The state of the world

[pecunium]

From Yesterday:

I’m exhausted. The process of my radicalisation proceeds. Tonight, in the mess hall, one of my fellows was going on about the Iran situation. That led to a comment of a cynical nature, about the Gulf of Tonkin, and then my support (when I was told not to pull a Rosie O’Donnell) was to point out the problem of the “unaccounted for yellowcake from Niger” that Rice trotted out as part of our justification for the war.

Things went a tad south after that. I pointed out that his claims that no one had positively disproved that Hussein might have gotten uranium from Niger was asking to prove a negative, and the argument that, “there might be some from somewhere” could always be trotted out.

When he said the Middle East’s problems were that no one was making them get rid of Islamists, he went so far as to draw an analogy, saying that , were the Mormons to start engaging in radical behaviors, the President would jump on them, and tell them to clean up their act. He didn’t like my response, which was that no one was doing that to the Christianists here now.

He didn’t like the numbers I had on attacks on abortion clinics (and the rise of them of late), nor of the Christianists who had the sodium cyanide bombs in their car. When he said he’d not heard of that, I said he was right, because no one is willing to talk about it.

When he tried to tell me that KGO in SF was the equal of Michael Reagan, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Ann Coulter, he got another earful. He did have to admit, when pressed, that he’d not actually heard Tom “x” calling for the killing of Republicans just for being Republicans, but only after he’d compared KGO’s content to the calls of the Limbaughs and Savages encouragement of eliminating “Liberals”.

I pounded on how Beck (who was on the television) and Coulter are being paid to spout this stuff, and that while the Right is fêting them, it’s demanding the Left, repudiate the most fringe of people: The Ward Churchills who wrote things years ago, which had been ignored; as cracked, and now are, “The Voice of the Left.”

Ten years ago, I kept my mouth shut when that sort of thing came up. Five years ago I made half-hearted efforts to respond. Today, I tend to restrain myself, not injecting myself into conversations, but when they do come, I am much more aggressive than I used to be. Tonight my conversation drove him from the field. It was peaceable, his saying we’d have to agree to disagree, but he wasn’t leaving from a position of parity. He’d been bested.

It was draining. A sort of confrontation (the loss of amity in a fellow was a possibility) which I don’t care for, and try to avoid; even online I tend to allow some wiggle room to people. But I’m no longer, so it seems, giving many inches to those who tell me things about how the “left” is evil, and that there is some sort of equivalence to the rhetoric of both sides.

I’m sort of proud of it, the sense of being more willing to stand up for what I believe, of risking something personal to stake a claim. I am also saddened, that it has come to this, the point I can’t just assume that some silly thing is mostly harmless, and let it slide, instead of coming back to my computer with a sense of frustration and adrenaline.

Comments

[doryllis.livejournal.com]

I know that feeling. The kind of emotional tiredness you get from realizing that they don't really understand. I had it once with an officer who told me that there was "no interpretability" to the bible it just said what it said. I started the discussion with the big ten and the "Thou shalt not kill" and he said, "Don't you mean you should not murder?" When I pointed out that the bible I had said kill he seemed to sort of get it for a while. It didn't stop the discussion but it felt like I had been in a spiritual battle where winning meant something. Making him see that there were two sides and his wasn't necessarily right. That meant something but it was hard as hell.

The other big discussion I had with my unit was the whole, "We aren't subject to the Geneva Conventions" discussion and then I pointed out that all of us were carrying a Geneva Convention Identity and classification card. They were befuddled by that. All the while convinced that torture was reasonable. Again, I walked out of the room feeling like all of the energy had been sucked out of me in 15 minutes or less. I am still n ot sure that they got it.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I made some points about the Geneva thing in class the other day.

Pointing out that Genvea specifically addresses the "unlawful combatants" we have tried to create; and that it was the "francs tireur" of WW1, and the partisans of WW2, which led to the entire passages about how to treat irregular forces, and so there ought not be any grey areas.

I didn't quite come out and say that orders to treat anyone as other than an EPW, or detainee, unless they had committed crimes against civil law, was an illegal order, but I came close.

