and were redundant, so I decided to just make it a diary.
We have no way of knowing, if your ten friends and a couple of hundred million other folks knuckled down and spent three or four years reading all the history and documents and white papers that you have, and a gazillion newspapers from as many countries every day, or nearly so, but what their conclusion might be somewhat out of the mainstream too.
Washington would prefer, however, that you and everybody else confine your current affairs reading to US corporate media, and that US corporate media confine its reporting to centcom news briefings and refrain from FOIA requests until it is repealed in the interest of national security and the war on terror, and your history reading to glowing accounts of grateful savages welcoming the friendly Pilgrims who wanted nothing more than religious freedom for themselves and anyone else who shared their religious beliefs, and how America cast off slavery with disgust as if it were a shat-upon garment as soon as they found out it was wrong in 1865, and from there proceeded to bring more light to more dark corners everywhere, spreading freedom and manifesting destiny with a bountiful hand from desert sands to palm-dotted isles.
That’s because they have no way of knowing either, just how much Joe the NASCAR dad will support those troops if he is not given the wiggle room to discount as exaggerations and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories just which details of which of their activities.
One of the things you learn if you are lucky enough to live long enough and know enough of the world, is that people are not that different from each other whether they live in a mud-wallled compound, a thatched hut, or a stunning 4 bedroom colonial w/basement, even a magnificent palace, or a houseboat, or under a cardboard box in an alley.
Regardless of all that, there will be a certain percentage of them who are fine, upstanding amiable people, some who are jerks, some who are very religious, some who are not religious at all, some who think they should be religious, some who are gay, some who are ignorant, and ignorant of that fact, and some who are ignorant by choice, and proud of that fact.
But the ones who are willing to do the intellectual and rhetorical and philosophical dirty work are one of the smallest groups in the bunch.
The folks who are willing to dive into the swirling, stinking unwholesome stew of past and present and pull out a gobbet of rotting offal to hold it up to the sun and analyze it, heedless of the maggoty drops that fall on their shoes, the revolting grease whose stench clings to their hands and nostrils forever after, are few and far between. I cannot express how much I cherish this blog’s brave dumpster divers.
It is natural to seek the path of least resistance, to want to believe the best about those one is taught to view as one’s leaders and protectors, and when that is not possible, it is natural to hold a preference for the demon one knows.
Forest-viewing is not the norm, most folks tend to stay focused on the trees. As someone, I think it was BooMan, if not, sorry, once pointed out, one of the reasons you don’t see much outrage in the US is that people do not perceive things like foreign policy, however malevolent, as something that affects them.
The US as a nation is an infant, a fetus, really, and so it is not surprising that Americans do not as a rule do not think in terms of centuries and millennia. Those who are affluent enough to do so engage in some personal finance planning that stretches into decades, but for the most part, people focus on today, next week, next year. That’s why so many of the ostensibly affluent are not really so at all – the luxurious homes and shiny cars are owned by the banks, and the designer clothes their “renters” wear are charged on credit cards, their affluence is a few paychecks and that retirement account minus the taxes away from poverty. They live in an illusive cloud of “lifestyle immortality” well into middle age, in much the same way as teenagers do dangerous and stupid things because death just seems like something that cannot happen to them.
Cognitive dissonance is not a conspiracy theory, it is a very real psychological phenomenon, and one of the things that sets Americans apart is that they have been exposed, for generations, to a constant diet of it.
With even ephemeral affluence comes the ability to insulate oneself even further from reality; with the exception of slaughterhouse workers, policemen and medical personnel, affluent Americans are protected from blood. Meat comes wrapped in plastic, neat bloodless cubes and rectangles, TV stations warn sensitive viewers before showing a bloodstain on the concrete where a 3 car accident leaving 7 dead and 3 decapitated occurred. Those who are familiar with TV coverage even as close as Spanish language channels in the US will know that is not normal.
