Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Glad to see you are back in form. Never give up!

"There are very very bad people who want to kill us, and we should kill as many of them as we can."

Spoken like a true republican. You don't realize it Dave, and you will probably never realize it, but your words show that you have internalized THEIR rhetoric, THEIR logic, THEIR point of view, so much so that you may as well be speaking for THEIR side. Don't think for one fucking minute that all who want to do us harm or want to kill us are bad people. And besides, should they be killed, as you state, only for wanting to kill us? Seems a bit harsh. We've killed over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men women and children, I, for one, think they have a damn good reason to be angry at us, a reason now for even wanting to kill us. We do not own the moral high ground here. In fact, we have done something that is so heinous that we are sure to earn an promienet spot in the rogue's gallery of despotic, murderous, adle-headed regimes that inflict the world with plenty of death and suffering. And, as usual, it is done under the guise of offering liberty and freedom, blah, blah, blah. The same thing the Japanese told the Chinese while Nanking was being raped and pillaged. It never changes. I don't know if you have kids, but I do. If soldiers from some foreign country landed on our shores and killed one of them, I wouldn't be too happy. Like any other human on the planet, I would want to kill who ever did them harm. That would be the REASONABLE position. It wouldn't make me a terrorist.

While we're on the subject of terrorists, the reason there hasn't been another 9/11 since 9/11 is not because Bush has done such a terrific job in "fighting the war on terror". It is because the Arab world is mostly poor and largely without sufficient resources to mount a very effective attack. Suicide is always a last resort. It always bespeaks of complete desperation and lack of alternative strategies. But what else do they have? The kamikazes during WWII were terrifying, but it basically signaled the end of Japan's military might.

We've endured literally decades of propaganda and brainwashing about the brown-skinned men who usually pass for dictators. Call it the CIA monster factory system. Khadaffi was supposed to be manically crazy. Yet now he is a reasonable and peaceful man. Kim Jung Il? Crazy as a fruit bat. Noriega was found to have porn magazines (surely a sign of moral turpitude). Sadaam had palaces while his people starved. The hypocrisy is thick enough to cut with a knife. We always forget that we put these people in power. Yet we are never complicit. We never stop to ask ourselves how they acheived their positions under the burden of such insanity.

What peole don't get, what is in fact beyond general comprehension, is that a regime must be stable to build a truely menacing weapon. There must be a well oiled command and control mechanism in place to build a sophisticated weapon. Such societies are usually very controlled. Their WMD's don't go off unless the order comes from the top. But Sadaam, Khadaffi, Jung Il, et al are, contrary to belief, not mad men. They may be bad people, but main interest is self preservation. That is why Sadaam did not use chemical weapons during Gulf War I. That is why North Korea will always threaten to invade South Korea but will never actually do so. Of course the threat of an invasion from the North eventually becomes an object of poliical expediency for someone, and then both sides perpetuate the myth of the threat. We like to ignore their misdeeds while they're serving our interests. The term "terrorist", is just another word for the bogey man. We don't need disclaimers explaining that, yes, there really are terrorists, and for that select group, death is deserving. We are the terrorists, my friend. It is we who everyone should be terrified of. It's time for critical thinkers like yourself to start questioning what you believe and what is going on.

The only reason why I'm writing this, Dave, is because I give you credit for being intelligent. I cannot fathom how or why someone like yourself utters such careless words--words, moreover that demonstrate an acceptance of how the oppressors frame their arguments. We will never get anywhere as long as people such as yourself parrot their viewpoint, their logic, their rhetoric. WE must be different. We must check our thinking. Tell me to go fuck off, Dave. I don't care. The time for reasonable exhortation is over. It is now time to resist. Vive la Resistance!

I agree with the above poster that you have internalized their rhetoric, and that has been precisely their intent all along. Drop it, and drop it fast. We don't need their rhetoric any longer. No more pandering to the right for any reason. What the left needs now is some hard cold medicine and here it is (briefly).

WE are the moral high ground. By and large uur morality is based on a mother/nurturing version of Christian values, rather than a father/diciplinarian version of Christian values, which the right embraces enthusiastically.

We need to beat them at their own game and seize the moral high ground.

I was listening to a guy on NPR today, and he said that the stastics say there are far more mother-nurture christians than father-strict Christians.

Finally we need to accept the fact that the Democratic party is bankrupt. It no longer serves the left if the best it can deliver us are people like Gore, Kerry and Lieberman.

