Head-in-the-Sand Libelers
Posted: November 23rd, 2006, 5:04 am
I've got a thing or two I want to get off my chest tonight... not sure how far I'll get.... kind of a restless, stormy night up here in the dull, inundated Northwest....
deb's "Head-in-the-Sand" post struck a nerve. After posting back and forth a few times, we concluded that Sam Harris has salient points about religion's dark side, even if he writes in a heavy-handed, inflammatory way that does as much harm as good. Now I wonder if I was too charitable. For one thing, who are these "liberals" purported to have their heads in the sand? Are they the poor saps who happen to disagree with Harris' absolute black-and-white decrees?
What exactly does "liberal" or "conservative" mean in this age of global this and that? We have "liberal" Congresspeople voting to authorize unilateral wars of choice featuring rampant profiteering; many who still yammer on to this day about "staying the course" years after they've been had. And we have "conservative" leaders bleeding trillions of dollars in red ink and selling off the country piece by piece. And what made "liberal" such a bad word to start with? Well, it tried to take away our guns.... Beyond that, it was an unfortunate tendency to consider environment and cause in the course of rendering judgment. Absolutely no place for that sort of mushmouth nonsense in these bellicose, 3-strikes-and-yr-out end times...
But what of multinational corporations run amok? What of defense contractors making billions of dollars of unaccountable profit in no-bid pacts with their friends in the White House, on the blood sacrifice of our sons and daughters in uniform, whether or not the work actually gets done?
Where is the swift judgment on the most mega-crime? Liberal, indeed.
But politics is not my thing. I'll leave that for the technically-skilled, often incurious types. Let's get back to Harris. We (apparently) have people out there who wish to kill us because we happen to live on the wrong chunk of earth or use the wrong holy book, and this is disturbing. Deeply. But the "solutions" offered so far will only dig that hole more deeply, while still unable to penetrate any further than routine tabloid schlock shock. By 1968, Johnson thought 500,000 more troops could win Vietnam, but Vietnam was never the fight to begin with.
The West, in its oil-junky ways, has exploited and fucked with the Middle East for many decades now, in various ways and degrees. The multinationals and military concerns have covered this ground for quite some time.
I know this is a hopelessly "liberal" thing to say, but at some point we need to actually communicate with each other, here and there, hither and yon, or at least make a considerably more honest attempt at it, and maybe even ***gasp*** stop to consider (honestly) the consequences of our own actions, individually and collectively, even pragmatically. Not exactly brain science or rocket surgery. And it's been sorely lacking in the last five post-Sept. 11th years of the Ascendency to the Throne of the Age of Extremism (pick your poison).
deb's "Head-in-the-Sand" post struck a nerve. After posting back and forth a few times, we concluded that Sam Harris has salient points about religion's dark side, even if he writes in a heavy-handed, inflammatory way that does as much harm as good. Now I wonder if I was too charitable. For one thing, who are these "liberals" purported to have their heads in the sand? Are they the poor saps who happen to disagree with Harris' absolute black-and-white decrees?
What exactly does "liberal" or "conservative" mean in this age of global this and that? We have "liberal" Congresspeople voting to authorize unilateral wars of choice featuring rampant profiteering; many who still yammer on to this day about "staying the course" years after they've been had. And we have "conservative" leaders bleeding trillions of dollars in red ink and selling off the country piece by piece. And what made "liberal" such a bad word to start with? Well, it tried to take away our guns.... Beyond that, it was an unfortunate tendency to consider environment and cause in the course of rendering judgment. Absolutely no place for that sort of mushmouth nonsense in these bellicose, 3-strikes-and-yr-out end times...
But what of multinational corporations run amok? What of defense contractors making billions of dollars of unaccountable profit in no-bid pacts with their friends in the White House, on the blood sacrifice of our sons and daughters in uniform, whether or not the work actually gets done?
Where is the swift judgment on the most mega-crime? Liberal, indeed.
But politics is not my thing. I'll leave that for the technically-skilled, often incurious types. Let's get back to Harris. We (apparently) have people out there who wish to kill us because we happen to live on the wrong chunk of earth or use the wrong holy book, and this is disturbing. Deeply. But the "solutions" offered so far will only dig that hole more deeply, while still unable to penetrate any further than routine tabloid schlock shock. By 1968, Johnson thought 500,000 more troops could win Vietnam, but Vietnam was never the fight to begin with.
The West, in its oil-junky ways, has exploited and fucked with the Middle East for many decades now, in various ways and degrees. The multinationals and military concerns have covered this ground for quite some time.
I know this is a hopelessly "liberal" thing to say, but at some point we need to actually communicate with each other, here and there, hither and yon, or at least make a considerably more honest attempt at it, and maybe even ***gasp*** stop to consider (honestly) the consequences of our own actions, individually and collectively, even pragmatically. Not exactly brain science or rocket surgery. And it's been sorely lacking in the last five post-Sept. 11th years of the Ascendency to the Throne of the Age of Extremism (pick your poison).