Against this backdrop, what should Americans believe? Whom should they believe? Their politicians, their media, yes, even their pollsters 🙂 – all have their own financial interests – interests which are quite different from those of either Joe the NASCAR Dad or Erin the Soccer Mom whose tires Joe rotated today. And the interests of all those corporations are certainly not the same as those of Rosa from Guatemala who bathed and fed Erin’s little boy while she took the Escalade to Joe’s shop, or Joe’s daughter Cheryl, trying to raise her own little boy by herself on two shifts of minwage.
How can each of them reconcile the impossible moebius twirls of logic that require them to support and oppose, trust and dismiss, wage war for peace, tape peoples’ mouths shut for freedom, spread democracy with napalm?
They support the policies because if they don’t, they become the enemy of their own nation, yet by supporting them, they disgrace their own nation, which is looking less like a nation every day, but to dwell on that is to align themselves with the terrorists, destroy the village to save it, they cannot win, and if they did, just what would their prize be?
Is it any wonder then, that Anomalous talked to ten intelligent people who did not know who John Bolton is? One might argue that their successful avoidance of the subject is proof that they are indeed intelligent.
Maybe you have seen one of those cheesy old horror movies where the monster is smashing through the door, and the mothers cover their children’s eyes, and in broken, halting voices, begin to sing lullabies or whisper happy tales of magical castles and beautiful princesses.
What would be gained by yanking the mothers’ hands away?
Holy imagery, Batman!
Gee, I go outside to do a little yardwork, found it peculiar that you hadn’t responded to my last comment. . . and . . . WHAM!!!
The truly amusing part for me, dear writer, is that I immediately took exception to your title, as I pride myself on the treasures I’ve found while dumpster diving. (Little did I know I was about to get hit with a maelstrom of metaphors)
So, like, could you summarize your point in a couple of small sentences comprised of monosyllabic words :^)?
It is only with great difficulty that I am able to answer the question “mustard or mayonnaise” without employing a maelstorm of metaphors.
I think it is probably glandular.
You owe me, Bucko. Ya just had to go and showcase a grammatically imperfect sentence I wrote – in very vivid blue, I might add – followed by your Pulitzer level writing. (Making sure that the whole community knew you had to open up the discussion because I was too stupid to debate on my own.)
So for that, alone, I need you to dig real deep and find it in yourself to summarize that there diary into one clear point.
My point, in one small sentence: The citizens don’t know what’s going on or they’d be really, really pissed.
Most of them kind of know what is going on but they don’t know what it means, they don’t really want to know, and in lots of ways, that is probably just as well because Chavez simply does not have a big enough army and Saladin is dead.
Damn, you’re good. And after all that, I must admit I agree with you :^).
Far be it from me to intrude upon this little love nest. I had to scatter a few 4’s around to encourage growth – but if there’s anymore of this tedious back-slapping I shall be round with a bucket of cold water 😉
Oh dear, more old hippies like me…
I’ll be posting an entirely sidetracking diary on Mythology within the hour.
I was not ready before I saw this diary – but now I see how I can make it relevant to the Big Picture that Ducky refers to.
Looking forward to it. My technique has me dumping Mythology directly into other people’s diaries on a daily basis without even recognizing it as such.
(And hey! I feel somewhat betrayed. Just a few short hours ago, we had this little brotherhood, you and I, where you said that we’re not ones to go off writing diaries on our own. And then. . .you leave me in your dust to go and do just that. Oh well – I’ll just continue on my merry way sprinkling comments to and fro. La la.)
Down here on the Bowery, it’s everyone for himself 😉
I am an awful person, I know that. I wasn’t even intending to post my diary, Bush: Mythology. (now available) It was only a sudden flash of insight that allowed me to complete it.
Now I’m back to commenting. No more diaries for a while, honest!
I will not define ‘for a while’
I picked it off from a corporate mission statement :^)
Oh, I know all about those. I’ve written quite a few…
with
“What the bad news was
became apparent too late
for us to do anything good about it.”
by
John Ashbery
IMHO people may have some vague idea of what is happening but don’t care that much because they figure that they can’t change things. They are resigned to making their own little worlds as good as they can but assume the big picture to be beyond their ability to change.
At last, validation for dumpster diving, and I hope that will include reality based DD as well.
