Do you ever get the feeling that the more complicated an issue or task is, the more likely it is that most people will get frustrated and advocate blowing the whole thing up?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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serious answer: Most definitely.
Murkins luv blowin’ stiff up real good!!
It doesn’t really have to be all that complicated for them to want to blow it up, they just have to think it is in their way, or alternatively that by blowing it up they will get something they think they want.
Tragedy of the complicated…
Yes, I think that’s true. I also think that’s true in a micro sense for some people. The more complex fixing something seems, the more likely they will, if able, just trash it and buy a new thing,get a new spouse, etc.
new spouse is ok
multiple spouses really is a good idea…it just makes so much more sense…esp 1 wife many husbands.
One man is waaaaaay too much trouble. Many? The thought is enough to make me want to blow something up.
well you have to control them
teach them to obey and do tricks
best to add them one at a time
Dogs are easier to train, do cuter tricks, make fewer demands, and they’re more loyal.
complications are too nuanced, ergo, the old adage: when all you’ve got’s a hammer, every thing’s a nail applies.
it’s all they…the neoCON RATpubs, and that isn’t exclusive of demoRATS…know. there are no exceptions.
I believe the same adage applies to the Palestinians.
OMG!
You know, BooMan, I’d LOVE to see how you would cope living just one week as a Palestinian.
Yes. I’d probably get frustrated and blow something up. What’s your point?
For the record, it is not so much Palestinians who are into blowing things up, is it?
It is really tiresome to hear Americans blaming the victims for not patiently enduring what Americans would not tolerate for two days.
Which Americans?
Are you familiar with the history of black Americans?
I’m tired of listening to people justify strategies that don’t work and that are self-defeating in the extreme.
It is so easy to sit on your ass in your comfortable chair in your warm, safe, secure house and go all righteous about what people ought to do under circumstances and conditions you cannot even begin to fathom.
You might say the same thing when I criticize the Israelis. But you don’t.
No, I don’t, nor will I, until and unless I see you criticizing the Israelis unfairly and unreasonably putting the onus on them as you do the Palestinians.
You see, unlike you I do not pretend to be unbiased for the simple reason that this is not an even contest between two parties with equal power and equal culpability. Nor is it a contest between parties with compatible goals and a similar willingness to find a resolution.
Unlike you I cannot treat this as if it were an even conflict between two parties with equal power and therefore equal responsibility. I cannot pretend there is not one party grossly violating and denying the rights of and doing terrible, terrible harm to another. And unlike you I cannot put the onus on the Palestinians for the abuse they suffer at the hands of the Israelis.
It’s one of my odd quirks, I guess that when I see gross abuses of power I don’t put the responsibility on the abused, I put in on the abuser. So, if you accuse me of being biased, you bet I am, and I’m proud of it. I will always be biased when I see power being abused and powerful parties causing suffering and harm to the powerless.
I just hate having to quote that old hypocrite Elie Wiesel, but no one has ever said it as well as he did: “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Neutrality is not the issue.
I’m not neutral. I condemn both sides. I am anti-both. They both refuse to learn from their enemies, which not only assures that neither can prevail, but assures that they both become more and more inhumane to each other.
They both must learn to take responsibility for making each other into what they are.
You ARE neutral. You put the same onus on the oppressed as the oppressor. You assign equal responsibility to both the powerful and the weak. You enable the abuse of power by making the abused party responsible for the behaviour of its powerful abuser.
You fail to recognize the dynamic that is at work here. What we have is not a “cycle of violence” between two equal parties. What we have is a classic pattern of abuse which the abuser is compelled to continue and the abused is powerless to prevent, and you make the abused party responsible for its own abuse.
The only thing that will interrupt this cycle of abuse is the unequivocal intercession of a powerful party on behalf of the abused party. Instead what we see over and over again is intercession on behalf of the abuser. Someone has to stand up for the Palestinians.
And by the way, I just want to point out to you the way you use “the Palestinians”, as if each and every Palestinian were responsible for his or her own suffering. Given that they are not even allowed to freely choose their own government without being horrifically punished for it, that hardly seems reasonable.
you’re making me laugh with your lack of self-awareness and irony. Do you honestly not have a filter that tells you when you are being a hypocrite?
One problem I sense is that you don’t respect power. Gandhi and MLK both respected and understood power. They both knew that power isn’t convinced by inferior power that allows it to feel its strength. They also knew that power can be acquired in various ways, and that only moral power can ever overcome physical power.
The overpowered are obligated to take a higher moral path than the powerful. Twas ever thus.
I am sorry to see that you found it necessary to resort to personal attacks, BooMan. Of course, you do not know me at all, so you have no basis for making comments about my level of self-awareness or anything else personal.