What we really need is new party, and now is the time to do it. With groups like Moveon.org and lots of grass-roots activitism a New Left party can emerge in time to win the next election, assuming of course that we even have an election in 2008; and with VERIFIYABLE voting reciepts and audit trails for every last machine.

Don't call them Republics--call them 'publicans.

In the early 20th century, there were anarchists. Or maybe there weren't, but at least there was the multi-purpose image of an anarchist. GK Chesterton wrote about him The Man Who Was Thursday. Hergé drew him in L'Oreille Cassée: a black cape, held up high with the elbow to cover the lower part of the face, while the other arm held a large black bulb from which a burning wick emerged. He was the anarchist and his goal was to bring anarchy. The establishment protected us against him.

However, the establishement used the term 'anarchist' to paint its opponents black, which soon led to a dilution of the term (and to mockery by above mentioned authors).

The modern variant is 'terrorist'. This term also has been abused for a while now, from a long time before 9/11.

(Oh, and in the 18th century there was 'witch'.)

Let's assume that there are indeed people out there with every right and desire and perhaps even means to kill you. Their moral right does not imply you should not defend yourself. However, by using the term 'terrorist' indiscriminately, you have robbed it of every meaning. Not just that, it has allowed your government to look for the bogeys under all the wrong rocks.

I have not used the word "terrorist" indiscriminately, Branko. I have used it quite discriminately. There are genuine terrorists who want to explode nuclear bombs in our cities. I want to kill them before they can do so. That hardly means that I support the war in Iraq. And that I am not a pacifist does not mean that I support all wars.

Any latest news on the following story?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1104/p09s01-codc.html

David, your original post made me laugh...but in all honesty, it was really only a half-a-second, half-hearted, sulking chuckle :(

(one of those chuckles that is just as likely to break for pants pissing laughter as it is for choking tears--but in the end does nothing except depress...resolution, the real kind, will come soon enough, though)

Hey, Liberal Dipshits....you guys got your ass handed to you. Thank God for MoveOn...they really mobilized the Republican base. You assholes need to get a life. Keep backing losers like "Purple Heart" Kerry and you will never win.

Dave, I know you are simply going to ignore this post, but I am going to write it any way. Why should we kill those who merely want to kill us? I think this is a stange and harsh position, and ultimately futile. Is it ok to kill others who merely have the desire to kill us? If you were intent on killing those who had the desire to kill us, how would you go about rounding them up? Certainly the prospect of such a penalty might make it difficult to force a confession.

Considering how bad the 9/11 intelligence was bungled, I don't think we are being kept safe from the bogeyman terrorists because of the excellent work of our intelligence agencies. So why hasn't a nuke gone off? If such a tragedy were possible, surely you must understand that killing people is not likely to prevent it. I know that this is probably very, very counterintuitive at this moment, but killing really is not the answer. Instead, we should think about doing things that will make them not want to kill us in the first place. Or would you countenance this as an option? We're supposed to believe that the Arab is totally beyond reason, is a crazy religious fanatic usually with ill intent of some kind. Very similar, in fact to other familiar stereotypes and charicatures.

An assortment of Arab Eric Harris and Dylan Klebolds downed four planes using only boxcutters over three years ago. Over three thousand people died. Profoundly tragic, undoutedly. Over 42,000 people die annually as a result of automobile accidents, and we just accept it as if nothing could possilble be done. I guess if killing people were somehow a possible solution to the automobile fatality problem, maybe we would all be more mobilized against this terrible threat that most of us face everyday.

I could not agree more with you David!
Here is another term we need to reclaim - mainstream. I heard a reporter yesterday saying something along the lines of "democrats will have to ask themselves how they are no longer mainstream"...I must be missing something!

David,

Kudos to you on your original piece--especially the "moral issue". I was fuming about this all day yesterday hearing the commentators talk about how people with "moral concerns" had supported Bush. I'm scared to death for my children if he should succeed in putting 2 or 3 funamentalists on the Court in his next term.

Why is it that the party that claims to want less government intrusion into our lives is so intent on using every last power of the government to dictate what we can and can't do? No wonder some factions of Muslims are so desperate to bring us down (not that I approve of their methods, but I can sometimes see their point).

