Letters to the Editor
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Che
Pandora's Box isn't the half of it.
I believe our right-wing friends have a term of art for this. They call it the "Law of Unintended Consequences". Truly, the concept is a pillar of right-wing thought.
Congress, for example, should just not pass any legislation. Just don't do it. For every enacted law has Unintended Consequences, and these are going to be harmful, and cannot be predicted.
The 'unintended consequences' of war, on the other hand, are to be expected and are simply part of the natural order of things. Eggs must be broken and omlettes must be cooked. Nothing to be concerned about. As Rumsfeld said during the Sacking of Bagdad by its own citizens: "It's messy".
As we all know, the right is just chucky-jam-full of contradictions of this sort.
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Consider that
we have been expanding "civilzation" at sword-point then gunpoint for thousands of years and have only developed the decency to feel bad about it in the last 200 or so, then it stands to reason that the mindset of manifast destiny would still animate our discussion and motivation.
Some of us however, have enough self-awareness to see this for what it is - a lame rationalization for our OWN barbarism.
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At Passover, a young Republican's fancy turns to thoughts of plagues
What an appalling mistake we made - failing to exterminate all "Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35."
No doubt they rejected the notion because it was too Jewish.
(with apologies to Mel Brooks)
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Chlorine Gas as a Weapon
People care about chemical weapons. The problem is that there is very little that you can do about the use of chlorine gas, unless you want to deny the world clean water.
How is that -- what do you think chlorine gas is used for -- well mostly water purification. It is also broadly one of the most important chemicals used in industry, for making everything from plastics to fabrics and fine chemicals, refining oil and petrochemicals, as well as bleaching.
Put simply, it is very hard to do anything to control chlorine gas -- its legitimate uses are too important. More significantly, as a chemical weapon chlorine gas is pretty useless, espite this bombing. It was the first chemical agent used in WW I, but was so easily countered, and of such limited effect, that it was rapidly dropped.
It is really astonishing how stupid and ill-educated Ledeen and the bizarre Professor are. One of the long recognised problems with terrorist weapons is that all sorts of supposedly innocuous things can be used by terrorists, castor oil beans (form which ricin is extracted), Cherry pits (Cyanide), fertiliser and fuel oil or diesel (ANFO bomb as used in Oklahoma), thyristors Itiming circuits in nuclear weapons and photocopiers), colloidal silicon (a gelling agent used to make pharmaceutical gels and even toothpast, but also weaponising anthrax (in 2001 for example)); acetone (a major solvent) and hydrogen peroxide (a bleach and disinfectant) plus a drop of drain-cleaner (TATP, the high explosive used for the London bombings (luckily making this is tricky and it tends to kill the person making it if they are even a little sloppy). The funny things is that Ledeen et al probably back the NRA in fighting restrictions on single use materials such as black powder or assault weapons . . . morons.
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correction on Rumsfeld quote
not 'messy'.
"Untidy" was the word he used I believe.
I apologize for any inconvenience. It was an unintended consequence of posting.
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From the right-wing DSM-IV guide to mental illness:
Lack of outspoken support for feigned outrage at the behavior of low-life inhuman barbarian Islamo-scum raghead camel jockeys is indicative of a racist attitude.
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RWA Explains Much
Like many other posters here, I have found Altemeyer's work to explain much of the behavior of the right wing and frankly of hyper-conservative members of my own family.
That's what's so powerful about this RWA research - it explains and predicts behavior that seemed crazy to me. Thanks to Glenn for the link to Altemeyer's site many weeks ago. Having read John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience when it came out, I was eager for more data.
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So Dick Cheney is a Vogon!
The most appropriate analogy would be to Vogons--"the worst marksmen in the Galaxy".
That explains everything, Democritus.
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Not to oversimplify or overgeneralize
An individual's self-identity is the base reference model for all social references and relations. Although our inclination is to use categories such as religion, politics and ethnicity to describe both individual and group identity traits, it is only our own ethnocentrism that makes them seem sufficient to the task.
If a person is taught to look outside themselves for their identity, they will find themselves forever subjected to the vagaries of the marketplace. They will live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. Today's "untermenschen" is tomorrow's "ubermenschen." "Eurasia is the enemy. Eurasia has always been the enemy." External identity is custom-made for hierarchy and control. It doesn't matter if you are liberal or conservative. The result is the same. Today's revolutionary is tomorrow's counter-revolutionary.
If a person is taught to look to themselves for their identity, none of the categories of external identity will dominate. By definition they cannot. Internal identity tends to strip away everything until the only thing left is the unity of being, a philosophical term for empathy. That individual will not identity with a movement or group that is not inclusive and collaborative.
A good example of external versus internal identity reference, and one that is relevant to this discussion, are the growing calls by the Right for genocide against our enemies in the Mideast and calls for protection (or accelerated genocide in the case of Ann Coulter) of the innocents against whom our enemies are committing genocide in Africa. This US and THEM, continually foregrounded in the MSM, is very much intended to pit Christianity against Islam, to portray our involvement in the Mideast as a war of cultures, a battle for the preservation of democracy. The only reason this propaganda has succeeded to the extent that it has is because in the US, religion is publicly identified through the MSM with a specific form of a specific religion, fundamentalist Christianity. Although Christianity constitutes one-third of the world's population (approximately 2.1 billion) and is the religious preference of approximately 85% of the US population, fundamentalist Christianity only represents 25% of the US population. That Christianity is so easily placed in the service of US geo-politics says less about Christianity than it does about the failure of US society to see and decry the machinations of those people who use external identity references to religion, politics and capitalism as a collective, ersatz definition of "freedom."
It should come as no surprise that the increasing cognitive dissonance is overwhelming the abilities of many people on the Right to cope. And it should not be a surprise to anyone that the THEM in the Right's worldview has grown to include almost everyone in the world as a result. When you are in a spot like that, genocide begins to make more and more sense. Nuclear war makes more and more sense. And totalitarian control of your own country by a single person (if that person is on your side) makes the most sense of all.