From my point of view it looks pretty hypocritical to sit in your nice comfy chair in your nice comfy, warm, safe, secure house and pontificate about morality to people who have had imposed on them for decades conditions and circumstances that you cannot even imagine.
And you are right. I do not respect power. Never have, even as a tiny tot. And I recognize and despise abuse of power. Always have. Even as a tiny tot. You might see that as a problem. I do not.
Your comparison with Gandhi and MLK is neither apt nor fair.
Most people are not even aware of the amount and kinds of non-violent actions that Palestinians have engaged in, often in conjunction with Israelis, and how they have been quickly and quietly, and often brutally squashed and kept invisible. I don’t recall ever seeing anything in the MSM about any non-violent actions on the part of anyone in Palestine, let alone how many Palestinians – including no small number of children – who have been killed and maimed while taking part. The only reason I know about it is that I have been deeply involved for decades with Palestinian issues, and kept in touch with groups conducting and reporting on these activities.
When you are dealing with an overwhelmingly powerful party who is absolutely determined to get what they want by any means necessary, and is not ready to relinquish or modify its goals, and particularly when that party also is as good at “perception management” as Israel has been, strict adherence to non-violence is not going to get you anywhere but screwed. The Palestinians found that out during the first decades of the occupation, as Israel quietly gobbled up and colonize their land. Their efforts to use diplomacy, legal means, and to appeal to the various international bodies were worse than useless, and kept their plight invisible.
I know, you will say that their own violence is what has gotten the Palestinians screwed. Ironically (yes, BooMan, I actually do recognize and appreciate irony), that is the only thing that has made them visible enough to even be noticed. Chances are had they never used violence, the land of Israel would extend uninterrupted from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan, and the Palestinians would be in the process of fading to a blip in history.
Please do not interpret any of this as advocacy of violence on my part. It isn’t. I would love it if non-violence were a realistic solution. On the other ahnd I cannot condemn equally those who abuse power to violently squash a weaker party, and those who use violence to survive.
you’re wrong and your attitude is wrong.
No, BooMan. We disagree, that much is true, but I am not wrong, not on the facts, and not in my attitude. I will not say you are wrong, just that we differ strongly.
As I have said repeatedly, I will defer to your superior experience, knowledge, and insight when it comes to U.S. politics. I will also listen and consider what you have to say on the Middle East, and you have been able to help me look at things in a different way, but at the end of the day that is my area of up close and personal experience as well as knowledge of both the book and the life kind.
I appreciate very much your thoughts about the use of non-violence versus violence on the part of the Palestinians. Norman Finkelstein, whom I admire enormously on many levels, was saying recently that if one million Palestinians were to gather picks and axes and whatever implements they could carry, march to that abomination of a wall in the West Bank, and start taking it down, that would take them farther than any kind or amount of violence they could imagine. He also acknowledged that every one of those million Palestinians would have to be willing to become unarmed martyrs on that day.
I agree with him, and no doubt you do too. It is also a fact that the wall itself along with all the other physical barriers make it virtually impossible for one million, or even ten thousand Palestininans to travel to and gather in one place at the same time.
And of course, the other question is, since you HAVE suggested in the past that Palestinians should take this kind of suicidal action, would you be willing to do it if you were in their place? I don’t know you, so I don’t know whether you would, but I think there are few people on this earth who are able to put their lives on the line that way. Most people’s impulse to live is too strong. After all, survival is hardwired into us.
Norman understands the enormity of what he is asking from the comfort of his safe American home when he talks about his march to the wall idea. Do you?
i can never figure out which ones are the victims
thats probably their goal
they meaning both of them
You cannot figure out which ones are the victims? Let me help you.
Did the Palestinians come to Israel from another continent, ethnically cleanse 80% of the Israeli population and take their land, houses, businesses, and personal property for their own? And then eighteen years later did they violently take the rest of the Israelis’ land in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, ethnically cleanse much of that land, forcing hundreds of thousands of Israelis at gunpoint to cross a river on foot, declare their land and property abandoned, and virtually immediately start a process of illegal land confiscation and colonization in order to establish facts on the ground that would obviate return of the land? Have the Palestinians systematically established facts on the ground in order to make their annexation of the land inevitable, and create a “matrix of control” designed to gradually paralyze the movement and growth of the Palestinian population?
Are the Israelis living under a brutal, oppressive occupation by the Palestinians in which they are systematically denied the fundamental rights guaranteed to every human being in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and in which the Palestinians utterly ignore the Israelis’ rights and their obligations as the occupying power under Fourth Geneva Convention, despite the fact that the Palestinians are signatories to all three?
Have the Palestinians illegally confiscated Israeli land in order to build colonies into which they move their citizens in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention with the intention of eventually annexing whatever is left of Israeli land to Palestine?
