Mosque to be Built Near Ground Zero

Your attempts to demonize the US for acts that several countries have done over the years are a good example of this formula.

Your attempts to demonize the US ...

The "Good German" syndrome

People still blame the Germans for allowing Hitler to do the evil that he did, and in particular for pretending not to see the Holocaust as it occurred around them.

Germans at the time thought:

* I didn't vote for him

* most people don't support him

* I engaged in some forms of protest

* although the forms of protest I engaged in were mocked and derided by the government and by those in the media, I did everything I could do and I sure felt good about myself as I protested

* if it weren't for the fact that the government would arrest and possibly kill me, I would have done more

* I didn't see anything directly, so I wasn't sure of how bad it actually was

* people in positions of high authority convinced me that whatever they were doing was for the best

* I live in a civilized, democratic country, certainly the most civilized and democratic that has ever been, and my country wouldn't do evil things

* these people were going to destroy our country, so what we had to do was just self-defense

* why do you blame us when we're the victims?

* there are many people in my country who support our government with a radical fervor, many of them my neighbors and relatives, and I want to get along with them or I fear their reaction should I dare to express dissent

* anyone who expresses the least amount of dissent faces the general hatred of the public

* anyone who expresses the least amount of dissent may lose his or her job or livelihood

* anything I might have done wouldn't have made any difference

* the people who are doing the work of the government are 'our troops', and must be supported in whatever they have to do on our behalf

* the alleged victims of my government aren't fully human, and their lives aren't worth even the slightest inconvenience or risk to our lives

* the alleged victims of my government have a false and evil religion, and my true religion gives me the right to eliminate them

* after the sufferings we've faced, no one can dare tell us what to do

* what my country is doing is actually for the improvement of the lives of what busybodies describe as its 'victims'

* my country right or wrong (no, sorry, that is someone else - the Germans weren't that stupid)

* our leaders are particularly blessed and wise, with a direct line to God, and would never do the wrong thing.


Can Americans today see the similarities between Hitler's Germany and Bush's America? Of course, the Germans said that they couldn't have known the evil that the Third Reich was capable of.

It is perhaps unfair to say that every American who isn't doing everything possible now to stop the insanity is personally morally responsible for the death of every Iraqi.

However, there is an immoral crime of the highest order being committed in America, and somebody is morally responsible. History teaches us lessons if we care to learn them.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Good_German_Syndrome.html

AUGUST 30, 2010, 9:00 PM
We’ve Seen This Movie Before

By STANLEY FISH
Stanley Fish on education, law and society.

The formula is simple and foolproof (although those who deploy it so facilely seem to think we are all fools): If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.

The only thing more breathtaking than the effrontery of the move is the ease with which so many fall in with it. I guess it’s because both those who perform it and those who eagerly consume it save themselves the trouble of serious thought.

Fish should have had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, as that piece amounted to nothing more than an admission that he does not understand what is going on, why people are upset.

Your attempts to demonize the US for acts that several countries have done over the years ...

from the chapter

Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy

from the book

Dirty Truths

by Michael Parenti

publisher - City Lights Books
261 Columbus Avenue
Sand Francisco, CA 94133


Why has the United States government supported counterinsurgency in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and many other places around the world, at such a loss of human life to the populations of those nations? Why did it invade tiny Grenada and then Panama? Why did it support mercenary wars against progressive governments in Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, East Timor, Western Sahara, South Yemen, and elsewhere? Is it because our leaders want to save democracy? Are they concerned about the well-being of these defenseless peoples? Is our national security threatened? I shall try to show that the arguments given to justify U.S. policies are false ones. But this does not mean the policies themselves are senseless. American intervention may seem "wrongheaded" but, in fact, it is fairly consistent and horribly successful.

The history of the United States has been one of territorial and economic expansionism, with the benefits going mostly to the U.S. business class in the form of growing investments and markets, access to rich natural resources and cheap labor, and the accumulation of enormous profits. The American people have had to pay the costs of empire, supporting a huge military establishment with their taxes, while suffering the loss of jobs, the neglect of domestic services, and the loss of tens of thousands of American lives in overseas military ventures.

The greatest costs, of course, have been borne by the peoples of the Third World who have endured poverty, pillage, disease, dispossession, exploitation, illiteracy, and the widespread destruction of their lands, cultures, and lives.

*****

Support the Good Guys?

If revolutions arise from the sincere aspirations of the populace, then it is time the United States identify itself with these aspirations, so liberal critics keep urging. They ask: "Why do we always find ourselves on the wrong side in the Third World? Why are we always on the side of the oppressor?" Too bad the question is treated as a rhetorical one, for it is deserving of a response. The answer is that right-wing oppressors, however heinous they be, do not tamper with, and give full support to, private investment and profit, while the leftists pose a challenge to that system.

*****

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and other Eastern European communist governments, U.S. Ieaders now have a freer hand in their interventions. A number of left reformist governments that had relied on the Soviets for economic assistance and political protection against U.S. interference now have nowhere to turn. The willingness of U.S. Ieaders to tolerate economic deviations does not grow with their sense of their growing power. Quite the contrary. Now even the palest economic nationalism, as displayed in Iraq by Saddam Hussein over oil prices, invites the destructive might of the U.S. military. The goal now, as always, is to obliterate every trace of an alternative system, to make it clear that there is no road to take except that of the free market, in a world in which the many at home and abroad will work still harder for less so that the favored few will accumulate more and more wealth.

That is the vision of the future to which most U.S. Ieaders are implicitly dedicated. It is a vision taken from the past and never forgotten by them, a matter of putting the masses of people at home and abroad back in their place, divested of any aspirations for a better world because they are struggling too hard to survive in this one.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Parenti/hypocrisy_Parenti.html

Fish should have had the good sense to keep his mouth shut,
as that piece amounted to nothing more than an admission that
he does not understand what is going on, why people are upset.

He - and we - know exactly why people are upset.
The difference is that we are willing to say out loud
why you and others are upset, and you are forced to use code-words to describe it.

Cycloptichorn

I 've not found codes to be necessary.

I 've not found codes to be necessary.

No, you have not. You're pretty much the only one here
who is willing to admit their bigotry out loud, proud of it.

Were you ever a member of the KKK?

You sound an awful lot like they do.

I see; u r familiar with them, n expert on how thay sound.

I 've not found codes to be necessary.

In this case they find it necessary to believe that the objection to their point of view is not the real objection, presumably because they don't have a convincing argument to counter the claimed objection.

I see; u r familiar with them, n expert on how thay sound.

Yes, I have spent a great deal of time studying them and their organization, as part of an anti-discrimination project
I worked on in College; and yes, you sound an awful lot like they do.

Are you sure you aren't a member?

Not an affiliate in some way? If not,
you may want to look into it, because I hear they are recruiting
people just like you, David, who have hate and fear in their hearts. You'd fit right in.

Cycloptichorn

I 've abandoned it. I have no fear.

If the Moslems prevail in giving us the finger
with this World Trade Center mosque, I 'll have a low opinion of it.
I'll understand it to be an expression of the Moslems' enmity and contempt,
but I 'll not respond with emotion; wasteful n futile.