Ductape you have again surpassed yourself with the writing in above diary. My favorite line is:
I don’t think it has always been this way, as far as some will pay attention to all of this and others will not. In my grandmothers time, when I was a child, she was fervently interested in all things political as was the rest of my family and neighbors. Perhaps it was the times, when information was so valuable and so very much prized because of the effort it took to disseminate and receive it, especially in a timely manner.
I was surprised to find in doing my genealogy research, that in the 1920’s and 1930’s census there was a category for do you have a radio in the home. Radios were not in every home at that time but this new and very effective means of communication was very important to the political scene and politicians were keen to use it I suspect, witness Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats.
What has happened to change the attention people will pay to politics, maybe too much info. Well I really don’t pretend to know, just that we must keep on plugging away and try as hard as we can to get the real word out.
Very excellent diary Ductape and excellent writing as well.
Information overload. All this data is just so overwhelming at times. And in our parents’ days, they weren’t receiving minute by minute analysis of WWII or information containing immediate opposition from all sides.
But I do believe, as you mentioned, that they were very different times overall. Weren’t those the days when it was viewed as impolite to discuss politics and religion outside the home?
Yes it was the times when it was considered bad form, but yet it happened, all the time. People always said you don’t discuss politics or religion at a party, but still they did and I witnessed a few such occasions in the 40’s and 50’s and by the 60’s you couldn’t stop people talking politics.
For young ones reading this, I never laid my eyes on a TV set until I was about 8 and that would have been 1951. Not much of a tv either, tiny screen, big cabinet and kind of a dull orange color. I think there was only one station available for many year, could be wrong, and then maybe 3 stations. Memory is vauge.
But once it got going TV news was a big thing for viewers. They were kind of wowed over having such current info.
Anomalyous you too are one of those great writers on this site, I just love your comments they are both witty and pithy, and always interesting.
Interesting. It sounds like we had very different experiences in our youth. I was raised in an environment where above all else the family members were expected to behave by the strictest of societal standards. But that likely relates to my parents having owned a small business, in a small community, where they couldn’t afford to potentially offend anyone.
I do recall a distinct change of tone in the late 60s – but that was directly related to my brother being in Vietnam.
(And thank you ever so much for the kind remarks, Diane. I appreciate your thoughtfulness – both to me, and to all others in the community.)
That the small town I lived in was (shudder) all Republican, don’t know if they even allowed Dems. in the town, (lol), so they weren’t arguing party issues, but rather inter party issues.
There was much more division as far as religion was concerned, much ado about what church you went to and how often, etc.
BTW this was in Salisbury, Pa. in Somerset County, way up in the Alleghany mountains, near Camp David and the Maryland Border and sitting right on top of one of the major coal veins. Town was not isolated though as it was on a main highway and at one time had train stop as well as it’s own streetcar system, that began to fail during depression.
My family and a lot of the townspeople were either mine owners/operators (coal) or mine workers, in the early years. My family were owners and operators and lost most of their money during depression when mines closed down. Town was quite prosperous at one time, don’t know about today.
This is turning into a diary, which I really should do sometime about the info I discovered while doing genealogy research of my family.
That’s starting to sound really close to home. Except where I come from they mined taconite (Mesabi Iron Range). And you had better show up for church each Sunday (or Saturday evening when the Catholic Church got a bit more lax after Vatican Deux). Lots of Irish and Italians from my parts, so Catholicism was predominant.
I spent many years traveling to areas around Pittsburgh, and I felt like a local.
Well here’s another co-incidence, my father worked at that Iron Range in the 50’s, I did not live with him at the time, but I visited there for one whole summer, he lived in a ruggedly beautiful cabin/house, back in the woods, outside of Duluth, and very close to Gooseberry Falls.
But in Pa. the town I lived in was completely of German descent, and only Protestants. A nearby town was a little more difused and they had many nationalities and a Catholic Church. I am a descendent of a group of people who fled the rule of the Catholic church in Germany, and surrouding areas, and who came to the US for religious freedom and most specifically came to PA because of William Penn and his glorious colony. The first mass migration to America. Religion was a very hot topic for many generations in my family, having great distate for any loss of religious freedom.
