So I guess it's crazy to go kill a bunch of civilians, unless you are a flying robot, in which case it's collateral, um, ancillary, um, additional marginal killing, like, uh, incremental costs. Is there an IFRS for moral accountancy, a set of generally accepted principles? I take it this soldier, whom the Times calls Bob (Hi, Bob!), went totally nuts, obviously, because what kind of soldier kills people? THAT'S JUST THE STRESS TALKIN', MAN. He was on his fourth rotation. I'm sure if his supervisor had just signed off on allowing him to use some of those accrued vacation days . . .
President Oh, Bother managed to sound even more like a Junior High School Vice Principal than ever in his response. This does not represent our school spirit or Mustang pride. What is it with him? The more grievous the event, the less human he sounds--I expect that he weeps at the sound of the Tetris theme but can only manage to cough discretely and check his watch for the nineteenth time when Rodolfo cries Mimi's name for the last time.
Well obviously the soldier must be nuts, because were it not so, it would call into serious question the tragic narrative of Afghanistan . . . heroic, but cursed despite its best intentions--that seems to be the consensus these days. But I don't think the guy was crazy at all; or, I do think he was crazy, but crazy in the sense that all people whose chosen profession is the export of death are crazy. Four tours of duty in imperial wars as a volunteer? Fuck yeah he was crazy, but the fact of a few unauthorized killings is not the dispositive one here.
188 comments:
This is what happens when people quit reading the memos!
too many repeat tours for our brave volunteer warriors - bring back the draft
if it weren't for troubling events such as this we would have no way to be sure of our resolve to support the war.
After extended occupations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, it's to be expected that some U.S. soldiers will go native.
" Four tours of duty in imperial wars as a volunteer? Fuck yeah he was crazy, but the fact of a few unauthorized killings is not the dispositive one here."
Well, Heinlein made a whole lot of money off "Starship Troopers", even in novella form before the movie.
And of course, when push came to shove, Captain Kirk and the bunch did what they had to do ...
Statistically, numerically, anecdotally, historically - whatever pizza-cutter you choose to use - YOU'RE the crazy one ...
Go take a cold shower and then get a NetFlix of Roi de Coeur, followed by one of Paths of Glory, followed then, of course by one of Le Grand Illusion ...
You're missing the spin. We can't conduct a war with flawed, emotionally crippled people. We need to let near perfect machines fight our wars!
" and paul ..as ( an unusual usual .. of feeling ) always ..i love you .. . " forwarded from the last post .. . in feeling again ..
Inkie
Matthew 25:7. Whatever lamp oil was there, between supporting the Transvaal fumigators and the Vorkuta mine operators it's long been wasted by this nation.
The Dull Sycophant
I expect that he weeps at the sound of the Tetris theme...
holy shit.
i know, i weep at that shit too (provided the music is 8 bit)
i bet bob is the kind of guy obama wants to share a beer with, not that harvard asshole.
Technology has a lot of unintended consequences. The reason for armies instead of hordes is probably part economics, part accountability and part horror at what can happen when you give out a bunch of pikes, war hammers and maces and turn the boyos loose. Unfortunately, some people have problems with the whole artificiality of the process. They become pacifists, or they become murderers.
The whole later part of the Afghan adventure really looks more and more like the Soviet experience as they've documented it. A Russian conscript served one tour; the GI volunteer may serve many tours. The GI is better trained, prepared and is not subject to the well-documented hazing, brutality and general inefficiency. In other words, the crap is more likely to bug the GI than IVAN, because Ivan is kind of used to it.
So, welcomed at least by some as liberators, the Russians stayed too long trying to make it make sense. Didn't. Rapidly lost the hearts and minds of the Afghans. First killings of Russians by Afghan Forces were in the first year. They had similar tactics, similar results and tried doing various things, none of which worked.
So, while I need to write at length about "Bob" over at The Defeatists!, Ioz is really on to something here. There is something crazy about a situation where you kill a kid or an unarmed old woman at 10AM and it's ok. Do it at 10PM and it's not. And, if the flying killer robot (actually, they're being "flown" remotely but what the hell, robot makes sense too) can just blow ragheads and hajis away randomly. And, there's something odd about being a soldier -- as a 20plus year veteran, I accept that I'm dealing with issues, Dude, I got issues...but, I'm not sure of the best response. I guess it's sort of like the piece of paper in the French version of Three Amigos -- Predators have Carte Blanche...
the tragic narrative of Afghanistan . . . heroic, but cursed despite its best intentions--that seems to be the consensus these days.
IOZ has parodied the hacks in their disposable togas.
Tragic: a journalistic word, meaning "more than usually unfortunate." When we call something tragic, it means we're at peace with it. "Tragic" is anything unavoidable, or depicted as such. A fatal car accident. A cancer's metastasis. A killing spree. A war.
"Tragic" implies a noble-minded spectator. As the curtain falls, the observer feels sad for what happened; but he feels even sadder for himself. How tragic to live in this world of ours, where terrible things must happen to those who get in our way.
Tragic: a legalistic term, meaning "regardless of whoever is responsible, no one is accountable."
A harbinger of things to come?
How quickly will honchos move to declare "Mission Accomplished" if "Da Troops" start pulling this stunt approximately once a week?
The Dull Sycophant
Okay, to take the bait--is it a "volunteer" army when the other option is starving? Or worse, going to college, becoming an HR manager for Kraft Foods, and reading IOZ when your boss isn't watching?
Who's crazy now?
Yes, it's the vigilantism that's the real problem here. If only our fallen hero had gone through the proper channels before shooting up a village. It would have saved the newspaper reporters the trouble of having to dig up his old college football teammates to tell us what a great guy he was.
Poor working class mercenaries. They just wanted to live out their rapin' and killin' video game fantasies. They didn't want to "flip" "burgers" for the rest of their lives; they wanted to piss on the corpses of dead peasants, their social inferiors. I wonder what Arka would be saying if dude wasn't a dude, and wasn't white.
I'll let everyone else tell HA how depraved that notion is, and instead offer this fun fact: About 1% of the US population is active or reserve. If you account for the fact that many people are ineligible for service, you prolly have about 5% or 10% of people willing to enlist.
So one out of ten or twenty people in America will volunteer to kill some fucking Arabs, the rest likely would too faced with HA's false-in-so-many-ways dilemma.
"it's to be expected that some U.S. soldiers will go native."
LOL. Or is it the other way around?
You're missing the spin. We can't conduct a war with flawed, emotionally crippled people. We need to let near perfect machines fight our wars!
"Sign this man for a year," said Tony Podesta.
So, how many of these would have to happen before you could truthfully say they were representative of the American military?
Glad to see Arka has the priorities straight here, hmm, let’s see now – dead ground up Afghan baby burgers or flipping cow burgers at the drive through. Boy, that was easy!
IOZ, thanks for the linking to my site and for the other times you have done so.
I think Bales is my generation's Willy Loman.
Mark, would you mind expanding on that?
I was thinking Buford Pusser....
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rob and Anonymous, it is extremely ignorant to assume that there are always "burger flipping" jobs available. Your "get a job" attitude needs a dose of Bruce Hornsby, or at the very least, a reviewing of some standard progressive websites, replete with the "I work 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I am losing my house" banner ads.
Even if that condescending conservative "get a job" fact assumption applied, "flipping burgers" does not suffice for life--say, raising a family, seeing the doctor, affording prescription drugs, not eating outdated Purina, etc.
Until you smug, overfed, Whole Foods pseudo-radicals realize how much it actually sucks to have no options except killing and dying for hire, there will always be a large set of impoverished people bitterly mad at you, willing to fuck up the world for even the slightest chance at a steady paycheck, access to a doctor, and some sort of institutional cultural respect.
What happens if you can't afford next month's SNRI, paying the bill for the time little Joey broke his leg on the slide, or fixing your 1994 pickup to get to work so your landlord doesn't evict you and force your daughter to move in with the bikers? You do what it takes, or you die on the street. Your (upper) middle-class whining that people should just "get jobs" instead of "choosing" to join the military reeks of the privilege of never having to make that choice.
Ever gone into the doctor's with terminal cancer that would be curable with a $130K operation, and get turned away because you don't have insurance to cover it? We have to "stabilize" you, but not to "fix" you. This is life or death, you privileged fucks, and even if the Reaper isn't actually standing there right now, you can tell that he might be paying a visit soon unless you do something to crawl out of the pit.
Yes, even the wrong kind of white people can tell that.
If you want to help the kids in Afghanistan, one of the best ways to start would be forgiving the white trash poverty soldiers and giving them something better to live for. It's gonna take a generation or more, but if you pompously pontificate the entire time, instead of making amends for fucking them over, they'll be only too happy to keep killing for short-term survival.
Tell 'em how it 'tis, H-A, not how it 'twas ....
Hi, I'd like to enlist.
Great! We just have one formality, you have to fill out this form listing your medical history.
Ok..Um, how do you spell mesothelioma?
What happens if you can't afford next month's SNRI, paying the bill for the time little Joey broke his leg on the slide, or fixing your 1994 pickup to get to work so your landlord doesn't evict you and force your daughter to move in with the bikers?
A) Deal with it, B) kill complete strangers on contract.
Choices, choices.
Akra, you dumb shit, your argument falls to pieces once you realize we are thinking of things from the Afghani's perspective as well as "our fellow" American's perspective. You see, by treating them as equal human beings, that is how we decide that the one's lives are more important than the other's higher standard of living.
Nice pretzel, Arka, you should consider yourself to be an intellectual. Your contortions to justify murder are wondrous to behold. Takes a lotta words, huh.