People can rant all they want about how horrible Bush is (and especially the true "axis of evil"--Cheney, Ashcroft, and Rumsfeld). But the real failure in my mind is that the Democratic party could not bring themselves to nominate a more centrist candidate with clearer, well-defined (and need I say simpler to articulate) positions. Bush is dangerous, but too many people saw Kerry as "not better enough". If the Democratic machine can't be fixed, they'll never be able to win.

Heaven forbid they put Hillary forward in 2008.

Daniel, I generally don't respond to comments because I already had my say on my post, and comments are for others to talk. So, please don't take my lack of response to mean that I haven't read and thought about what you've written.

But, puhlease, Daniel! Do you honestly believe that ALL I advocate is killing terrorists? That I only favor military options? That I take killing lightly? I don't how to put this any more plainly to you: I am not a pacifist but that doesn't mean that I favor only the use of violence. That's just weird.

And please show me a single phrase I've ever written that subscribes to the hateful anti-Arab stereotypes you say I am promoting. You are bringing that to the table, not me.

You are arguing against a strawperson. Worse, you assume that because I disagree with you about the justification of violence against terrorists, it must be because I am an anti-Arab bigot. That's a pretty big leap, Daniel, and one you have no justification or evidence for making. Frankly, I think you need be careful to separate what someone says from what you assume that person must be thinking. It's a basic listening skill, especially useful before you call someone a racist.

Dave, with all due respect, I think it is you who is making the leap here. I haven't accused you of bigotry or racism or even implied that you are guilty of such things. Primarily I take issue whith the following statement: "There are very very bad people who want to kill us, and we should kill as many of them as we can." I ask you what makes these people bad? How would you go about identifying them so as to kill them? In all fairness, by your own logic, does the fact you have a clearly stated desire to kill them make you a legitimate target in their eyes if they slap the unavoidably subjective label--"bad person"--on you? Half the Arab world probably doesn't like us very much. They have a right not to like us very much. We're killing them. We are bombing them and destroying all that they hold sacred. We are deeply, deeply humiliating them. Killing more of them because they want to kill us because we're killing them seems a bit unfair.

You write: "Worse, you assume that because I disagree with you about the justification of violence against terrorists, it must be because I am an anti-Arab bigot." No, I really don't believe that, Dave. I actually believe that you're probably, by any reasonable standard, decent and tolerant. But far from being comforted by this, I am disturbed by it. A desire merely to want to do harm, in most places, in most free societies, is not a capital offense. I'm certainly not a legal expert, but I don't even think its a misdemeanor. In order for a reasonable person like yourself to state publicly that he wants some killed, something must have happened. I do suspect that you have been influenced by what George Lakoff would term the terrorist frame. You know, the one we've been bomrded with 800 times a day since 9/11. There is certainly an unstated racial element to this frame, but its chocked full of enough variegated symbolic freight to appeal to a vast swath of people on many levels. That's why it has been so successful. That's why you don't necessarily have to be a racist or a bigot to subscribe to it in some way. I personally think the terrorist threat is way, way, overblown. People are kept in a perpetual, and high state of fear. For those who want to keep this going, it doesn't hurt that at its foundation we are talking about people who speak a differnt language, bow to a differnet God, wear differnt closthes, etc. I am not in a position to judge whether any of this makes one iota of differnce to you. But I know that it does for many people, and it is part of what fuels the fear of the other.

Daniel, please read not just the single line that sets you off but the next paragraph in which I carefully define what a terrorist is because -- as my post tries to make clear -- I too believe that the terrorist threat is overblown. And could you please then tell me why you included the line: "We're supposed to believe that the Arab is totally beyond reason, is a crazy religious fanatic usually with ill intent of some kind. Very similar, in fact to other familiar stereotypes and charicatures." Why are you lecturing me about this unless you think it's something I don't already know and believe?

Thanks.

Bravo on this Dave. Good rejoinder to Frank Luntz and Lakoff. Other ideas for loaded language: pro-torture party, pro-killing party.

On the other hand, I'm really bothered at the overuse of the "hunt down and kill the terrorist" trope. Voters are not Pavlovian dogs.

Caveat: If you're just replacing one kind of rhetoric with new emotional buzzwords, then the Democrats are repeating Republican mistakes. If we say "intolerant moms" we are just using cliches that have no meaning (and in fact, when Bush accused Kerry of being a liberal, Kerry's remark to the effect that labels are meaningless in this day and age was right-on.

