blatham wrote:As purveyor #1, let me assure you that I've reflected on these matters both often and in depth. That reflection has left me morally disgusted with a group of people here who, along with others in the broad community, continue to forward an militarist ethos and ideology which is not merely authoritarian but which forwards sweeping hatreds and which demonstrates a near austistic disconnection from awareness of human suffering. I've stopped caring that so many of you have no apparent means of or apparent interest in rising above your delusional and dangerous nationalist mythologies or partisan loyalties or perverted uses of christianity. If you guys were only phucking up yourselves, I'd have some remaining sympathy but the world is a far worse place than it was six years ago and each of you bears a hell of a lot more responsibility for that than I have any expectation that you'll glimpse.
I perceive about as much reason for holding to some drawing-room notions of manners as I would when the guys sitting around me in the pub decided to go out and form a lynch mob.
My disgust is with the group of A2K'ers -- the huge lot of them -- who continue to deny the very real global threat Islamic terrorism poses, and who would prefer to allow the threat to grow until it is incontrollable before they felt any obligation or compulsion to do anything about it -- if they ever would. They are the appeasers, the Neville Chamberlains, who believe negotiations are the only acceptable course of action to combat this growing threat. They are blinded to the dangers of allowing Iran to have nuclear weapons, and blinded by their visceral hatred of George Bush, whom they believe to be the greatest threat to the world since Adolph Hitler. I often think anti-war types are pleased when terrorists create chaos in Iraq so they can feel they were right, and the supporters of the invasion were wrong. Peacenik-leftists have a general attitude of anger about this subject, and are often difficult to reason with. Their rhetoric is quite noble, but by looking constantly at the stars they ignore what is real and happening around them, caring primarily for the glory of their ideals.
Bernie has announced time and again that he does not believe I am capable of "changing my mind regardless of data input." What that really means is he is frustrated that no matter what he has said, I haven't yet adopted his extreme left-wing view of the world and of the Iraq conflict. He fails to comprehend -- it appears -- that he has NEVER demonstrated any flexibility of thought on the subject. Regardless of the many arguments I have made regarding the justification of the Iraq invasion, he has never shown a glimmer of coming around to understanding the error of his current thinking on the matter. And despite the obvious fact that we are there now and the reasonable and wise thing to do is continue on until a modicum of peace and stability is attained there, these people think we should just tuck tail and flee, leaving the Iraqi people to clean up the mess. This brand of liberalism disgusts me.
So if I had the shallow degree of character displayed of late by Bernie, I would just go ballistic at the constant and inane blatherings of these folks who have blinders on to any view other than their own, yet who claim moral superiority in deed and thought, and accuse others of inflexible thinking. If my thinking were skewed in such a manner, I might think the best course of action to take would be to shun intellectual interaction with these wrong-thinking leftists. And, of course, I could be counted on to abandon civility in my discourse, rationalizing that I was a white knight bearing the banner of my cause by treating these people with contempt and discourtesy. Thankfully, I have not yet reached that low point.
