Darren probably doesn't want me coming to his defense, given that we slagged each other off recently in email and on our respective blogs. But my disagreements are with his personality, not necessarily with his opinions. And in this case (and a great many others), my opinion is that his expressed opinion is right on.
The only change I would make to his original comment is one acknowledging that the process is in its early stages, but that it nonetheless resembles one we've seen before. 'so THIS is what it's like to be a good German in 1935.' Or, more geekily, not so much 'so THIS is what it's like to be one of the civilian aides on the Death Star' as "so this is what it's like to be an ordinary citizen of the Galactic Republic during the Clone Wars". He writes:
We have concentration camps and unlawful, illegal imprisonment for thousands if not millions based only on their nation of origin. We invade whoever the hell we want to invade, kill whoever we want to kill, lock up whoever we want to lock up. We deny basic health care not only to our citizens by the millions but to our own soldiery by denying the deadly side effects of our weaponry. Our government is steadily and very calculatedly stripping away a little more of our basic freedoms every day, and using that steady decrease of civil liberties not to keep us safe, but to make certain of the current junta's continuing power base. The current junta is using its power not to protect the citizenry or make our lives better, but to keep the vast majority of us in grinding, miserable poverty-stricken wage slavery, to support the idle decadence of a tiny sub-fraction of the overall population.
And I notice that neither of the respondents addressed his characterization of the situation in those terms. If they had explained to him how he's wrong, I might have more sympathy for their objection to his Godwin violation. As it is, the way I see it, when you're in a crowded theatre and find it's filled with smoke, you're quite justified in shouting "Fire!" and anyone who doesn't listen will, as Rosencrantz says, burn to death in their shoes.
And I believe if we learn from the past
We'd say haven't we been here before
Oh, and I believe if we open our hearts
We'd find keys to unlock every door
— Tommy Shaw, "Haven't We Been Here Before?" (Styx, Kilroy Was Here
PDM skrev:
Hunter Thompson said it best: there is no paranoia----only people who are uninformed!
I thought it was William S. Burroughs who said "A paranoid is someone who knows a little bit of what's going on."
Our host, catching me chewing on my own ankle, says, vis-a-vis his post:
I would suggest you start by re-reading it.
...Boy, is my face red. I read it as "There's just as much as Ohio and Indiana".
If you need me, I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I don't exist.
Our host skrev:
There certainly is a lot of Pennsylvania. There92s just as much Ohio and Indiana, but it has much less reason for being.
As a Pennsylvania resident, I probably ought to resent the hell out of that. But I've only been a Pennsylvania resident since the end of last September, so I'm just wondering if Patrick could clarify what he means by that.
Tom T. skrev:
Those of us who are offended by this thinking find it distasteful that Lind and others opposed to current American foreign policy make such a point of tracing it back to the Jews.
Yeah, well, I'm offended by your (feigned) assumption that tracing some ideas back to their originators, who just happen to be Jews, is tracing them back to "the Jews" as a fungible group. (Curiously, no conservative I can recall reading had any problem blaming "the liberals" as a fungible group for the actions of anyone occupying any point on the political spectrum between Bill Clinton and David McReynolds.)
Of course, this is a waste of my and the world's time, since our host pegged you exactly in saying that you are not "a person open to reason instead [but rather] a set of polemical techniques". In that context, you're sorry to have wasted my time.
Xopher skrev, re Ann the Man:
I'd say she's evil. I have a tendency to think that about people who say that America has to "physically intimidate" people like me, "so they know that they can be killed too."
Because otherwise, "they" (all of them, without exception) "will turn out to be outright traitors."
And who say that their "only regret about Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building." The fact that those words are not thrown in (what we must, for lack of a better word, call) her face every time she opens her mouth is prima facie proof, to anyone with a functioning cerebrum, that whatever liberal media we may have in this country can be most charitably described as comatose.
Doug skrev:
the Oscars [...] and Hollywood in general are, in my mind, the exclusive domain of liberals and left wingers. [T]he fact that Hollywood is PR conscious enough to bestow some token recognition(s) to an infrequent non-leftist, does not in an way change its essential character.
In the words of a wise old man: "Specifics, please. Generalities make my teeth itch."
substitute Nazi for Communist at every point.
Or just reverse their positions, like some people were actually in favor of (that is, of our allying with the housepainter against Unca Joe when the alliance between the two broke down).
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2003 | 9 |
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