Also, Arka, your argument is within the narrow confines of poor Americans versus middle class and unfortunately your poor misused Bob could hardly be called poor. I saw a picture of his house, a nice big two story job in a nice neighborhood. So how do you explain that? Fact is, Arka, Americans like to kill, they always have from the very beginning. You don’t have to offer them a choice between hamburgers and sirloin steak, Bobbie boy likes killing, he gets his jollies from it and it had nothing to do with his social status. Bobbie boy is as middle class as they come, he’s a sadistic monster so save your crocodile tears for somebody else.
Nutella, that's a grammar fail. "Afghani" being plural for "one from Afghanistan," you might more correctly say, "From the Afghani perspective."
You can save it by pretending you were talking about "the hypothetical Afghani." Yeah, from that Afghani's perspective.
Moving from grammar to structure, you (and your most recent partner from the cheering section, rob) have created a strawman. You know, the kind of thing Santorum does about sex and its snowball effects? Yeah, that kind of thing. You created a false dichotomy between "support our troops in their murder" and "those stupid violent troops," but this one does not literally advocate either position. In fact, this one finds "U.S. foreign policy" and its masterminds, as well as its drones, reprehensible in behavior.
However, critiquing the gross flaws in the condescending sneers at the bulk of the poor Americans who actually fall into the military is not supporting the killing. This one not being "with you" does not mean this one is "against" you.
What you're failing to see is that (most of? all of?) American combat infantry troops deserve pity, too. Perhaps (certainly?) not "more than" the little kids they murder, but at least some. Deciding that the buck stops with them--with their desperate, misdirected violence--is cheap and ineffectual.
The insurmountable arrogance in the 12:44 Anonymous' "Deal with it" is tantamount to the spirit of "let them eat cake!" Deal with it how? By going hungry?
None of you are making that choice. You're paying your taxes to fund the slaughter. You bought the guns, assholes. You put the uniforms on those crackers, paid for the jet fuel that flew them over there, funded their pension plan, and read the papers chronicling their crusade of death.
And now, it's so wonderfully easy to sit back in your armchair and say, "Tsk tsk! How dare those crackers shoot someone? How reprehensible!" They shot someone because if they didn't, they'd be out of the game for good. They're whores, just like the rest of us, and they actually have the guts to put their life behind it.
There actually are hobos dying on the streets of America, many of them veterans past their usefulness. That fate isn't just a rhetorical ploy; it's what happens to people who don't play the game. Is that what you ask? That the flyover state white bois struggle to work at Burger King for a few years, get laid off, and starve in an alley? Sorry; they want lives, too, and if Obama promises them food for murder, history shows they'll take the murder.
If you were backed into that corner, you'd make the death choice, too. You know how this one knows? Because you're not in prison for tax avoidance. You're funding the slaughter. Your bankrolling of the filth is even worse than their hands-on killing, because, just like Obama v. Bush, you have a better understanding of the geopolitical realities of what your actions entail.
The killings are terrible. The killings should stop. But you mid-level managers sneering at the drones you pay for to protect your fatherland-bound asses is one righteously sickening sight.
@2:54 Rob, that's one anecdotal story.
And who cares how big his house is? Is it hanging by a thread? Is it upside down? What kind of private medical expenses or responsibilities does the guy have?
Does he ever want to retire? Does he ever want to pay off that house, be able to feed a family (relatively) healthy food, or aspire to break out of the cycle of wage labor?
Or, like, Office Space. Being "middle class" in America is not some kind of guaranteed pressure-free situation where you win. Being middle class just means you have a few more toys in between you and starvation. Again, you're playing the game, too. Does your victory in it, which frees you from having to make certain hard choices, grant you heavenly leave to scorn those playing at a lower level?
Side, obvious point: this guy is just one pariah; they're writing about him for the same reasons they push the Superbowl and Hunger Games and Twilight and the Manning trial. His story is out there a thousand times, but even if all you cared about was that one particular naughty soldier, the few factoids the corporate media tells you about him are about as reliable as, say, the stuff that same corporate media tells you about this place called Iraq or this other one called Vietnam or this other one called Iran.
And here you are, scooping up their drivel and asking for more, just because it's good-sounding dirt about a soldier. What made you think you could trust their perspective?
Oh, and of-fucking-course he's a sadistic monster, but so are the rest of us, from that perspective.
Put another way, go hang around middle eastern combat zones in an American military uniform for a few months, and see how long thoughts of applied pacifism last. You would put that M-16 to use, baby.
Do you actually know any blue collar people, Arka? 'Cos I can't really see them endorsing the patronizing wank you're advancing here.
Please take every ounce of misguided, elitist pity you're expressing, and re-direct it to another worthless cause. I suggest that humanitarian war George Clooney thinks we ought to be waging in the Sudan for their own good.
Excuse me, sir? Could you please keep your voice down? This is a family restaurant.
... what Massa Payne sez. ... Pick up your gun, we gonna have a lotta fun ... Get your gun, get your gun, get your gun, get it on the run, on the run, on the run ...
The Dull Sycophant
Did anyone mention yet that in a previous life Bobby was a financial analyst who committed fraud and ruined the life savings of some poor retired dude - who, without any money to pay for a rascal scooter, took Arka's advice and joined the Army? How ironic!
out of curiosity, what is it about killing that makes it "crazy"?
Clams or bones or whatever you call them.
to feed a family (relatively) healthy food
Vegetarian Starter Kit from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/vsk/vegetarian-starter-kit
that was a lot less helpful than i had hoped.
Hey. Be nice. I read Deer Hunting With Jesus.
Arka,
Speaking of false dichotomies, how about the one between "shoot foreigners in their homes for fun and profit" and "starve in the street"? I'm sure some percentage of people join the military for reasons like this, but a lot of people join because they think it's their patriotic duty and apparently have no problem with murder as long as it's done in the name of promoting freedom. Do these people get a free pass, too--maybe for being too dumb to see through the propaganda?
Oh, and no, I'm not in jail for tax resistance and I don't have plans to go anytime soon. I see no reason why I should serve time for someone else's crimes--Barack Obama's or Bobby Bales's.
Puppylander, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
the bloodthirsty killing (and tax paying to fund bloodthirsty killers) is crazy from the point of view one who thinks of those who are to be killed as equal human beings. as HA says, it's sa little less crazy, or crazy for different reasons, from the point of view of one who, while trying to put food on his family or pay her mortgage, doesn't make the decision on a purely ethical level.
".. what happens to people who don't play.. " . . of one , .. and in another country , near .. . she (s'e) sat up .. looked around ..in a hospital bed .. how .. how did i get here .. did someone find my pale limp body in the street somewhere .. and carry me .. . ..of last night ..
anne, how much acid have you taken in your life?
cn, um, duh.
meta: what do you personally, individually, idiosyncratically, think it is about killing that makes it "crazy"?
anonymous 11:31 , ..is it something that someone could add to your juice when you looked away for a moment ..i know very little about street drugs , .. if yes .. then once when i was 14, / and of here ..of what i wrote on reading something of ark',of that quote , .. i was just trying to tell of something of my evening ,last night .. but still weak.. .
I took me a few minutes to realize the "Manning trial" wasn't a reference to Peyton's free agency.
I think High Arka is actually Leonard. Who else would loudly castigate others for perceived logical inadequacy and in said castigation confuse three distinct ideas???:
"you . . . have created a strawman. You know, the kind of thing Santorum does about sex and its snowball effects [slippery slope]? Yeah, that kind of thing. You created a false dichotomy . . ."
1,000 words in 10 minutes? Somebody's bogarting all the good shit.
Inky,
Not sure, but I think Mark might be referring to the story over the weekend about how Bales was passed over for a promotion and was having trouble paying his bills.
Anon@12:49,
Me, too. I thought "trial" was a bit dramatic, but who knows? I've never had to choose between several NFL teams offering me tens of millions of dollars. Could be tougher than it sounds.
HA, I read one sentence of your reply, considering reading it in its entirety, saw how long it was, and went back to sleep.
Seriously, dude.
dubious authenticity: being able to feel for and understand the plight of brown folk thousands of miles away.
in light of: not being able to feel for and understand the plight of underadvantaged tommy guns a few miles down the road.
dubious claims: The life of poor American's is in anyway comparable to the life of poor Afghans.
Accepting dubious claims, we move on to dubious morals: Killing Afghans is morally OK if it gets you out of killing Americans or something. I dunno.
This isn't about judging those that go to war. They're human just like the rest of us, and I, in their place, might make similar decisions. This is about stating that murder is not made OK even if you're escaping poverty, or want to go to college or whateverthefuckhaveyou.
So, let's say that again, MURDER ISN'T OK. Even if you're poor!
I would kill for an HR job at Kraft.
um...
ioz: "all people whose chosen profession is the export of death are crazy."
nut: "murder isn't ok. even if you're poor."
rp: "bobbie boy is... a sadistic monster"
but who's judging? no one, because "this isn't about judging".
guffaw! of course it is! why don't you asshats ever own up to your moral frames?
Shorter nutjobs: poor white folk possess dubious ethics easily compromised by (festering) dangling carrots.
Again, on behalf on my brothers and sisters, please stop trying to defend us or apologize for us. Smiling, benevolent murderers are not and have never been exclusively of proletariat extraction. This is not the Work of Poor People. Do your fucking homework, dudes. Guy committed white collar crimes aplenty (plus your standard violence against women, hit 'n' runs) prior to running off to the war.