As usual, I just played a significant role in taking a thread waaaaaaaaaay off topic.
Sorry about that Ducky. And thanks to all for a wonderful day of discourse and diversion – time to get back to my personal reality.
I just checked my records and the first year they asked the quesiton radio sets was in the 1930 census. One of my grandparents had one and the other side did not. They were both equally well off, so this must have been the very beginning of the radio phenom…
The radio was a beautiful thing in my early life, very fond memories.
OH, btw, DTF, thanks for the diary!
I spent my weekend actually doing something fun for a change. A friend of mine, fellow classical music lover and I got into a debate about Der Erlkönig, which is a poem by Goethe (probably his most famous), and used in a song by Schubert (probably his most famous song). To make a long story short I spent the last few days translating the poem – mind you without the poetry – so that it reflects what is being said. Well, I had fun.
Point is – pertaining to the topic on hand of course – I would much rather be doing this stuff than cluttering up my time with politics. I want to be a soccer mom (well, not really). I want to be able to go through my life without Bush co, torture, war, poverty, abuse, murder etc… as being something that happens now. This crap should be in the past; it should have been on the road to annihilation when we hit the Renaissance and the Age of Reason – why are we going backwards?
Your thesis is really good, Ductape, but I can’t shake the feeling that there is more going on – I’m hard pressed to put my finger on it. I’m wondering, beyond the US being in its infancy (though they are more on par with juvenile delinquents) and just being content in a bubble, if it has to do pride and the conditioning thereof. Deep down I think that the idea of this country is so ingrained into the American psyche, that it can do no wrong. Bad things happen in the past, not in the present. People are brought up to be nationalistic without knowing it. People believe they live in the greatest country on Earth – but it’s something that just is – no explanation necessary, beyond a few documents that say it is so. And then maybe I’m far off….
And going a little bit deeper into it than most people care to.
Yes, there are some strange ideas deeply ingrained, one of the more obvious ones these days involves Saddam and the WMD.
Suppose Saddam did have WMD – how would that justify invading Iraq and murdering, tortuting, raping, maiming human beings, destroying art and history and infrastructure?
Obviously, it doesn’t, unless you accept the premise that Iraq, like the rest of the world, is the property of the US to do with as it wishes.
Yet even many who oppose the invasion base their opposition on the lack of WMD!
Now that will go down in history as textbook “ingrainment!”
about you DP, is your supreme self-confidence, your colorful prose, your dedication to both your central arguments and your craft.
Oh, and your amazing sense of humor and worldly compassion as well.
Yet, I don’t agree with you that it makes no difference whether Saddam had WMD, whether he was working with al-Qaeda, etc.
It makes a lot of difference.
Iraq was our most pressing foreign policy ‘problem’ prior to and subsequent to 9/11.
How we got into that predicament is material, but also immaterial. We had to find a way to end the sanctions, and to vacate as many troops from the Arabian penisula as possible.
And when we pondered how to do this, it made a great deal of difference whether Saddam Hussein would be in power, post-sanctions, whether he would reconstitute his WMD, whether he would possibly use reconstituted WMD to pass on to third parties to exact revenge. Whether he would slaughter the Kurds, Marsh Arabs, or Shi’ites.
All of this needed to be assessed as a matter of national security. And it did not matter whether we should have ever been in such a situation in the first place….at least if your job was to keep Americans safe from harm.
That is a different matter than considering that we own Iraq. We had taken a baseball bat to a wasps nest long ago. What we had to assess was whether or not we were likely to get stung.
Bush consistently insisted that we WOULD be stung. But, it turns out, the chances of us getting stung in the short term, were very slight.
That matters. It matters a lot. And to finally allow us to resort to history…it was the Bush family that got us in this (specific) mess in the first place back during the father’s administration.
is that it is based on that one central premise. A premise which is, I have acknowledged, the bedrock of all US foreign policy; namely that the world is US property.
