You detect and catch a young man trying to infiltrate your meeting about the “disappeared.” What do you do?
The minister responsible for “disappearing” your wife and your daughter to the rape-dungeons is in your sights. Do you fire?
You hold your fire and let the young man go, according to the movie, at least, where it even works out. The daughter is raped and machine-gunned but in the end Argentina becomes a democracy and Banderas is re-united with Emma Thompson.
Emma managed to escape from her captors by playing on the weakness of the only half-way decent prison guard. The only man who would not rape her was also the only one who would respond to an invitation and place himself in position to be garroted. [Discuss, though there is more]
George Bush destroyed the American Exception. America is now just another country with flawed elections, corrupt politics and suppressed dissent. A country which invades others with no legal basis, which defecates on the noblest desires of her friends while lauding the horrors of those most opposed to her true nature. And not least a country which “disappears” people. (I would provide links but I think the whole site is a source of links on this. Look up Susanhu, for example).
A number of questions arise.
Can we imagine ourselves a better America and a better world? If WE can’t see it, WE can’t get there.
When change comes, should the perpetrators, their enablers and their crimes be investigated in depth, even if it means civil war, or should we follow the Argentinean model and give a blanket amnesty in order to settle the crisis and allow the healing to begin?
At what point does violent resistance become not merely moral but imperative? Use your imagination. Imagine…
… the Germans and Japanese, victorious in WWII, occupying your state.
… the Chinese, a half century from now occupying the vast under-populated lands of North America.
… my aliens occupying your home town in order to “improve” America.
Now, imagine the reaction from
you,
the rednecks,
the survivalists,
the state,
the feds,
the army,
assorted other loonies and
bigfoot
as everyone tries to muscle-in on his territory.
We all have a bloody streak in us. I am completely against capital punishment and yet if I actually apprehended one of the people who has been poisoning dogs in the northern neighborhoods of Athens, I would do things to them that would make Nazis blush.
Hence, the poll. (BTW, while Greek law is often very progressive it falls down completely on this).