Letters to the Editor
Reality-Based Lefty
Published Letters: 115 Editor's Choice: 24
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The English are our cousins
[Read the article: British debate highlights the cravenness and complicity of congressional Democratic "leaders"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]After spending 8 months in Europe (mostly in Austria) and visiting our city cousins in the UK, it's amazing to me how much the culture in the UK is like us. Both of us have our own brand of exceptionalism, messianic sense of destiny, and an underlying bully culture when that exceptionalism is challenged. Both are surveillance states, especially when compared to the rest of Europe. Passing through or to Britain or the U.S. is considered burdensome re: airports. No one wants to fly through our countries because they know that they'll have to endure some endless set of torture related to their luggage.
The thing that really brought out the contrast was when I attended a bullfight in Spain. I was deathly worried about bringing anything (like a camera, for instance) to the bullfight, because I had my two kids, and I thought if I had to return home to return my camera it would be a trauma.
What I found instead when we got there was there was no pretense of searching anything. You could (and were actually expected to) bring a picnic lunch, complete with bottles of port wine and sherry. Within 30 minutes, people were pressing cans of beverage in my kids' hands, and handing me an actual glass with sherry in it. I attribute it to the fact that Continental Europe 1.) has seen the effect of endless violence in their societies propagated through war (which of course they had their part in starting) and have decided from a purely pragmatic position that it doesn't work, and 2.) have a strong sense of public community space and won't let it be jeopardized by a surveillance state. With respect to Spain, this is all the more interesting because Spain HAS been a victim of large-scale terrorist attacks (the Madrid Train Bombing) and has in-country Basque separatists (ETA) that are very real threats in the most innocuous of public venues.
If the UK is more self-correcting than the US with regards to these matters, I think it is probably due to a longer legal tradition of legislating how people will get along, and have embedded in their own history about what happens when they don't follow that tradition (e.g. Cromwell, et. al.) We live in a cloud of perennial exceptionalism and denial, unable even to face up to our own personal genocides.
Such developed sense of identity is not going to descend on us automatically. But one thing for sure-- the right-wing noise machine, and the D's acquiesence to its calling-- is going to give us a national identity. But it's not going to be anything aligned with the principles laid out in the Constitution.
Re: Tim Russert's death -- thanks for writing what you did, Glenn. I have always found that 'politeness' and 'decorum' is typically used to suppress legitimate opinion. Kurt Vonnegut summed it up best with his 'excrement in the ventilator' example in (I believe) 'Hocus Pocus'.
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Careful with what is read
[Read the article: Iran tackles summertime sin]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]FWIW, I have a number of friends that visit Iran regularly. They are not tourists, having family in Iran, and most of them speak Farsi. They say they never encounter any of this stuff, other than being forced to show marriage before a man and woman can check into a hotel.
It's also well-known that the mainstream press is big on hyping any of this stuff-- not that it doesn't happen, but it's pretty rare as to be almost non-existent.
In so many ways, Iran is more like us, especially with its middle-class mores, than they are different than us. I'd be skeptical about any stories of widespread dress-code persecution.
Funny how we NEVER hear any stories about Saudi Arabia, where they really ARE serious about dress code and such.
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@Samlor
[Read the article: Iran tackles summertime sin]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So Samlor, how do you come by your knowledge? By visiting? Or by the American media?
I'm no supporter of the mullahs (I have historic roots in being AGAINST them) but I'm still curious why Americans are so interested in demonizing them. It can only lead to self-justified bombing.
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@Event Horizon
[Read the article: Iran tackles summertime sin]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I live on a college campus, and no one even knows who Ahmadinejad is. For the most part, no one even knows WHERE Iran is.
But it's this kind of stupid demonization that opens the door to bombing of countries, and the very real effect of stripping the human civilian population of its dignity far more than the occasional idiot enforcing a headscarf rule. We've seen that it's basically OK to kill massive members of those civilian populations, especially if they're in countries with brown-skinned people that we don't understand, if we can justify it with holy righteousness as liberating them from oppressors.
Maybe I'm just nuts, but I believe that societies can evolve. History teaches us this. Compare even the worst atrocities of WWII and Hitler (evil and bad in themselves, make no mistake) with what Genghis Khan did. Besides impaling entire human populations on stakes, he managed, if you understand the DNA evidence, to rape a good percentage of the women along his path of destruction. One man.
And when you look at the brighter side, we have managed to evolve societies that are based more on reason, and less of belief. And those societies are the standard-bearers for civilization in the world today. No one even thinks of going back to the good old days of Genghis Khan.
We have a pretty short historic view of societal evolution. It was only in 1920, less than 80 years ago (3 generations) that women got to vote in the US; only 40 years ago for equal rights. Iran would probably have been way past the headscarf phase had we not overthrown their elected government back in 1953.
But we did, and they're not. Let's give their societies a chance to evolve without war. Let's not dredge up another reason to save all these so-called oppressed people from their government by killing them.