From that premise come all the arguments about how gunmen are needed to protect America’s oil, etc etc etc.
And some very skillful and elaborately elegant arguments are built on it, and have been for generations.
There is just one slight problem.
The rest of the world does not see it that way, and will not see it that way no matter how many bombs are dropped, no matter how many “detainees” are beaten to death over how many days, no matter how many villages are napalmed, no matter how many times napalm and bombs and approved compliance blows get new names.
The Iraqis, and the Iranians and all the rest believe just as strongly that their land, and their oil, is theirs, as any loyal American believes that it is America’s.
Thank you for all the compliments, I don’t think I deserve them, but one I do deserve is this: I do not try to convince any Americans that the oil is not theirs.
I don’t try to convince them of that because I don’t think it can be done. What I will do is try to explain, in as many ways as I can, that it is not a belief that has really caught on globally.
And it is that disconnect, that unbridgeable gap, which constitutes the very real and imminent and palpable danger to the safety and security of ordinary Americans.
The threat does not stem from an American failure to slaughter and torture a sufficient number of Muslims, nor a failure to provide sufficient funds to client states to tighten up the clampdown on their populations.
If it is Washington’s goal to keep Americans safe from harm, it’s best and last and only and fading, and possibly no longer existent chance to do so lies in repatriating, immediately, its entire panoply of gunmen, torturers, sexual predators, interrogation specialists and operatives and consultants and technical support interrogators and napalm renamers and the whole shebang – call in the planes and boats and trains that brought them in, load them up and take them out.
I agree that the past cannot be changed.
I believe that the hope of a future, for the US as well as the world, is worth taking that best and last and only and probably no longer existent chance.
Cease aggression and disarm.
and I value your argument which has many very strong points in its favor.
Yours is a much needed voice. I don’t see things as quite so simple. Nor do I seek policies that I find hopeless in implementation, even if they contain enormous wisdom.
But you already know this about me.
In America we are under no illusions that our mineral, timber and other resources are ours. We know they belong to ranchers and other bagmen.
And so, too, do the resources of the rest of the known world. At least, that is what the deeds say.
But we shall continue this discussion, and I hope with as much levity and seriousness as in the past…
or Hashemites and Mubaraks. Or Arafats. There are far too many of them, to be sure, and their deeds are in many ways even more nefarious than that of the western colonialists, with all respect, expectations from that sector are somewhat lower.
The last century or so has seen some changes, both in the US and outside of it.
Just as some elderly southerners wax nostalgic over the days when “the coloreds knew their place,” so does the colonialist shake his head and try to figure out why his world has changed so much.
The answer is to an extent, technology, but not only because more people have access to information about the slavers and colonialists, but – and here is a hopeful sign for you, though it might not seem so – the slavers and colonialists are now also empowered to learn that the slaves never were happy, that the natives never really did believe the westerners were gods.
Now I will tell you the terrorist secret: The west cannot survive without the Majority World, and a deeper secret: the west cannot survive without the good opinion of the Majority World.
leave aside this discussion for tonight. It is a rich discussion that I sense will be ongoing.
There are many things to hash out and kick around.
But, I’ll leave it where it lays…for tonight.
Following on that thread, perhaps we truly feel we must pass on our “democracy”, because it is the right path – though we don’t ask why and we don’t question the methods. The belief that they will give up their terrorist ways (forget the fact that we brought the desire to be terrorists to the Iraqi people) and embrace our lifestyle (forget the fact that we’re all in debt). I’m not sure that Joe and Erin believe that they should own Iraq and that it is ours to do with as we please. We are just passing enlightenment on to them – we are benevolent, as opposed to torturers and occupiers – which brings us back to ignorance and blind faith in our system.
and the rest of the world. As I said in a previous post in this thread, I will not try to convince them that they do not. It would not be possible.
They are like the children in the “King and I” movie who got upset when they saw a world map because in relation to other countries, Thailand was small.
The difference is, the children were able to learn.
Joe and Erin are not able to learn because their belief that the world is US property is not due to ignorance of a fact.
