Ok so this shoulda been posted awhile ago, but its pretty funny. I just keep thinking about it and the people that i've told always suggest I tell someone else.
Both stories are related, the first one kinda lets you enter the mind of a christian-conservative/neo-conservative/facist, the second sums up the across the board assumption of all people who support war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ok so I live near Chicago and a week or two before nov. 2 I was riding the train in to school. This elderly lady with a slight east european accent(not sure what nation) walks up to me with an air of haste around her. Turns out she is a political activist and very passionate about what she is doing, probably organizing with her church.
The woman says to me "Here I have to give you this[flyer]. We have to get young people to vote for Alan Keyes and George W. Bush."
"I can't do that" came my response.
"Oh don't say tha-" she said
"-Does that say 'pro-life for George W. bush' on that flyer?" I asked taking notice of the heading.
"Yes, pro life" she replied
"Were you aware that George Bush while Governor of Texas executed more people than any governor in history and he didn't even finish his 2nd term?" I inquired
"That is not true" came the reply.
I was dumbfounded, I thought for a few seconds "how could I prove this" I realized that I could lecture her or tell her to read. Neither of which would likely help her opinion exist outside a vacuum. So I chalked it up to another individual who let faith overwhelm reason, and if a person is not reasonable, you cannot debate them.
"Well there is little I can do if you don't accept facts" I said over my shoulder as i started walking down the steps towards the train platform, as it could be heard on its' approach.
I have also been trying to drop some knowledge on the facists over at collegeconservative.com, after I heard they got hacked I went to check it out. The host put up an open letter bitching about socialism. The first thing I saw when I got to the website is an article talking about how Abu Ghraib isn't that bad and the "liberal" media blew it out of proportion. The article espouses an ideology that liberals would want to give the prisoners a room at a posh hotel(as if that is the only alternative to violating the geneva conventions).
When the debate has an attempt by a conservative to mix the colors and make it a wash(which is always the case, like the guy who responded to my post on college conservative with an ad-hom insulting this site you are currently reading for grammar or something[like i'm an english teacher or give a shit, my speech.writing is real]). The easy way is to not bombard them with all the contradictions, but stick to the central meme that has ample evidence and an aversion to conservative's moral equivocation.
So I posted it up: United States Soldiers Sodomized Children on videotape.
The answers were what i told you: an ad-hom about my site, a general bitch about socialist theory guy, and one person who quoted another's post "If torturing an Iraqi will save a GI"s life then black is positive red is negative".
Then I realized this is not an argument, this does not even apply to my abu ghraib meme. This is a general value judgment that conservatives would rather see an Iraqi die then an American(I'd like to see if we could make their head explode by changing the options to: a young black GI and a white christian Iraqi LOL).
I realized that I didn't want to see either of them die or get tortured. One thing I do know though is based on what tiny information I have: the CIA is the Michael Jordan of torture. Death would be preferable to all who will have to go through the CIA's codified torture methods.
My assumption is that GI's are given orders by those in power. GI's choose to be GI's because most of them have very little other choice(college money or second chance at life or whatever). They are killed as much by Iraqis as the Americans who send them to die.
This is the fundamental divide between a facist and republican-democrat. They see war and they ask "why did 1000 people die?" they're response is that Iraqis are animals that killed them and hate us because of 911.
My belief is that it is because they were sent there by chicken-hawks, then the chicken-hawks are responsible for their death.
the entire meme can be summed up very easily: Collective Punishment.
neo-conservatives/facists believe in collective punishment. They actually believe(this is important, because history books won't say this), they actually believe that Islam blew up the world trade center. They believe that Muslims were responsible so all Muslims should be punished. If you remember the rise of the third reich there was a strong belief in collective punishment for the jew the power to really start enforcing such beliefs from the top-down provided itself after the burning of the reichstag.
I do not believe in collective punishment. I tend to ascribe to a Benthamesque vision of justice and punishment. I think only INDIVIDUALS who are responsible for crimes should be punished.
-Jimothy J. Jones
p.s. Can anyone tell me why i'm sorrounded by so many people that are pro-torture? Do they just have no empathy? or are they androids like a Philip K. Dick novel?
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