The problem, I see it, is not the inability for democrats to push the hot-button items, but the ignorance of the ordinary voter.

Why did I express the following sentiment:"We're supposed to believe that the Arab is totally beyond reason, is a crazy religious fanatic usually with ill intent of some kind. Very similar, in fact to other familiar stereotypes and charicatures."? Because, like it or not, that is what the term terrorist basically connotes, however tangentially, whether you mean for it to or not. I personally don't think it is a useful term anymore even for describing Osama bin Laden. Osama's name is invoked so that people never look past the charged rhetoric and attempt to understand what legitimacy their might be to Arab grievance. You are, of course, free to do whatever you want, but given that your definition of terrorist describes us just as much as it describes Osama, I would be careful in using the term.

As I've already posted in a comment to another, later blog entry of yours, I agree with most of what you say. I have been a bit of jerk in jumping down your throat now and then because I'm a profoundly emotionally excitable person. So I do apologize. At the same time, I am glad that one has the liberty to take issue with you from time to time. Since I believe that we're totally on the same page, as it were, on most issues, I will not devote anymore energy to being critical of you or your writings, but will instead direct the focus of my ideological differnces elsewhere.

Daniel, please continue to express your differences here, if you'd like.

You may be right that the term "terrorist" now is too debased to be useful. I'm trying to use it carefully, but even that may be a mistake if people assume that I mean by it some awful stereotype of Arabs. But, in the context of this blog at least, I'll probably use it - carefully - where I think it applies...about which you and I may disagree, albeit probably less than it might seem.

May I add some terms I am reclaiming?

COMPASSION: The symantics of Compassionate Conservatism must be demystified and destroyed. I had a soccer-mom explain to me on the phone last week that she was voting for Bush because she considers herself a Compassionate Conservative--a term she thought she had just invented until I let her know that Bush and Pubes before him have been using the term -- along with many other phrases that make the simple minded feel important -- for years.

Publicans, please understand that I don't want your compassion; I don't need your compassion. To show me such, in your eyes, gives you power over me. So save it. Keep your pitty, your tolerance, and your motherfucking compassion. I'll do just fine without it.

HE CAN RUN BUT HE CAN'T HIDE: It was very easy for "W." toss this phrase about in the final four weeks of the election. He got a hard on simply from being able to remember it. He used it and saw that it jazzed up his base of elitests and idiots quite nicely on the final leg of the campaign trail. Well, I am claiming it now. Mr. Bush, you can run but you can't hide. Unlike your friend Bin Laden, who can, it seems, can both run AND hide, thanks to you.

PRAYER: I talked with a woman checking me out at Walgreens this morning. I see her there frequently--she works lots of hours. When she asked how I was doing, I said tired and pissed about the election. She said, "You're tellin me." And we began talking. What do we do now. Can you believe it. There were no color lines between us. We talked about the war and her boys. And when I took my bag she reminded me--what we do now is pray. THAT'S RIGHT, WE PRAY TOO. Publicans, you do not have a monopoly on prayer or God. You do not have a monopoly on Christ. You do not have a monopoly on salvation or forgiveness.

Those are the three I'd like to add right now.

Thank you.

Except for never wanting to hear the ol' cowboy cliche of "can run but can't hide," I'm with you, Jeneane. Good catches. Thanks.

"You may be right that the term "terrorist" now is too debased to be useful."

And that is what I was trying to say. My apologies if that came across incorrectly.

"Homeland. Can we please stop calling our country that? It's a term that only exists within the war context. And I'm sick of its unsubtle resonance with the Fatherland."

I've been saying this for the past 3 years now.

From the moment "homeland" started to be bandied about, I have been continually reminded of that old Star Trek episode, "Patterns of Force", and their references to "the fatherland". haha.
I just keep picturing that toughy blonde woman, speaking it so forcefully. hahaha!!

Note: I started watching Star Trek before I was even old enough to have learned about WWII, despite having an uncle & father who served in the war - my uncle at Normandy, my father in the Pacific. So that episode was probably my first exposure to the "lingo" aspect in relation to Nazism & war. My father & uncle didn't think it was appropriate to discuss the political or battle aspects of the war with a 5 year old. I was merely told Hitler was bad, the Japanese attacked Hawaii, there were terrible typhoons in the south pacific, and polonesian islands with whorehouses that didn't have any walls. (Yes, I was also allowed to watch Monty Python with my father at age 5.)