Ahh, Nutella, thank you for expressing so honestly the Homer Simpson take on politics. Mass mental laziness is one of the cultivated requirements for this type of society. Or, as Miss Silverstone said: "What-ever!"
la rana, a slippery slope scenario can be a strawman on one side of a false dichotomy. Those terms are all screws in the same rhetorical machine, and are not mutually exclusive. For example, posit that there are two factions: "Republicrats" and "Radicals." Then posit that the Radicals create a false dichotomy between themselves and the Republicrats, within which snowballing unethical framework operate cracker boi strawmen who must, necessarily, kill in service of misguided Republicrat ideology. Ergo the Radicals are very intelligent, morally superior, and factually accurate in their critiques of any action attributed to the misrepresented strawman of the day.
All the crap about this particular murdering idiot that you're being fed is just your version of the same mass media product that makes some people interested in Michelle Obama's wardrobe, others worried about Iran's nuclear arsenal, and others excited about watching the latest faux-young-adult blockbuster movie. You're buying your own brand of the product. How rebellious of you to critique a soldier! Gasp, gasp! The heady thrill of following the New York Times toward something you're not supposed to do!
puppylander, thank you for that excellent compilation of source material. The peanut gallery here loves passing judgment, then later on offering "thou shalt not judge" as a principle that sets them apart from the mob.
I tells ya, it's eerily Christian, the mood around here. It's almost like the Puritanical tradition of America's settlers has infected even its most avowedly radical children.
@gray area, lmfao
And a moral one for Nutella: is it theft if a man steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving family? Or if he joins the Army so his kids can see the doctor in exchange for him losing his testicles in Pakistan?
No, it's not. If you give people no other options, they'll fight to survive, and be right to do it. Shame lies with the people who have options. Which is why it hurts you so much, and why you so desperately want to differentiate yourself from all those doing the hands-on component of the killing.
i don't understand why it's "nutjob" to think that the military draws heavily from the underclasses. (is this not so? was it not ever thus? i'm glad to be educated on this point. perhaps a link or two?)
i also don't understand why it's "nutjob" to think "morality is nice--if you can afford it". (again, glad to have the discussion.)
I don't mean to question the progressive narrative that we are one government spending cut away from millions of people dying in the street, but it is first class bullshit to state that many join up because their only other option is starvation or cancer. This is the kind of false reality that can only exist within 2 square miles of a Social Sciences building.
And yes, in a 'lifeboat scenario' the normal rules of morality are frequently set aside as it is truly kill or be killed - but that is not the day-to-day reality for 99.9% of the US.
So no, you aren't given a free pass to rape your neighbor because your girlfriend left you. And it's still wrong to murder other people just because Uncle Sam is cutting you a check. I mean, do we really need to debate this?
It's not a "false reality," I miss all the race talk; there actually are people (gasp! gasp!) in the "first world," and the United States, who die for reasons of:
1) lack of shelter
2) lack of food
3) lack of medical care
Ergo getting state health insurance and a paycheck is, indeed, the actual, literal difference between life and death.
The traditional red-stater has, for years, mocked the idea of any social welfare program as "handing out money to those who won't work." They make this same argument: "You could get a job and be just fine if you really wanted to and weren't so [immoral/lazy]."
What many of the posters here are saying about the military underclass is the same: "You could get a job and be just fine if you really wanted to and weren't so [immoral/lazy]."
It really is life/death. That military underclass, and their terrible, killing-and-dying labor, is what keeps the U.S. on top so that we lovely domestic blog posters can whine about how awful and immoral the common soldier is. Even if we're right, we're still pompous. And maybe we're not right.
Remember when everyone died before the welfare state?
High Arka: So your point is that everyone who is "middle class" (whatever that is) or who is not engaged in active revolt or terrorism has no grounds on which to criticize THE TROOPS?
That's pretty purist in its own way.
Even granting much of what you say, what is the point? Are all crimes free of comment because the commenter is guilty of some sin or other? talk about "Christian" morality.
Brian M, the discussion developed in response to this from an Anonymous: "Poor working class mercenaries. They just wanted to live out their rapin' and killin' video game fantasies. They didn't want to "flip" "burgers" for the rest of their lives; they wanted to piss on the corpses of dead peasants, their social inferiors."
...this from Nutella: "So one out of ten or twenty people in America will volunteer to kill some fucking Arabs..."
...and this from IOZ: "crazy in the sense that all people whose chosen profession is the export of death are crazy. Four tours of duty in imperial wars as a volunteer?"
They go to great lengths to justify their pontificating on the basis of the corporate media's Sacrifice of the Month having "chosen" to go fight in a nasty war.
By all means, criticize the troops. Some of them may actually have "volunteered" in some form, as opposed to being driven to it.
There are other ways to coerce people with death than by putting a gun to their head. The other ways are far, far more effective.
Dear nimrod Americans,
Your empire is never a noble cause, and the lower middle class able-bodied adult men who occupy your volunteer death squads and colonialist armies are not the only people in the world suffering.
Please commence removing your fat heads from your constipated arseholes, and stop making it all about you.
Also: your comparatively shitty existence, while cleaner and healthier and more boring and safer and less apt to be bombed out of existence than a lot of third worlds, will not cease to be because and when you stop policing the world. Reallyyoucanstopnow.
Signed,
Someone who would never even benefit from the ostensible joys of conscription in your stupid military because she is the wrong sex and color and nationality.
PS Fuck you white boys.
PPS I am thinking HA is one of those cats who earnestly believes The Slaves were better off in their little cubbyholes, rather than getting shot at and hung by poor white boys (the true casualties of an oppressive culture) coerced into joining the KKK because only the grand high wizards get a college degree, et cetera et cetera feminazis fags commies takin' mah jobs et cetera.
middle class moralists! Jesus.
say what you like about the tenets of voluntary militarism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
I thought deeply about the arguments that High Arka has made, and I've decided to forgive Robert Bales.
All of my radical friends are going to mock me, but I don't care. It's the principle of the thing.
Did High Akra "Hunger Games" schtick come out before or after it came out that this guy was a crooked stockbroker?
Following Arka's logic, the most oppressed people on the planet are white men because they're the loudest, whingiest, and most apt to generate the attention they desire by staging camp, over-produced acts of revenge and mass murder.
"I think High Arka is actually Leonard."
"I am thinking HA is one of those cats who earnestly believes The Slaves were better off in their little cubbyholes..."
I think Arka is actually Rik Mayall's character from The Young Ones in a version of In a Year of 13 Moons punched up by Bret Ratner.
"How rebellious of you to critique a soldier! Gasp, gasp!"
Actually, it is rebellious, at least in this culture.
It's not at all rebellious to craft another variant of the support the troops/noble overstressed hero/dirty fucking hippy slander routine.
"The traditional red-stater has, for years, mocked the idea of any social welfare program as "handing out money to those who won't work." They make this same argument: "You could get a job and be just fine if you really wanted to and weren't so [immoral/lazy]."
So until the decadent parlor intellectuals you despise force their socialism upon said red-staters at gunpoint, no one can criticize a soldier's atrocities without being exposed as a decadent parlor intellectual.
If Arka were Rik, she'd be more right-on and her class consciousness would be better developed.
"By all means, criticize the troops."
Okay. But isn't that what you got so mad about?
those poor poor boys, your name suggests you're forgetting Lynndie England.
"Actually, it is rebellious, at least in this culture."
It's not rebellious on IOZ's board. Nor is it rebellious as to the world at large. You guys are coming to a place where it isn't rebellious in order to feel rebellious for doing something that would be rebellious were you doing it in public in "most places on the North American continent."
There's a value in your feeling of novelty at "not supporting the troops," but once that's past, objectively speaking, you're not the first person to ever reach that place, nor the first person to do so in "this epoch," either.
Having been excoriated by troops for not supporting them enough makes it darkly ironic--if not novel--to get the reverse treatment here on this board. You're both making the same mistake. Your concerns, and theirs, are valid, and deserve addressing. Their misery, and the misery of their victims, are valid, and deserve addressing. There is a problem here that runs deeper than "their bad choice."
Because, as everyone knows, if the Afghanis didn't want to be invaded, they would've simply gotten off their asses, overthrown the Taliban, and become a part of the international community.
"So until the decadent parlor intellectuals you despise force their socialism upon said red-staters at gunpoint, no one can criticize a soldier's atrocities without being exposed as a decadent parlor intellectual."
You'll notice above that this one said the soldiers should be criticized. They should be--but if you'll look just a few posts up, you'll also note that the problem here is not criticizing the soldiers for their atrocities, but blaming them also for the "free choice" to join up.
Those who pull the triggers are damned, yes, but so too are those who leave them no choice, and those who arrogantly curse them for "making a free choice" to pull said triggers. It's as misguided and insulting as the Pentagon's pretense that rampant butchery is rare and against American principles.
Oh, and strike "Canada" and "Mexico" and "Alaska" and stuffs from that "North American" continental remark up there.
arka, say a starving american shoots and kills another citizen and takes his/her money and sells everything the victim owned. the murderer deserves pity? because the crime was profitable?
you're a jack ass. you're smug and disrespectful, and your arguments aren't interesting or provocative (much less sound). please give it a rest.
Because I can't get up in the morning unless I'm pretty confident that High Arka thinks I am being rebellious, I want to state that I believe the US government should invade another country soon so that our poor underclass, one meal away from starvation, is able to make a living wage by killing other people. You like low gas prices, right? Me too!
I want to be especially rebellious by making it clear I look down my nose in disdain at those who think there are moral issues with killing foreigners, when the alternative is US citizens dying from starvation and cancer.
arka, it's spelled what-eva, lol
rebellion is a marketing tool. like every fucking thing.
and people comment on blogs cuz they are bored out of their fucking minds.
@933
Fuck off, racist piece of shit.