For Erin and Joe, and millions upon millions of Americans, many of whom do not consider themselves religious, it is a tenet of faith.
I don’t know any Joes, but unfortunately I have to cross paths with Erin daily. They are wrapped up in their lives as if there is nothing else of worth, they are completely ignorant of things other than what brand of shoes to buy – they might recognize Iraq if shown on the news, but they can’t point to it on a globe. Their children are what they treasure – yet they don’t give any deep thought to their future, but they don’t give a damn about children in general – they are cold. I’m generalizing, of course.
The neocons feel they have the right to own the world, which reflects on the population – yet I don’t believe Joe and Erin are capable of giving it much thought. They parrot the values of their government – they care about the price of oil – yet the means don’t mean anything to them as long as their lives function as they believe they should. They leave such matters to those who know how. You are right about faith – but the faithful are more often than not ignorant and in this case because they choose to be – it is convenient, which is what the people want. They don’t want distasteful information in the news, not because they know what is happening, but because it would force them to think and make moral judgments. They are content to believe Abu Ghraib has been avenged. People don’t think – but they vote, and that vote is based on convenience.
Deep down I think that the idea of this country is so ingrained into the American psyche, that it can do no wrong. Bad things happen in the past, not in the present. People are brought up to be nationalistic without knowing it.
I don’t think most of the American people believe we can “do no wrong” – even in the present. I suspect most of us caught on to the nationalistic dogma after saying the Pledge of Alliegance for the 100th time.
People believe they live in the greatest country on Earth
Noted below: it’s the promise of freedom contained in those pesky founding documents. I’d add the “greatest experiment” on Earth.
Yes, I have this discussion with my husband all the time. His impressions growing up here, is that the Pledge is something as you say – nationalistic dogma which you don’t take seriously enough to give much thought to beyond it being routine. Personally, besides being a product of what the Nazis left in their wake – (I’m not comparing, because there are too many differences that it wouldn’t make sense), I must ask – why the insistence on still using it – especially with the newest line “Under God”?
As for those pesky founding documents and they are pretty impressive – I don’t think people understand that it is not what rules us today.
Under god was added in 1954 in response to “godless communism”. Old habits die hard – especially with the current Pres.
I don’t think people understand that it is not what rules us today.
People don’t understand that they do rule us today. Part of what Duct talks about above in terms of our lack of knowledge is knowledge of our own system of laws:
The Pledge isn’t the only thing we learn by rote. Critical thinking is not required in American schools.
I know about the response to the communists – however an odd approach for a nation that is separate of religion itself – no? Regardless of what the Soviet system purported to be – religion was very much alive (Christianity in any event – the Patriarchs still held quite a bit of power over the people). So you have 2 systems in conflict, yet their governments both shy away from religiosity and then one embraces it as a reaction to the other? Very petty – no great thinkers there.
Any system of government is just a moment in time – things change – that holds for the Constitution as well. Ideally you want to create a system that can only progress, unfortunately that isn’t happening. There is an obvious conflict with Capitalism and the virtue of greed. You mention critical thinking – well that too is in conflict with a progressive democracy. Not understanding what you are voting on and believing the act of voting an act of a superior society is a recipe for disaster.
We on the left drum to the beat of the first amendment – those on the right drum to the beat of the second amendment. Most on the left would probably say everyone walking about with a gun tucked under their shirt is a bad thing. We try to change this. A system that can’t progress from its original principles without changes – but it can also digress. In a democracy, impeded by the lack of safeguards for progression (since a democracy is progressive), if the undereducated democratic public views free speech as a bad thing so what of the guarantee in the first amendment?
What can I say, it’s dump day. So much for living in a town without garbage pickup.
You do get to know your garbage when you gots to truck it yourself…
They support the policies because if they don’t, they become the enemy of their own nation..
No. Here if we don’t support policies of our government, we change the government or the policies or both – but we do not become the enemy. And for an infant we have the oldest active governing document in the world.
Taking a long look at the system we are governed by, even with all our faults, we are miles ahead of most of the rest of the world. Our “forest” view as a people is precisely what generates endless criticism:we believe no one in the world should want for freedom.