Since I know there are a lot of shades of gray, I won't go quite that far, but I know where I draw my lines, and if I go to the brig; I go to the brig.

But hey, I'm a hippy-dippy pacifist liberal freak who want's the terrorists to win, just ask karl_lembke

We've got a total

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

blind libertarian in my regular Sunday/Tuesday chat who also thinks that our Presnit is the Bestest thing in the universe.

He apparently hadn't received the memo that Roger has stated that the ONLY two things that are off limits in Dawn Patrol are politics and religion, and that Roger is the arbiter, because it's his playground.

And he made me lose my view of this because he conflated judges with prosecutors in the recent firing flap AND has a wide, probably delusional view of what the prosecutors were or were not doing that got them fired.

I rose to the bait for a moment, then Roger reminded us of his rules. Felix kept on even after I said, "i think you should just Stop Now!"

(I think it's okay they're appointees, that's the current standard. BUT they're supposed to act to follow the law and if they pursue a case that turns out to be groundless or worse, persecution, it devalues the whole rule of law. I think a lot of people have lost sight of that.

[lalouve.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear how tiring this is for you - it is very emotionally draining to engage in that kind of thing. But I'm happy that there are still people in America that remind me why I like going there.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Well, of course it's exhausting. Pounding your head on a brick wall is never good for you.

Even if you didn't shake him in his faith, think of the effect you had on others who could hear you. Even if all you've done is sow a few seeds of doubt, the fact that you were able to argue, and refute him on many things, makes liberal and progressive opinions more acceptable to many--the fact that we didn't stand up effectively to bullies was something that weakened us before.

Three cheers and a tiger for fighting the good fight, and may there be something interesting to cook when you get home, and something interesting to drink with it!

[redbird]

Yes, it's exhausting, and unfortunately necessary. Thank you.

(I haven't had to deal with that in person lately, a combination of self-selection [people who think that way are unlikely to be my friends], some luck in family, and lack of random political ranting at work.)

[bifemmefatale.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry you find it so draining, but very, very glad you still speak up. We need you.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks for fighting the good fight.

Details on the sodium cyanide bombs? Nothing turned up in google news.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It wasn't recent. Check out the archives of Orcinus.

It was in Texas, and IIRC, about 2003/4.

TK

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

Been there, done that... trying to reason with zealots of any sort is very exhausting. They are so convinced that theirs is the One True Way™ that it is nearly impossible for any other opinion to leach in.

Keep fighting the good fight. As a martial artist, I know that you are very aware that water can break down even the hardest stone, given enough time.

[karl-lembke.livejournal.com]

I’m exhausted. The process of my radicalisation proceeds. Tonight, in the mess hall, one of my fellows was going on about the Iran situation. That led to a comment of a cynical nature, about the Gulf of Tonkin, and then my support (when I was told not to pull a Rosie O’Donnell) was to point out the problem of the “unaccounted for yellowcake from Niger” that Rice trotted out as part of our justification for the war.

Things went a tad south after that. I pointed out that his claims that no one had positively disproved that Hussein might have gotten uranium from Niger was asking to prove a negative, and the argument that, “there might be some from somewhere” could always be trotted out.

I just popped over to FactCheck.org (http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html) to see what they had to say about yellowcake.

The famous “16 words” in President Bush’s Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address turn out to have a basis in fact after all, according to two recently released investigations in the US and Britain.

Bush said then, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .” Some of his critics called that a lie, but the new evidence shows Bush had reason to say what he did.

1. A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush’s 16 words “well founded.”


2. A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from “a number of intelligence reports,” a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke.


3. Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush’s 16 words a “lie”, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger .


4. Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

How do you know someone from the British 'intelligence community' is lying to you?

The same way you know a member of any other 'intelligence community' is lying to you.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Since I am in the intelligence community...

TK

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I should have restricted myself to commenting on our own 'intelligence community', which has a long and shabby history of pursuing its own agendae at the expense of those democratic values they are supposed to support (up to and including attempts to subvert - possibly by violent means - elected governments).