The Dull Sycophant
Were the comments always this awful, or have I just grown up a bit?
growing up is for idiotzzz
Arka & puppylander:
Enlisted recruits in 2006 and 2007 came primarily from middle-class and upper-middle-class backgrounds. Low-income neighborhoods were underrepresented among enlisted troops, while middle-class and high-income neighborhoods were overrepresented.
link
But regardless, it seems pretty obvious that our boy Bales was never one missed paycheck away from living in the gutter, so all of the "pity the poor cracker boys" schtick looks an awful lot like making excuses for murder.
Also, comparing the plight of your caricature of the poor US soldier (should I take that job at Mickey D's or join the army?) with the Afghan villager (will I get killed by a missile fired from a predator drone or shot in my own home in the middle of the night by a disgruntled former stock broker from Ohio) is beyond ridiculous.
the heritage foundation, eh?
i think that report came out in response to this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/03/AR2005110302528.html
curious... what do you think changed in 2006? (these days, the years blur together for me. i don't really remember the big events by year.)
i think it's a misstatement to say that arka is suggesting: "let's feel more sad for troopie trooperson than we do for ahmed blowntosmithereens." i think that's a strawman.
the point is that there are any number of reasons that a person might join the military.
the point of conjecture is that, typically, the person joins because it's their best chance at a decent life. arka may be exaggerating about "survival", but i think "best chance at a better life" is quite true.
the anecdotal is replete with stories of kids who are in it just for access to college, kids who are in it for job training. they're in it for stuff that they don't otherwise have access to. the patriotism bit helps a little with the emotional side. (you and i recognize it as marketing to think of military service as "noble"--but plenty of folks aren't so cynical.) (it's not too "nutjob" to notice that the white t-shirt with the american flag necktie printed on it can be purchased at walmart--and not so much at lululemon. but you tell me. i assume that's where ioz shops for his yoga togs. i've never set foot in lululemon.)
but again, it's all relative, right? d.o.d. thinks a high school diploma is "middle" class. personally, i think that's out of date. but then, i live in the overeducated northeast. i'm an overeducated northeasterner. i'm not really what anyone would call "underclass". that's a long, long way from me.
then again, if all you have is a high school diploma, and no chance at paying for college, no chance at getting a scholarship, and your job prospects aren't great since we have no manufacturing jobs, then you're likely to end up here: http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor
it's just ironic because, on the one hand, the denizens of this board are always moaning about how wage slavery is bad. but then when it comes to someone actually finding a way to get out of it, the response is, "deal with it".
it's interesting (and unsurprising!) that there's so little actual info about recruiting demographics. i think your best barometer is the recruitment ads themselves. they're specifically targeted at addressing the deficiencies. ("look what you can get by joining up: on-the-job-training, g.i. bill, travel the world, etc.")
in other words, most people don't join because of some "crazy" compunction to kill other people. it's usually much saner, practical sensibilities.
i should also note that while most of you are talking about bales, ioz said "all" are "crazy". it doesn't seem to me that arka is addressing the former so much as she's addressing the latter.
more straw, i guess.
A lot of what underlies the slurs here is the belief that not being "one meal from starvation" makes someone automatically not desperate.
However, someone can see starvation looming without being one literal meal "away" from it. For example: a "middle class" person with a nice $65K/year salary and benefits, who carries $80K in student debt, a $213K mortgage on their upside-down house, and has two kids who will die without shelter, attention, and food. How far is that person--or are the people they're caring for--from starvation? Especially if that person's manager catches her or him reading this blog instead of renooberating the Tomplex files before the morning teleconference?
Showing compassion for such a person--or empathizing with their concerns--does not mean that such a person is immediately "more important than" (or "equally important to") a one-meal-from-starvation token brown child.
And yes, puppylander, the military's artificial "middle class" statistics, meant to justify it's "we're a volunteer organization!" schtick, are as believable as most other corporate media surveys. Yet here, among such an anti-establishment audience, those figures seem to find eager reception.
(Guys, this stuff is coming from the same people that you mock when they lie to you about Iran--yet you immediately swallow up their mainstream figures when they say something you like?)
Many IOZ readers direct their anger at the system toward the struggling "middle class white westerner." Their anger is justified, but their application of it is misguided.
Many stock red-staters direct their anger at the system toward lazy immigrants or backwards Afghani. Their anger is justified, but their application of it is misguided.
If that individual, selfish anger causes us to never care about anyone who isn't defined as being "in the absolute worst situation right now," then we'll never be able to help ourselves. The Afghani child in danger of a drone strike suffers "less" than someone having their uterus cut out sans anesthesia by Persian scientists in the 400s. Does that mean we shouldn't care about the child? No, of course not. Our pain is not quantifiable, ye counters and tabulators of terrible things.
Lightspring embrace.
I give in - I now have the proper level of compassion for anyone who enlisted and has a net worth less than 10 million dollars. Now can we talk about something else until our dear leader returns?
8 year olds, dude
Maybe you're right. Maybe she is the Rik character.
Arka, are you very concerned about the welfare of The Kids?
Desperate people who enlist and kill people are still murderers. This is not that complicated.
Were the comments always this awful
No, only since Arka showed up.
Can the parasite be persuaded to start its own weblog?
For example: a "middle class" person with a nice $65K/year salary and benefits, who carries $80K in student debt, a $213K mortgage on their upside-down house, and has two kids who will die without shelter, attention, and food.
That's some high class balooney, HA. And even granted that baloney, how do two wrongs make a right again?
How far is that person--or are the people they're caring for--from starvation?
From STARVATION, like eat grass starvation, like eat pigeon droppings starvation, pretty far. Currently almost impossible in USofA.
Many stock red-staters direct their anger at the system toward lazy immigrants or backwards Afghani. Their anger is justified, but their application of it is misguided.
Their anger is not justified, and their application is not misguided. In particular the anger against afghanis, for not rolling over at the imperialist anglosaxon demands, WHILE IN MOTHERFUCKING AGHANISTAN, is a perfect example of imperialist thinking. Perfectly logical within the imperialist mindset, and perfectly unacceptable and unexcusable to me. To understand means to reject even more strongly.
Child murderers deserve strictly contempt. Understanding the child murderers and their stooges only heightens disdain.
In recent history USofA joins Nazi Germany and PolPot in killing children as a tool of politics.
The Dull Sycophant
*stretch*
@8:47, the 9.9 x millionaire is an inappropriate, extreme example. The shorthand is "strawman." There are legitimately desperate people between negative net worth and $10 million net worth. A more reasonable line could have been drawn for the purposes of sarcasm, but $10 million isn't it.
@9:04, the cultural reference escapes this one.
@8:33, that truism is also a strawman; the claim is not being made that they're not murderers.
You nonies so desperately want a certain kind of enemy--the kind you're accustomed to fighting, and against whom you have so many grudges--that you'll see that enemy in the shadows and mirrors of each new challenge life offers.
(Nach, if you were aware of the transcendent irony of this one being accused of over-defending 1) white people and 2) American soldiers, you'd laugh so hard you'd spill your latte right on your iPad. The eyes of truth are snickering.)
*/stretch*
Here's this one's proposed new post signature:
"People think it's easy being right all the time, but you know, it isn't."
Tell us whatcha think, loves.
Yay, Dull showed up after warmup time! Dull:
Dull: "And even granted that baloney, how do two wrongs make a right again?"
They don't in this case (ever?); however, you're again missing the point. The point is that it is not always a "choice" to join the Army. For the record, yet again, what this particular erratic white token did was/is neither right nor good. It was evil, vile and disgusting. The continued suggestion that asking for compassion for (some of? many of?) those who "volunteer" for the imperial security services is tantamount to exonerating them for their crimes is as emotionally flawed as the way people used to tell this one to "move to a cave in Afghanistan" when it was suggested, circa early 2000s, that America not re-re-re-invade the Middle East. Or the way that suggesting Iraq not be attacked led to accusations of "defending Saddam."
Saddam wasn't being defended; he himself was terrible, whether or not America was also terrible. It's possible to feel human compassion for both those middle eastern ones and those white ones, and to empathize with the suffering of each.
"[starvation is] almost impossible in USofA."
This is the ignorant, elitist viewpoint, yes. It's a form of American exceptionalism that justifies itself by being "gritty" and "tough" and so, the logic goes, different than standard American exceptionalism. By suggesting that people in "the first world" do not die from such natural things as running out of food, shelter and medicine, we imply that, whatever our many sins, we are still ahead of those backward, uncivilized, unclean people in the "third world."
So, we can safely disagree with most imperial policies while believing that, deep down, our society is better to its members.
Not so. The dramatic "death by starvation while crawling across the sands of the Sahara" may be relatively rare in America, but there actually are a lot of kids (and other people) who are hungry, and who die from it. And shoplifting expired Doritos or using welfare bucks for Purina--it's not starvation, but how bright is that line?
(red-state, white) American anger at Afghanis is not "justified" in the sense that the Afghanis deserve it; it's justified in the sense of there being a valid reason for the anger. E.g., they're right to be angry about being economically screwed over by America's financial elites, but that doesn't give them a pass on shooting/bombing Afghanis. You're right to be angry at the murder of your fellow humans in Afghanistan, but that doesn't give you a pass on blithely ignoring the unfair woes of other humans.
On the hidden dying in the first world, you might glance briefly at Exposure
Please go away now. You are embarrassingly tedious in your ever present desire to attract negative attention and direct any conversation towards yourself.
puppy,
I never said that Arka's saying we should feel *more* sorry for the troops than murdered Afghans and their families. I get the distinction she's making and I get that it's in response to people who said "all of the troops" are crazy or whatever. My point is that when we're talking about a guy who had half his family murdered in the middle of the night by an intruder (in multiple senses), it's a joke to talk about the "desperation" that might or might not drive relatively affluent (relative to the people they wind up being ordered to kill) Americans to join the imperial death squad.
