The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by badducky:

The people in Abu Ghraib that covered up the truth were acting with good, old-fashioned honor. Honor is all about controlling your public self, not in revealing the true self.

The people who blew the whistle were acting with justice, not with honor.

Honor and justice are not synonyms. Hopefully they work together for the good of mankind. Hopefully.

I haven't thrown away the term at all. I like to acknowledge the center of the term. I prefer to ignore the public image of it.

i am not at all glad saddam is dead. he was an evil, odious man who deserved all the contempt thrust upon him.

however, the greatest problem our troops face on a daily basis is not the specter of baathists or al-quada or terrorists. the greatest problem and danger our brave troops face in this region is the honor culture of revenge.

thus, when a man's brother is killed by one group, he is honor-bound to kill a man in that opposing group which becomes immediately followed by another revenge killing. this group could be American soldiers, or family members of another ethnic group.

that's a culture of honor for you, hoyt.

as a southern man, myself, with an unwanted sense of honor, and a library card, I cringe when I hear my peers say "Honor". Honor was never really a good thing. 'Twas no different in the slave-owning south where two men would shoot each other over very minor things (for more info on "Honor" check out "Honor and Slavery" by Kenneth S Greenberg).

legal systems are supposed to mute the vengeance of an honor code into a system of justice. saddam had little chance of a fair trial in his own nation. his execution was just another retaliatory murder on the precarious edge of lawlessness.

thus, i am very sad to see saddam executed. the culture of vengeance that creates all this destabilizing, and continuous violence in Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, etc. just got stronger.

longer post than initially intended, with my apologies.

Incidentally, while Saddam Hussein hanged, George W Bush hid in Crawford, TX, in his storm shelter.

Yup: tornadoes, massive lightning bolts, hail and flooding rains swept over Tejas last night.

While Saddam Hussein hanged, George W Bush hid from the sky.

even if we had caught him and slowly, brutally tortured him for the rest of his life after he left office, it wouldn't come close to paying back the pain and misery he caused to so many others.

i guess that's why they call it an injustice.

this man may be dead, but he wasn't pulling the trigger. what happened to all of his torturers and assassins? can we channel all the energy of excoriating the memory of Pinochet to bringing his herd of thugs to justice?

I once met a local politician who idolized Newt Gingrich, and thought "liberal" was the same thing as "stupid and lazy".

He had an autographed gavel given to him by Newt Gingrich.

He liked to talk about how poor people need to stop whining and waiting for the government to come help them out.

I asked him if he ever knew anyone personally who was poor, and what they thought about losing government assistance.

He said something about laziness.

He also had inherited his successful local business from his grandfather.

He was able to spend all his time and energy in local politics because of his hard-working staff, who were often left to their own devices while the owner spent hours fuming about liberals like Anne Coulter.

The highest paid member of his staff needed government assistance to cover her and her husband's healthcare. And she had to sit and listen to this guy fuming about how people like her were lazy and stupid.

I knew what I wanted to do with that gavel.

I can only wonder if PublishAmerica's "senior editors", and others of their ilk, appear on Airleaf's mailing list...

Can anyone show me this mystical back room of a bookstore where we have all these lost books?

I've set foot backstage in at least three different bookstores, and I saw only four small-ish crates of damaged goods, bric-a-brac stored to replenish the bric-a-brac for sale at the register, and a few dozen empty boxes.

Ah, Texas.

An accused pornographer versus a man named Head (mind if we all collectively rename him "Richard"?). Kinky running for the big house against someone both Stray and Horny.

I remember driving home from work in the next town over. I drove north past the city dump. Then I took a right at the second strip club (they've built a third, now). Then, I took a left at the second Tongan Missionary Baptist Church, drove past the Coptic Orthodox Church (among others), and turned just before the SaeBit Baptist Church. From my backyard, I looked out at the giant "JESUS" flag flying over a shopping center in the distance.

Texas. Gotta love it.

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