Now, its the war against terror. These people have been fighting it for forty odd years, since Ian Paisley resurrected the IRA. During that time, our intelligence community has - by probably reliable accounts (see below about how reliable these accounts might be) - sided with and supported 'Loyalist' terrorists, up to and including at least collusion in the Dublin bombings (given that the Loyalists were upo to shooting unarmed Catholics but had no demonstrated skill with explosives, the suspicion is that involvement went beyond collusion). They have at least tacitly accepted drug dealing and gangsterism for some 'higher good'. They have done everything they can to derail the 'peace process'. You can also argue that they have so corrupted the body politic in the UK by their self serving paranoid fantasies that, without the Ulster experience, GB would not be presently engaged in Iraq.

As far as they are concerned, they are about on a par with the Russian and French intelligence communities, and you can assume they are lying because their lips are moving because their acts - so far as we can tell - contradict their words.

Which does no service at all to their fellows who are doing their best to honestly do a necessary and nigh on impossible job.

Of course, this does not address the uses made of intelligence, however gained. There we enter an altogether different hall of mirrors.

[karl-lembke.livejournal.com]

In other words, you don't.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You are trying to change the subject.

I don't give a damn about the "16 words".

What I said was Rice, and I said Rice because she claimed, long after the debunking of the fig-leafed lie the president made in the SOTU, (figleafed because the Brits were, in no small part, using our abstracts of the Italian stuff, to shore up the stuff you are treating as credible. It was a classic case of a single, bad, source, being used to self-confirm, but I digress) that part of how we knew Hussein was a clear and present danger, and lying in his 12,000 page declaration of where the WMD went was that he'd not accounted for the yellowcake we knew he hadn't bought.

Nice try though.

[karl-lembke.livejournal.com]

The "16 words" reflect an underlying belief, which you seem to care about very deeply. You have declared it to be a lie. Indeed, now you declare it a "fig-leafed lie".

FactCheck.org is not as quick as you to jump to that conclusion. Indeed, they reach the conclusion that Bush had every reason to believe what he said in the SOTU.

And no, I'm not saying you want the terrorists to win. All I'm saying is that you want to declare any and all methods that will lead to a U.S. victory off limits.

(By the way, there is no apostrophe in "wants".)

[tenderberry.livejournal.com]

All that remains for evil to succeed is for good men/women to do/say nothing - draining it may be - and friends/colleagues may be lost(no great loss to my way of thinking) but tis necessary - and I for one am grateful you made the effort and so well -

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

There's no way to know how well it went (though I did chime in with the news about the three Republicans who went to Jordan last week, and I got to make a snide comment about how the "liberal media" had failed to tell us about it).

Part of the reason to not lose/alienate people is the risk of polarising them. I don't want to be discounted as a partisan hack, but rather seen as someone who is presenting facts.

If I make people angry with me, then it won't matter how right I might be, I will be discounted, summarily.

TK

From Clarissa - www.ilovethesmoke.com

[(Anonymous)]

It's a hard call to know when to speak up and hope your intent will be absorbed for what it is rather than summarily rejected by the non-thinking. Good on you.

The Left is frustrating me due to their lamentably inept efforts at keeping the right reigned in. When you've go Michael Moore spouting off so radically, the whole cause is then demeaned.

Keeping my fingers crossed for the good sense of the masses.

Re: From Clarissa - www.ilovethesmoke.com

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Michael Moores, the David Geffens, or even the Ward Churchills demean, "The Cause". I certainly don't think they hurt, "the Left" anywhere near as much as the Tony Perkins, the James Dobsons, the Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reillys, Rush Limbaughs, Matt Drudge, Hugh Hewitts, LGFs, Glenn Reynolds, et al, ought to hurt "the Right".

But the Right doesn't see it that way, and pays (most of those people) lots of attention, and some of them lots of money (as well as daily air time).

The weight of unblanced discourse is skewed, but not in a way which I think is to "the Left."

TK