I don't put a whole lot of stock in these demographic studies, either, but I think you're downplaying the role of patriotism (and xenophobia) in getting people to join up. I live in the overeducated northeast, too, but I live in a pretty mixed neighborhood, amongst people who proudly fly the marine flag and advertise their kid's service in Iraq. I don't get the feeling that these people are in it for the job training. Also, I was at a car show at my neighbor's garage last summer, and there was a dude there with a t-shirt that said: "Join the marines...travel to strange, exotic lands...meet unique, interesting people...and kill them." It didn't say anything about getting a bachelor's degree.
And, yeah, it may be ironic that some people here complain about wage slavery and then condemn soldiers, but so what? If your choice is between killing people (not to mention getting killed for no reason) who've done nothing to you and a shitty job, you take the shitty job. Take two shitty jobs.
Arka,
By your criteria, I should be feeling the desperation any day now. But even if I got laid off from my job tomorrow, I wouldn't even consider joining the military. I wouldn't join the military if you put a gun to my head. Maybe that's my privilege speaking. Or maybe it's just my feeling that if the douches in DC want a war, they should fight it themselves.
Also, this compassion for one, compassion for the other thing still stinks to me. We're not talking about poverty vs. poverty. We're talking about poverty vs. getting shot for no reason. Desiring a college education--or a steady paycheck, or healthcare--isn't a good enough reason for signing up for imperial murder. I'm callous.
You nonies so desperately want a certain kind of enemy
We nonies want a less monotonous comment section
I swear Reginald, if my stock portfolio doesn't improve in the next quarter, I shall be forced to let go of my chef.
My god! How will you eat!?
It is not an easy decision, but I believe I will be FORCED to join the Army, and they will likely FORCE me to murder foreigners.
That's awful!
Well, yes, someone with their own personal chef would think that. But try to have compassion for those less privileged. You want me on that wall, you need me on that wall, you can't handle the truth!
joe,
i don't mean to understate the role of patriotism. but i do think patriotism comes in a few different flavors--not all are xenophobic or otherwise ostensibly psychopathic. (we don't really disagree that patriotism often carries a kind of thoughtlessness, misguidedness, naivetee, unsophistocation, etc.) but this is all empirical, isn't it? (i mean, in part, how many stories are there of people with the tattoos and t-shirts and bumper stickers and bravado never having served? like buying a ferrari to compensate for a small wiener?)
i don't think it's too jokey to ask about the empirics. it's just a look at cause/effect.
that is, when i read arka's comments, i read the critique as sorta like... christians who think all non-christians are unsaved--nevermind that some non-christians were never exposed to "the word", vs. christians who believe salvation requires choice which is impossible without evangelism.
the parallel runs: ioz&c. are the christians of the former; the underclasses are the non-christians; arka is christian of the latter; and this notion that "military = death squad" is "the word".
i don't think we disagree wrt identifying the person who signs up with the express and unapologetic intent to kill people as "crazy".
where we're disagreeing is wrt everyone else who joins the military. (this is ioz' "all people whose chosen profession is the export of death are crazy". i could be wrong, but there was a time when most people who signed up for the reserve understood that you don't actually do anything but run around in the woods for a couple weekends a year.)
we could try another parallel with item in news, martin/zimmerman slaying. where purchase of handgun = joining military; purchase of handgun with purpose and intent to go out and kill someone = joining the military to kill "other" ("crazy"); and purchase of handgun with purpose and intent truly for personal defense = joining the military for reasons other than seeking out the deaths of "other" (not "crazy", even if thoughtless, misguided, naive, unsophistocated, or otherwise.)
well, maybe my perception of this is dated, and something changed with the 2006 et seq. crop of recruits.
hmm... think about that for a sec. 18 in 2006 means 13 in 2001. these are kids whose first real glimmers of understanding (that there's a world beyond mom and/or dad) occurred after 9/11. i'm starting to feel old.
anonymous 1:14
Best. Comment. Ever.
"In recent history USofA joins Nazi Germany and PolPot in killing children as a tool of politics."
At least it's an ethos.
@1:14 anonymous, that's just a more colorful version of the "$10 million" example. It's an applicably humorous mischaracterization of the point, but is still a mischaracterization. Tee hee?
Joe, it would be a noble choice to not join the military even if subjected to mortal coercion. However, do you pay your taxes to buy the military the guns they use to kill people, the ammo they fire into the screaming little kids, the ships that bring them over there to do the firing, etc.?
Do you keep paying those taxes despite your full knowledge of exactly what they are doing with the resources you provide them? Have you done that year after year, as you watched the bodies pile higher?
Why?
Is it not contributing to murder if you don't get your hands dirty? Does that make Obama innocent? Or Bernanke?
This is the old "would you sell yourself for $100 million?" rhetorical ploy, where once we've established that we're all prostitutes, it's just a question of price. But if you're currently holed up in Idaho, not paying any taxes and not contributing to the killing at all, then this one cheerfully withdraws the analogy and offers you support.
If you believe that we should not feel compassion for those who have it bad simply because others have it "worse," you're following a poor line of reasoning that you will ultimately be unable to sustain. For example, what do the Afghani have to complain about? We nuked Hiroshima; we've never even done that to Afghanistan. [describes incredible suffering of Hiroshima.] So, you see, in conclusion, the people of Afghanistan have nothing to complain about, by comparison.
The poverty you disparage is death. That's what we seem to be missing here. No one wants to acknowledge that people actually die of hunger and exposure in the United States. The invisible homeless are those who have made the choice to opt out, or who have simply fallen lucklessly (or lazily, as you prefer) through the cracks. Death waits at the bottom of the scale--if not a terrible death in war, a lingering, terrible, lonely, forgotten death in a cold alley.
Death and suffering should not be ignored simply because others are suffering "more." Trying to quantify those things, like an accountant of human souls, is an evil action that ultimately leads to the zeroing out of the balance sheet. If you're willing to make young white men collateral damage in an economic scheme because the quantity "dead" for young brown men is "greater," what other things would you be willing to ignore and marginalize? The cycle will eventually come around again to a point where that logic makes the young brown men worthy of ignoring.
Let us show compassion for all who suffer. Let us dissemble the imperial murderers not only for their current least popular crimes, but for all the insidious ways in which the terrible system of greed coerces us all into supporting the variegated pain of all humans across this planet.
Wait, I have to live in Idaho?
* drops mic, and principles, and storms off the stage
I tried buying off my complicity with the liberal sanctimony of lecturing other people about their complicity, but it required a lot of typing and eventually I got carpal tunnel. So I quit.
my dad just sent a joke into reader's digest:
so, they found a few extra hieroglyphs at the end of the mayan calender with when translated reads "page one of two"
Run for office or get off the pulpit, Arka.
puppylander,
To keep it short, this whole discussion never would have happened if we were talking about a bunch of weekend warriors running around in the woods. Your handgun analogy doesn't quite work if joining the military means that you'll likely end up in Afghanistan, which, in effect, means joining to kill "other."
Arka,
First, my main aversion to the military has nothing to do with being noble. I just loathe any institution that requires reflexive obedience to authority. The fact that it also might require killing people who aren't actually a threat to me, or getting killed myself while doing someone else's bidding, is just all the more reason to avoid it.
Second, I'm not really impressed by the tax argument. I don't "provide them" with anything. They take it and use it however they want. And even if I went and lived in the woods, eating nuts and berries, the empire would still continue to do its thing. My support or lack of support means nothing. The way I see it, one of the few meaningful acts of resistance for an individual with no connection to the political system is to refuse to join the military.
Third, I never said or implied that we shouldn't feel compassion for those who have it bad because others have it worse. No idea where you pulled that one from. And I'm not disparaging anyone's poverty. All I'm saying is that it doesn't justify murder. Simple as that.
Joe,
As to First, the desire to not "reflexively" (or otherwise) obey "authority" is a good, wonderful, living thing. Hurrah!
As to Second, the tax argument is a major one. You pay taxes knowing full well that over 50% of the taxes goes to military funding (assuming black books stuff doesn't make that total much higher, and pretending that other administrative expenditures are not ultimately about imperialism). You do it year after year, contributing to them. No, it's not you "deciding" to buy the guns, or supporting the use of guns in a moral sense. But you do keep enabling them. You're not only the faceless person in the crowd during the gang rape who neither helps nor hinders. Rather, you're the guy who gave the serial rapist money for Viagra, knowing full well what he'd do with it once he got his hard on. And you do it year, after year, after year. Which doesn't make you a rapist. And yeah, he'd kill you if you didn't pay up. But imagine the victim turning her eyes to you as they saw away at her sandpaper-dry labia. Do you feel the stirring of any trace of culpability whatsoever, knowing that without your Viagra money, he wouldn't have been able to do it to her?
Or, to be less metaphorical, the dead Afghani child with two-sixteenths of an ounce of the four pounds of Ohio steel embedded in his brain, which two-sixteenths you paid for: do you have any connection whatsoever to the child's death? Less, perhaps, than the guy who dropped the bomb. But what would happen if we all stopped paying our taxes, so to speak--how long would the bomb factories keep running? Most (all?) of us are cogs in the grindery. It's a dark thing to admit, but it's a truth. And the middle class financiers are, in many ways, much more culpable than the lower class drones, who receive missing legs instead of well-funded 401(k) plans at the end of any given twenty years of imperialism.