Do the Palestinian occupation authorities force Israelis to take poorly paved side roads and wait for hours at checkpoints so that it can take hours to travel only a few kilometres while Palestinians travel on modern, wide, well-paved Palestinian-only highways built on confiscated Israeli land?
Do Palestinian occupation forces maliciously hold Israeli ambulances at checkpoints for hours until the patients are dead or near death? How many Israeli women in difficult labour have been maliciously forced to wait at checkpoints until they gave birth at the checkpoint, and how many of those women and babies have died as a result? (Check out the Isreali organization Machsom Watch for information about checkpoints).
Are the Palestinians demolishing Israelis’ homes on a regular basis both as collective punishment and as a way to squeeze Israelis into smaller and smaller spaces while they take the land around them?
Are Palestinians holding thousands of Israelis, including hundreds of children, in indefinite detention with no charges against them, and no hope of release? Do Palestinians regularly torture Israelis, including Israeli children whom they have taken into detention often for nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or, in the case of children, having the wrong father or brother, or perhaps being near a group of children accused of throwing stones at Palestinian tanks? (See also B’tselem.)
Have Palestinians ever imprisoned 1.5 million Israelis in the 21st century equivalent of the Warsaw ghetto, bombed the electricity-production and distribution facilities (which effectively deprives the people of water, since electricity is needed to pump water), and starving them by blockading shipments of essentials such as food and fuel as well as medicine and medical supplies so that the malnutrition rate among Israeli children and the death rate from treatable injuries and diseases skyrocket? Are Palestinians intentionally starving hundreds of thousands of Israeli children?
And do the Palestinians subject this Israeli population imprisoned in an area about the size of San Francisco to a relentless bombing campaign from which they have nowhere to escape because they cannot get out? And do their bombing targets include a university, a women’s university dormitory, at least one kindergarten, numerous synagogues, hospitals, the entire civil infrastructure, and thousands of homes and businesses? And do the number killed in these bombings include mostly civil servants – i.e. ordinary government employees? And with these bombings are they currently killing an estimated 10-15% children?
Are Palestinians denying Israelis the right to self determination? Are they arresting tens of elected Israeli officials because they belong to the wrong party? Do they collectively punish the Israelis for not electing the people the Palestinians want them to elect? Are they squeezing Israelis into smaller and smaller increasingly isolated enclaves by building roads, colonies, and erecting a huge barrier built on illegally confiscated Israeli land – a wall that snakes and meanders deep into Israeli territory, dividing town from town, neighborhood from neighborhood, and blocking farmers’ access to their fields?
Do Palestinians forbid Israeli fishermen from fishing waters they have every right to fish in, confining them to waters that yield little or nothing, and regularly harass them, firing on them, and often destroying the boats with which they make their living with no due process, and for no apparent reason other than to make it difficult for them to survive?
Do Palestinians prevent Israeli farmers from transporting their produce until it rots and is unsaleable?
Have Palestinians refused to allow Israeli Fulbright scholarship winners to leave Israel for their education despite the fact that they have valid visas to the U.S., thus stunting their education?
And speaking of education, do Palestinian occupation forces deny Israeli school children the basic human right to an education by regularly blocking their way to their schools? And do they also destroy schools so that Israeli children have no school to go to?>
Violent Palestinian school children kicking an Isaeli occupation when they are blocked from reaching their school.
Palestinian school kids breaking through an Israeli occupation checkpoint to go to their school. Those children should be condemned for forcing that poor occupation soldier to point his rifle at them.
Palestinian school children protest the Israeli bombing of their school in Gaza, September, 2005.
For further information about human rights abuses by Israel, including comparative numbers of civilians and numbers of children killed by each side (remember when you read this that it is Palestinians who target children while Israel does its absolute utmost to avoid killing any civilians) check out the Israeli human rights organization, B’tselem“.
As yourself who has the power here, and that will tell you who is not the victim.
Hard to figure out who is the victim here, isn’t it?
Please condemn these school kids for forcing these poor innocent Israeli soldiers to point their weapons at them. After all, they are guilty of trying to go to school, so what else could they do?
Those violent Palestinian kids! They are taught to hate, you know.
Look what those terrorist Palestinian kids have forced this poor Israeli soldier to become! Why don’t they just leave the poor guy alone, forget about school, and go home?
And now you can see how terroristic Palestinian adults teach hatred and violence to Palestinian kids”.
Now THAT’S better! They decide not to disturb the poor Israeli soldier by making him shoot them, and take their lessons sitting in the street. Good little Palestinians, gooooooooood.
Either that or give up entirely. And no, it’s not just Americans.
yes
isnt that what all our favorite childhood cartoons were about?