What we haven’t done is live up to the promise contained in that document, and that’s frustrating. But that frustration is what drives us. It’s what creates your “dumster divers” – of all stripes. And eventually the mass in the middle is turned ever so slightly and the “system” is changed.
Not easy to notice the change when focusing on the leaves, much less the forest.
I think you can safely assume that what the US has spread on the Iraqis is not what most Iraqis think of as freedom.
And I think you can safely make that same statement about any nation that has been the recipient of US freedom-spreading attention.
Now if that is what Americans consider to be freedom, they have the right to self-determination and they are welcome to spread it on themselves.
For most folks around the world, however, freedom includes the freedom to be free of US aggression.
Re: Iraq (and Afghanistan). Agreed. But at minimum, we should stay until 1) we are asked to leave by the governments; or 2) our mandate (Iraq) expires on 31 December of this year. My guess is we’ll be invited to leave in December.
WWII “spread” (restored) quite a bit of freedom to a few countries, as did our “intervention” in South Korea (by invitation). Also think most East Europeans would be thankful for our pressure on the old USSR. Beyond those I’d have to agree with you.
Perhaps Sahib suffers from poor vision, and needs the invitations writ larger.
But so far, not by the governments of Iraq or Afghanistan.
Just the people. Government of the people. US could do worse than consider the notion.
and perhaps Bush is al-Kadhdhab?
There were rumors John Paul II thought he was Dajaal.
Excellent column and discussion, very interesting to follow. Glad you brought it up, Ductape.
Separating myths from reality, especially national ones, is pretty difficult to do, it seems, even if one thinks they want to. The myths of American exceptionalism, benevolence and democracy promotion are pretty hard to uproot. Sirocco tells me that Belgium still refuses to acknowledge the criminality of King Leopold in the Congo. Britain, the Netherlands and others, while somewhat facing up to their pasts, either still seem to be under the impression that they have a right to ‘fix’ people (i.e. Iraq), or else that they bear no responsibility for the ones they’ve already broken.
Even now, there are layers upon layers… one looks at the Sudan and sees a clear picture of genocide and you wonder… why is nothing being done about this? But around the murky edges there is the US even now forming coalitions with the Sudanese government, because of the “war on terra”. Despite the ongoing terror right there in that country. And the other countries on the murky (rotting offal soaked?) edges, who have “interests” in now promoting this side, or inciting that side, because of resources.
With Venezuela, people are horrified that Chavez is working to actually use the profits and resources of that country to benefit the desperately poor citizens of the country. That is a no-no. I don’t know if he is the greatest person, but it’s a start.
There is much yet I don’t understand or even know to think about until I meet someone who brings things to my attention, like this topic has.
of the incredable intelligence on this site. You people make want to learn. In regards to the topic, and this may too simple for you deep thinkers, but for the folks out there who don’t know who John Bolton is, why we really went to war, What Rove is really like, how deep Bushco is in with the Saudis, and all that is going on around them, they just don’t want to know. They have an idea things are not too great but have been so ingrained to believe that America is the leader of the free world and stands for all that is right and good in the world, if they stopped to talk about what is really going on it would shatter their worlds. Is this just too simple?
It always strikes me as a moral problem as to whether one should let people who quietly live their own lives, in their own self-imposed ignorance of the world, remain happily unaware, and what rights does one have to aggressively impose information on these people, causing them stress, and discord in their peer group.
The answer is one of degree.
If I am absolutely sure that an express train is bearing down on an isolated crossing. And there’s a family car with kids inside stopped there. And Dad gets out to pick up a teddybear thrown out of the window by a screaming kid. I have every right to do whatever it takes to save the situation. To make sure they understand the situation that they are in.
The express really is coming down the track…
Sure… but the situation changes a bit if afterwards you decide that once the situation is taken care of… you know, your own child really would like that teddy bear, and this family obviously has no idea how to behave in a car, I’ll just take it away and give them a cart and horse instead… for their own good.
They vote. Nobody with that power has the right to be ignorant.