As to Third, good. Many apologies for lumping you in with the crass anonymi who pop up to personally insult this one in order to ride a wave of detached vindication over the sharp coral reef of the topic at hand. The antilife tendency of classification runs deep, and this one must ever be on guard for it. To deepen our compassion for everyone involved is to realize the similarities between ourselves and "them." Our suffering doesn't "equal" or "approach" that of the current bomb-targets, but we share with those humans the quality of being relatively powerless thralls before the might of the grindery. Our role is to labor, produce, and obfuscate, rather than to die. Better than dying, perhaps, but just a different part in the same play. Those whose role is killing are different also, but we share a common affliction. Being able to empathize with the terrible choices they make, and the abhorrent actions they commit, is a step along the way to realizing that our own actions are a similarly abhorrent part of the system.
This produces a violent cognitive dissonance effect from those who operate under the illusion that their disagreement with imperial policy means that they are "against" the Empire, even as they perform its domestic financial functions, pay their taxes, and otherwise fail to resist it. For them, to forgive others who make different sorts of difficult choices, they must understand the factors that drive those people to those choices: which gives them a glimpse of the machine working on their own lives, and suggests at the shadowed structure that makes all of their petty, whining, non-resistance powerless and, ultimately, in service of the grindery. Ergo violent attacks to assist their conscious minds in shutting out what they don't want to see.
LE.
dude, WHY are you?
HA
No.
The Dull Sycophant
HA:
Your arguments provide no utility. Any purchase or participation in an economy anywhere in the world enables state murder. So...unless one is ahermit living in self-imposed autarky, by your definition of shared guilt, every human being is guilty somehow and someway. \
Versus a man who deliberately chooses to DIRECTLY participate in the killing. There is a difference, or do you deny that difference? The very existence in a violent world means we all enable death and destruction. Yet, we (the average soul) has no right to criticize the murderer, the rapist? Because ultimately, that's what your argument boils down to...because everyone is "guilty", nobody is "guilty". Again...that is a very "Christian" argument.
Maybe that IS what you are saying?? I am guessing that this argument, which ultimately leads to no law, no punishment, no State, is one which many or some here would support. It's a tough and demanding argument, though. As bad as law is...I'm not sure the anarchy some yearn for is better in any way.
brian,
every unhermited human *is* guilty in some way.
there's a question, however, on "directness". is it really a difference in kind (of guilt)? or is it actually a difference in degree?
we return to our gentle host's comment "all whose chosen profession yadda yadda yadda are crazy".
in other words, why draw the line there?
"Your arguments provide no utility."
They provide no simplistic bright-line, such as IOZ uses to slur all those who "choose" to join. There is, though, a great utility in recognizing our shared responsibility. Yes, we are all guilty, in a The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas way. While it's a tough individual choice to walk away from Omelas, it would not result in the death of all. Sufficient withdrawal would cause the system to begin to crack, and take notice.
Obama, to personify the deathhorror of the now, has no trouble letting, say, five thousand Americans and a half million middle easterners die in any given time period. Anymore than Bill Gates would be tangibly hurt by lighting his cigars with $10,000 treasury bonds. As long as everyone else keeps tithing, the Word shall be spoken. Enough Arendt-style withdrawal of support would make them take notice. E.g., a few wackos not paying their income taxes to protest war just end up in prison. 50% of the tax base does it, and the Pentagon is forced to blink.
There is no written, property-based, western capitalist guarantee that, if we all accepted responsibility for our terrible actions, things would become roses and sunshine. The nature of a healthy, sustainable system is found not in absolutes. The wonder of surrendering to the flow--rather, let's say this using religio-scientific jargon, to make it more palatable to the now...
Rather, the social group which accepts, at the level of the individual and the group as a whole, culpability for the actions of all its members, and accepts that it is unable to codify precise principles that will fit and explain every situation, will discover within that very seeming "uncertainty" that a lack of rigid, unchanging guarantees and guidelines actually results in a net gain in both individual and aggregate positive behavior.
Or, in economic terms, the honor system will result in free riders, but the costs of maintaining an authority to enforce transgressions outweighs, both in gross cost (significant) and opportunity cost (doubly significant), the cost of funding free riders.
An unwritten understanding of this math is what drives many people to call themselves "anarchists," although that term is merely the cheese at the end of an elite maze of political pitfalls--the maze remains, even if the cheese tastes good. This is anarchy, as said before.
What use, then, to realize that all are guilty? We can accept that without concluding that all are equally guilty. In a healthy acceptance of oneself as agreeing to assist imperial American murder in exchange for a 401(k) plan that may or may not crash, we may find that we can forgive ourselves, the first step toward forgiving others, the first step toward forgiving the world and stopping the attempt to take revenge on it with deathly absolutes.
text limit continue:
Easily/tangibly? Put yourself in the shoes of the white boy from Mississippi who gets laid off from the carwash, and has the choice of joining the Army or going on $336/monthly welfare, while living in shame in your parents' trailer. Yeah, you won't starve--that year, at least. What kind of life are you going to have?
You join the Army, do the training, and get assigned to patrol this dusty street in some fucked up place somewhere. One of your new friends steps on a bomb and gets his leg and junk blown apart. You ask some guy to tell you who planted the bomb, and he spits in your face and calls you a piece of shit for invading his country. You trudge around for another couple years on patrol, sleeping in 30 minute snatches, while those assholes keep rustling around in the tent, using their comms, typing on their keyboards, whining, looking for their shaving lotion. You down stimpills to keep yourself alert; you find out your dog died and your dad's on dialysis. More stimpills. What do you mean, you have to pay for your own replacement uniform? They're barely paying you as it is! Show up in it at 6AM or you're getting a dishonorable and won't even be able to work at a gas station, or go to the VA hospital if you're even around in ten years. More stimpills. The new guys took the uniform shipment to the wrong base.
Who's to blame when you shoot someone? Yeah, you are, of course. You greedy, murderous bastard. You were clearly playing too many "Splinter Cell" games at home. How can you be so inhumane? You are so, so different and worse than the stockbroker whose taxes pay the proportional equipment requisition amounts for eight other guys in your squad.
Tell your buddies you did it because you were scared, senseless, tired and wacked out. Go home, you faggot coward.
Smile. Look tough. Yeah, I shot a raghead. It was me. I'm in control of my life and make my own decisions. I'm a strong man. I did it. Fuck yeah!
Just downed on me ... That's some slippery sloping HA engages in for our amusement.
Well, anyway, I'm glad that the price for physically and mentally fit 'Murikans to avoid the ghastly fate of work in fast food industry, or some other fruitful employment is only the shortening of some ragheads' suffering.
Delivered from the torment of life in the bowels of Afghan hell on earth?! Why ragheads should be extatically thankful!
The Dull Sycophant
joe,
sorry. i missed your reply above.
granting that joining now means likely tour in afghanistan and likely combat/killing, i think maybe you're now underestimating the role of patriotism. the handgun analogy still works--and works even better in this light.
"One of your new friends steps on a bomb and gets his leg and junk blown apart. You ask some guy to tell you who planted the bomb, and he spits in your face and calls you a piece of shit for invading his country... Who's to blame when you shoot someone? Yeah, you are, of course. You greedy, murderous bastard."
so you willingly signed up to continue an already decade-long occupation of one of the poorest nations on the planet. you politely ask questions of the goat herder you detained in the middle of the night, and he has the gall to disrespect you (with SPIT!). then, while minding your own business strolling through some village whose name you can't pronounce (you and your buddies strapped with M-16s, natch), some other asshole has the gall to attack you, for no greater crime than occupying his home, killing and arresting his friends and family, and destroying his nation's infrastructure. then you go out and kill some ragheads who were verifiably unarmed and innocent.
who's to blame? that's right, us, our nonviolent ideals, and our taxable income.
by the way, shithead, i don't pay taxes AND i think you're an asshole. i'm sure you can explain in no fewer than fifteen paragraphs why i'm at fault, but i still want to see you do it.
15 paragraph summary:
All U.S. soldiers grew up in trailers so they're victims no matter who they slaughter or why.
What part of that don't you understand?
it's alarming and disappointing that the iozian commentariat has grown so dishonest.
puppylander,
I meant the gun analogy doesn't work as a defense of the position that most people don't join the military out of a desire to kill the other. I thought that was the point you were arguing.
joe,
is it too subtle a point if folks join out of patriotism--which certainly entails bearing arms--but only incidentally/ situationally entails killing?
i'm really bothered by how facile the argument is made that subscription to patriotism automatically rises to murderous intent of the "crazy" sort. (now, the commentariat is what it is--flux--and the cream rises into the aether--only the dregs remain.) (but i've been seriously re-considering whether this ioz is in fact the ioz of yore. doesn't seem it. but on the intertubes, we're all just glory hole-ing, aren't we?)
"What use, then, to realize that all are guilty? We can accept that without concluding that all are equally guilty. In a healthy acceptance of oneself as agreeing to assist imperial American murder in exchange for a 401(k) plan that may or may not crash, we may find that we can forgive ourselves, the first step toward forgiving others, the first step toward forgiving the world and stopping the attempt to take revenge on it with deathly absolutes."
As a philosophy, this is wonderful. Epic, even. Kudos.
When you use this philosophy to soft peddle murderous rampage...I'm not sure it is a very useful philosophy, though.
puppylander: When the "ism" involves subscription and belief in a murderous, world-bestriding military machine, a machine known in recent history to kill indiscriminately, I'm not so sure we can be so blithe or accepting about it.
It's willfull blindness at best.
