I like that what one commenter has not experienced or seen (how could that happen? It's impossible) firsthand, there is a blaring insight shared from someone that goes Bang. BANG. BANK IT!

You can Take It to the brain/heart of emotional bran 'food for thought' to chew on later like a moo cow's cud.

It's bitter, but not caustic.

`

-A German WW 11 veteran said `It (in the war fog) didn't hit me that much then, but when I think of it now--I slaughtered people. ~.

-I reproached myself while (prison) at the Hotel Hilton as a destroyer. An indescribable uneasiness came over me, i felt like a criminal. (,).

-I fired again and somehow got him in the head. There was so much blood.... I vomited, until the rest of the boys came up.--Israeli Six Day War veteran.

-He called the communist gooks, and once I asked him why?

`Do you think it's right to call the V.C. (venture capitalist) gooks and dinks? He Shrugs. `Americans give names to everything.

`My company in the jungle called your American war architects Big Hairy Monkeys. He hesitated.

`The average private g.i. joe was too dumb to know why they were in war. That was mentioned to me. It was a long-ago discussion, and I agree. Most people are led blindly, and dense-ignorant of info.-to make an informed decision/choice.

` We [in war] killed monkeys and ate them. Any human who has seen war from close-up takes his/her misery with them. grave.

~The message is increasingly clear. Kill?

~Proxy? Killing is what damn war is about.

McCain has 'stuffed' wounds of pain and guilt deep down.

Politician's language of war helps to make another war palatable.

The bloody table feast is what a hyena beast will do. human? scavengers.

A sane citizen craves the wholesome truths. A morsel sugar pill will not help.

A snooping, and out-of-control, lier politician is spineless. Weak. So. What next?

If a people don't want more slaughter 1NOT in their name, address B. Obama clearly.

A world is too potentially precious to destroy. Children will be heirs to future war-ruins.

Truth can be the only force to transform change. BETRAYAL! People are cathartic here, imo too.

You wrote: But the overriding reason most of these people will vote for someone who will shit on the constitution is simply that they don't know what else to do. They are unwilling to do anything that might actually make a difference so they hide behind "voting and hoping" and call it a day.

This is no small matter we are discussing, I think. Several questions come to mind here:

What is “shitting on the constitution?” Is that supposed to mean some act of final desecration? Has some central tenent been violated? Is that what has in fact happened? How clear is the evidence? If I really thought this had happened, it would influence me greatly. So I would need to be somewhat convinced. Is it that clear?

Am I certain Obama is doing this? Many intelligent people seem to disagree here, and the issue is not clear to me, though I continue to study it as carefully as I can.

How can one “do anything that might actually make a difference”? What, precisely, would? I am interested in making a difference if I thought I had a real chance to do so. What do you mean by this, exactly? Do you have a program or manifesto or something laying out what meaningful actions I could take as the individuals we are in our concrete situations? And do you have convincing arguments and evidence for it that would balance the risk of following your advice, whatever that advice is? And where might I find your evidence?

I am voting and hoping because in fact I do not know what else to do, given my lack of clarity on the issues and the lack of a clear and well supported list of alternative actions I could take. If you have answers to these questions I would dearly love know what you are thinking so that I could critically evaluate it. Are there texts that support what you are saying? Analyses? These issues are important. I do not ask these questions rhetorically. I am honestly asking you, adnoto, since you keep bringing these points up with some frequency. I myself only think there’s a slim chance Obama will be better than McCain: you are saying that is a fool’s hope. I welcome all relevant information. I was a soldier once who would have died for my country, I am not afraid to live for it. What do you suggest?

The issue is so serious (and what the hell, maybe you know something real about this I don’t or have some real practical alternatives that would be meaningful. If I can have a small hope in a politician, I can have a wild hope that I can learn something new here on the intertubes). To underline my sincerity (since I don’t mean to be an anonymous interlocutor and just blow steam):

Professor James R. Goetsch Jr.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Eckerd College

4200 54th Avenue South

St. Petersburg, Florida

goetscr@eckerd.edu

I thought you would have realized that yesterday, celery. To say they had no choice is not true. A soldier can always refuse to follow an illegal order. Always. And face the conseqeunces.

Respect to bystander, ethic_professor, philosophy teacher etc/

A former Auschwitz guard pleads.

The grandchildren can forgive him?

Yes, of course. That's why I said "for the sake of argument." People use phrases like that because they wonder how a certain set of factors would play out in a dynamic that seems unlikely. They do that to have a better grasp of the issue. People want to have a better grasp of the issue, because they want to be able to defend their points more effectively.

But thanks for your attempts to stifle my question.

I agree with Glenn's post 100%, except for the religion thing. Steve Benen in War Room gets it right. But perhaps I see it differently because I work for what could be construed as a faith-based social service organization. Technically, my employer was founded by the Catholic church, and to this day we are technically still sort of associated. Mind you, I'm not Catholic, the CEO isn't even Christian, and the Chair of the Board is Jewish.

Money is not quite as fungible as Digby would suppose, not if it's audited properly. Any truly committed group is going to use government funding for what it is intended for, not to subsidize other activities. In fact, after 20 years of experience in the biz, it is more often the other way around, church-raised funding going to support generic social services. The Catholic church is a good example of this, actually-- they tend to be pretty cash poor, but man they have a lot of infrastructure, which they often put to good purposes.

Don't get too paranoic about church and state-- probably the single most effective social service in North America is the Salvation Army. And probably the single most effective foreign aid organization is the Mennonite Central Committee. The work both do should be supported, and in both cases the track record is pretty clear-- they don't use public funds to proselytize, at least not directly.

Any faith based group that does, should lose such funding immediately.

Obama's take on it is the first thing I've heard out him in the last two weeks that actually made me happy. I am still shaking my head over the FISA and Clark things; not just that they were wrong (so very wrong) on principle, but that they were also, I strongly suspect, wrong tactically.