I would also use a different term:"nationalism", which I don't think is nearly as nice as "patriotism".
puppylander,
( ) ( )
@Dull, there isn't always sustainable work available in the fast food industry. People are not always unemployed "because they're lazy" or "because they have ridiculous standards." Sometimes, there's really nothing one can do except die.
@4:08 Anonymous, you're begging the question (again?)--whether or not all/most/any of the soldiery "willingly signed up" is at issue. Positing that a soldier did willingly "sign up" out of true belief, your judgment that they willingly signed up for the bad things that resulted is much more fair.
If you want to hold yourself up as an example, you're welcome to. Some follow-up questions would be: Do you pay sales tax? Are you supported by someone who pays taxes? Have you taken any direct action to save people? Do you utilize ISPs who have deep connections to the American military-industrial-congressional complex of empire?
It might benefit to offer 15 paragraphs of repetition, in the hopes that you would not be forever assaulting strawmen. These factoids have been stated before, but yet again, here they are:
(1) Saddam Hussein was indeed a bad man, but that still doesn't make invading Iraq a good thing (this one was necessary to repeat a lot in the face of these types of arguments circa 2003);
(2) murdering American soldiers are indeed to blame for their reprehensible actions, which actions should not be condoned for any set of desperate circumstances that drove them to such actions;
(3) more than one person/subgroup can be responsible for a terrible set of circumstances, and partly responsible for specific actions appurtenant thereto;
(4) a blanket stereotype of all current imperial soldiers as having "chosen" to go do what they do is grossly in error;
(5) understanding with, and empathizing with, the awful circumstances that drove someone to do something wrong can occur simultaneously with recognizing that someone made a terrible, wrong decision that merits judgment;
(6) it is possible to die in America as a result of lack of necessary resources for sustaining human life, and lastly,
(7) one can accurately predict death's onset, and take steps to avoid it, and be thereby "avoiding death" even if one would not die "tomorrow," but instead die seven months, or some other non-instant time period, later.
All of these things are not only true, but they fit rationally into one another. In different circumstances, changing "imperial soldiers" for "Palestinian freedom fighters" can work also. However, present 1-7 changed in such a way to, say, an Israeli politician, and you'll likely receive a violent defensive reaction accusing you of siding with terrorists. How dare you empathize with the Other?
@Brian M, we're not trying to soft-pedal the rampages, here. They're just as terrible; in fact, this one may find them more upsetting than some of this one's detractors. When you're not just seeing things in terms of the horrors faced by one side, the full picture is a sight far more macabre.
Currently, this one is being breezily deleted at standard Democrat blogs for suggesting, in occasionally visceral language, that it is ghastly and unacceptable to campaign and support the mass child murderer we all know of by the name of "Obama." Their error there is marginalizing the value of one set of people relative to another. Here, this one asks that we not slur, dismiss and ignore a different set, and is met with a similar, though much more openly expressed, reaction, which essentially says, "Stop reminding us about _________! It's absolutely unthinkable to place ______ before _______!"
It's good of IOZ to complain about/identify hypocrisy, murder, etc. In doing so, though, he (and we) should not fall into the trap of stereotyping the motives of an entire desperate sub-group of pawns, be they "male humans" or "cracker Americans". That kind of willful, anger-spawned ignorance will only seed the next form the killing will take, even if it takes a few generations to twist the terminology around enough.
brian, i disagree. i think it's possible for people to sincerely believe in so-called "existential threats". that's not nationalism. it's patriotism. even if willfully blind as applied to you and me, let's not forget that we can afford to luxuriate in this morality.
anyway, if you have to change the term from "patriotism" to "nationalism", then you're asking to have what seems like only a slightly different conversation--but in reality, is a significantly different conversation--and not really a conversation at all--because it shamelessly begs the question. (as in, ok, let's define "nationalism" to mean death-seeking... you will have avoided making a case in the instances of "patriotism"... leaving "patriotism" an unaddressed question.)
I would agree that "nationalism" versus "patriotism" is a significantly different question. Which is kinda my point. One can have fond feelings for one's culture and heritage and all that. When one willfully embraces* government propaganda and joins actively in violence against elite-defined "enemies of the state"...then that is nationalism.
High Arka...
Fair enough. None of your points in the last post seem that insidious. One has to admit that Romney is an Etch-A-Sketch and Santorum is frothy crzyness, though, so how can you question PRESIDENT HOPE N' CHANGEEEEEEEEE? Get with the program!
arka ,.. of more than a march hare .. ,of this bunny energized how i wonder, you are still reminding me a lot of justin ( someone well known here .. but away now , ..of his varying on high functioning autism ,something of ...in the way that he talked .. ) , .. and remember when i asked you a quick question in your comments on something you had written ..and you responded by saying something of a novel coming .. and in return i said that i only had the time for a little reading .. , most in their living only have the time to read and comment a little ,.. . ? accounting .. .
puppylander,
is it too subtle a point if folks join out of patriotism--which certainly entails bearing arms--but only incidentally/ situationally entails killing?
No, it's not. But how many years of occupation/senseless killing of dirt-poor villagers in Afghanistan does it take before the veneer starts to wear off the "patriotism" rationale? It starts to look like willful blindness, as Brian M says. Their joining the military isn't proof of some "crazy" bloodthirst (though I think you're making too much of IOZ's hyperbole here) but it does suggest some level of disregard for the lives of the "other."
As for "let's not forget that we can afford to luxuriate in this morality," I still don't buy that the situation is that dire for most army recruits. For a pretty big segment of the population, the question of morality doesn't even enter the picture. Our presence over there is proof enough that these people are a threat and therefore killing them is just fine.
I still place the majority of the blame on the policymakers who actually send them to war, but I don't think anyone who joins the military knowing full well that they're going to Afghanistan should get a free pass.
brian, more question-begging?
joe, first half is a fair response.
second half, a minor quibble in the moral relativity sense. which of course is a sucky argument (on my part), because i do buy into certain varieties of absolutism.
the larger disagreement is over meaningful alternatives. but once again, that's an empircal question. that is, if any of the 3-8 of us commenting here were to join the military, a fair case could be made that we were "crazy"/bad. i simply wouldn't extrapolate too far from there, because arka is right that that judgment feels an awful lot like "get a job, you bum".
beyond that, by continuing to drive my car, by continuing to use and purchase products such as the keyboard i'm currently typing on (and anything else made of petroleum-based thisandthats), i am as much a part of the unfortunate causal chain/web as the soldier (not on the front line, but) providing logistical support. simply and abstractly, the (a)morality turns on, if it's a question of me/mine who have to suffer vs. other/theirs, i will choose the latter every time, with only very limited apology. my sense is that most human beings share in this, relative to their own situations--even if they don't/won't/can't admit it. i suggest it's an open question whether that's a flaw.
It is an open question, puppy, and we're all responsible for the doings of the rest of us. Look at it on a larger scale; imagine a race of alien beings coming here and asking us why we allow our planet to be raped and so many of its inhabitants to be brutally tortured and killed. Here's our best response:
"Well, it wasn't me!"
Which, to this more enlightened culture, sounds like a different kind of Nuremberg defense. Or, hypothetically speaking, say it's not an alien judge reviewing the case, but a divine one; an angel sent as part of what, to you, would be a minor information-gathering task for the subcommittee on human moral responsibility, to see what kind of a defense there is to offer.
Really, isn't "It wasn't me!" rather a whiny, purposeless defense? This world is filled with sickness and terror because each one of us agrees to it, with each day, preferring to be bought off our concern for the rest of the human race (and the living world, and "the planet," and "the environment," et cetera) in exchange for whatever comforts we have. If we as one (or even just "some of us" or "a lot of us") stood up and marched forward in the service of justice, a lot of us would die, but the problems would end. Some of your Buddhist monks figured this out well during Vietnam, but were left isolated and bought into spectacle.
Convincing you all that you only had responsibility for what "you" did was one of the nastiest tricks played around here. Works well with "evolution" and "sin" and "property," but none of those things leads down a pleasant road.
You know, deep inside, what the right thing is to do. You know how to end it. For example, what is the only right thing to do with a poisoned sector that has begun orchestrating the mass slaughter of others? But fear--or perhaps selfishness--keeps you playing your role.
Your disliking of that role, and the anger you feel as a result, is a healthy reaction, even if you misdirect those feelings at this one or that one. At the very least, don't let that spark vanish. It may preserve enough that your successors march to the proper wars and councils.
le
hearkening back to my comments on the feminism post, it's an unfortunate aspect of reality that all else being equal--and even if not!--i will choose to protect with my daughter (within my own limited grasp of the world as it is) before protecting some nebulous "other" woman. same goes for just about all of my relations with respect to any "other". but i would feel no compunction--i would not prioritize otherwise.
should i? should you? there's a wonderful fortuity today: the megamillions jackpot tonight is $540M. honestly, how would you divvy up the spoils (if you would divvy it at all) if you wound up with $270M after tax? would the bulk go to afghanis first? or would you settle your own affairs first? your family? friends? and maybe, maybe, if there's some left over, send it to strangers? be honest.
arka,
on reading your comment further, i'm not sure whether we agree or disagree... (from "purposeless defense?" on.)
based on my (i feel honest) prior answer, i think "concern for the rest of the human race" rates a bit too facile. there are gradations, degrees and priorizations of concern. this is my basis of easing judgment of "all whose chosen profession is".
i mean, there's a layer, apart from the hypertechnical denial "it wasn't me", isn't there, that's not the fearful/selfish "i did it for me". namely, there's also "i did it for mine". i'm fairly convinced that this is the middle plane on which most humans (read: non-saints) reside. it's a circumscribed altruism, but altruism nevertheless.
what exemption holds there for the "injustices" in the world? or is justice merely ill-conceived?
puppylander,
because arka is right that that judgment feels an awful lot like "get a job, you bum".
If it were true that most soldiers faced a choice between joining the military and starving in the street, then I'm sure there'd be a lot more sympathy for them. But in the absence of empirical data that we can all happily agree upon, I have to say that premise strikes me as wildly exaggerated.
beyond that, by continuing to drive my car, by continuing...
Well, I can't fault you for continuing to live your life. The fact that these things are tied into an immoral foreign policy right now doesn't mean that they necessarily have to be.
if you wound up with $270M after tax? would the bulk go to afghanis first? or would you settle your own affairs first?
Of course you'd settle your own affairs first. There seems to be a strange false equivalency running through this argument, though, equating not wanting to kill Afghans with being charitable toward them. I don't feel compelleld to give them anything. I say we just leave them alone.
Arka,
Whiny or not, I'm not a big fan of the notion of collective guilt. It tends to lead to things like invading a couple of countries and killing untold thousands of people because of the actions of 19 hijackers, or flying planes into buildings because of the actions of a certain government.
I also don't buy the idea that I'm somehow morally obligated to sacrifice my own (and my family's) material well-being in order to prevent an injustice from happening that I indirectly, several times removed, and unwillingly contribute to merely by doing what I need to do to survive. Talk about a morality that nobody can afford.
I'm guessing most people have no idea "how to end it." If they did, it would already be over by now. That's the genius of the system. It doesn't require the active participation of most people, hence the focus on those few roles that are indispensible to the war machine--the people who actually give the orders and pull the triggers.
Joe, that's a dangerously false comparison. "Collective guilt," or recognizing that almost everyone has a part of responsibility for this world, is not the same as blaming one specific country (or small set thereof) for said problem and invading it. In fact, it's rather the opposite. The penitent are not the falsely righteous, which is the America that invaded Afghanistan.
If you're not morally obligated to sacrifice your own well being to help others, then it's dog eat dog because dog must. If it's a question of what you can afford, then you're right: there is nothing here for you but doing what you can. The ground is the limit, the figures don't add up, and complaining about Obama is all you can do. You've just solved the free will problem in the negative, exonerating yourself thereby.
Notice how the latter part of your argument sounds a lot like the traditional red-state "no welfare queens!" argument? Here it is again:
"I also don't buy the idea that I'm somehow morally obligated to sacrifice my own (and my family's) material well-being in order to prevent an injustice from happening that I indirectly, several times removed, and unwillingly contribute to merely by doing what I need to do to survive. Talk about a morality that nobody can afford."
We've come full circle, you might say. You're really not so different than your brothers the Gingrich supporters, or those who say, about Obama:
"I also don't buy the idea that I'm somehow morally obligated to accept Republican craziness in domestic policy that would hurt my family in order to prevent foreign policy injustices from happening that Obama indirectly, several times removed, and unwillingly contributes to merely by doing what he needs to remain politically viable and keep the Republicans from gaining power and doing worse. Talk about a morality that nobody can afford--if it wasn't him, it would be McCain, and things would be even worse."
This is the same dark ritual. You've got skin in the game, so you're only willing to take certain moves. The game will continue.
/sad smile
This one also notices that you would prefer to cite to major publication empirical data to verify for you what happens when people run out of money, health care, food and shelter.
Because, like, if it was bad to attack Iran, the paper of record would say so, right? If a politician was lying, everybody would, like, know!
But here's something anyway:
Yes, Virginia, people do hit bottom in the First World (TM).
joe,
there's a lot of sympathy for soldiers--just not on this thread.
as for the premise, you just have to look up and read the tenor of "flipping burgers" to see it's a lot like "get a job".
i don't think there's a false equivalency. what affairs really need to be settled? i mean, could i continue on in my life, such as it is, "working" (if you can call what i do "work), and just give it all away to some people who could probably use it to buy things like, erm, food? could you? i certainly could. but would i? and would you? and should i? and should you? again, i think it an open question.
anyhow, i think the genius of the system is not it doesn't require active participation of most people. actually, the genius of the system is just the opposite. (the system persists because we can't/won't/don't participate differently.)
Yes, Virginia, people do hit bottom in the First World (TM).
Wait, I'm confused. Was this written before all the homeless people joined the army?
Ms. Anonymous, the ones there didn't join the Army. Instead, they chose to starve and freeze on the street, validating with their deaths the defensive morality of those who did join the Army.
If God existed, people would invent a different one.
High Arka---
Will you expand a bit on your comments here?
Is joke?
Or, which part in particular?
arka, .. if you would like to see something of what i was suggesting above ,of justin .. you can look at some of the posts .. look at the ones when he talks at length ..of the longer ones ,on his shotwell off shoot from his americana blog ..and he also had a few others going at the same time from there last summer .. ,i'd be curious to know what you see ,i think that he is on arthur's blogroll as his name,j. mccarthy, if you are looking for a way in .. . most that have been here for a while know him , he does the talking at length that you are reminding me of in some way mostly on his own blogs ,he is polite and well liked .. . , you are different writers .. but it is something of the way about of the at length that gets my attention ..
arka, more, . also of your seeming like more than a hare in march at times when you mention as you did above of commenting on many other blogs as well as this one at length , /i also find it curious the way that many here are still assuming that you are a man here .. / of justin , more - ... of how you stay with a topic and move around it at length in a particular way ..that justin often did in his writing at length , his talking in this way was connected to his what is now known as some varying on high functioning autism , of what he is and he has talked about this openly now , .. this extreme of focus that he is ..
what was directly connected to the high functioning autism with justin .. was something of a .. calm manic that he was , and a not being aware of something of his own mantra.. .
your ability to swerve between relativism and absolutism is astounding.
additionally, if you refer to yourself as "this one" one more time, i might shoot you and piss on your corpse. can't hold it against me though, have you SEEN this economy?!
interesting thought of the first line anonymous 3,10 .. . / and arka wouldn't be arka without the ..this one .." .. .
the ones there didn't join the Army. Instead, they chose to starve and freeze on the street, validating with their deaths the defensive morality of those who did join the Army.
Those poor, poor boys. Reduced to the choice between starving in the street or slaughtering foreigners against their will.
I for one will NEVER criticize those poor soldiers again. Thank you for your post!
@Mr. Anonymous 3:10, this one finds a great irony in being excoriated for not being sufficiently feminist a few weeks ago, then being threatened now by a man who wants to piss on this corpse once it's been murdered.
Some might see this as a dark underside to a deceptive, discriminatory, violent "feminism."
Which are the relatives and which the absolutes? Dissect away. Everything is laid out in public; enough inquiry will display accuracy in clear detail.
@Ms. Anonymous 5:01, this one did not suggest "those poor boys" (men or women, you might have meant to say) should not be criticized. It has been repeated many times, by more than this one, that we're not trying to exonerate all soldiers, but rather, to counter IOZ's stereotypical slur about the free-willed choice to join.
Trying again:
#40-B: Individual soldiers may still rightly, and should still, be criticized for wrong acts.
Despite #40-B, #40-F: all soldiers should not be considered to have joined the military as an unweighted choice based purely on personal philosophy.
Your numbers on domestic starvation are way off:
Second Exposure
the relative: "that guy who murdered (at least) 17 innocent unarmed non-combatants in a single night deserves sympathy, understanding. without context, his actions cannot be judged."
the absolute: "you people are complicit."
pissing on your corpse was a reference to another atrocity recently committed by a different batch of our soldiers.
you are derisive, smug, and combative. which would be bearable if your arguments held water, or were compelling. but forming sound arguments is of no interest to you. you pick fights to display your dexterity. in short, please go away.
ps. a few weeks ago you responded to a post about feminism and anarchy by bemoaning (at length) the dangers of the feminist holocaust wherein women cut off lots of penises. if you claim the mantle of feminism one more time i'll piss on your corpse.
the relative: "that guy who murdered (at least) 17 innocent unarmed non-combatants in a single night deserves sympathy, understanding. without context, his actions cannot be judged."
the absolute: "you people are complicit."
pissing on your corpse was a reference to another atrocity recently committed by a different batch of our soldiers.
you are derisive, smug, and combative. which would be bearable if your arguments held water, or were compelling. but forming sound arguments is of no interest to you. you pick fights to display your dexterity. in short, please go away.
ps. a few weeks ago you responded to a post about feminism and anarchy by bemoaning (at length) the dangers of the feminist holocaust wherein women cut off lots of penises. if you claim the mantle of feminism one more time i'll piss on your corpse.
For the temporary record, this one deleted her own comment at 9:50, then replaced it with a grammar edit a few minutes thereafter. The subsequent comment has since been deleted without note.
This may be a technical error, or the library may be on fire; only time will tell.
@9:08: Yes.
Let's add 40c: While soliders may be criticized for "wrong acts," i.e., the few atrocities which come to light despite the usual massive collusion and cover-up, they cannot be held morally accountable for the act of volunteering to kill without question or any other aspect of their ideology or service because they all "face starvation" if they don't join the army. "Facing starvation" is broadly defined as anything but guaranteed cradle to grave security AND cultural respect. It's not just joblessness or a low-paying job. Even a middle-class job may be terminated forcing someone to instantly "face starvation." Having an opulent house is the same as "facing starvation" because it is theoretically possible the house could be lost by missing a mortgage payment and the payee unable to find any means of eating. Not having your cultural values or social class respected by the liberal media causes psychological pain, which is sufficiently similar to "facing starvation" that it can be considered the same thing.
Requests for evidence that the bulk of volunteers actually "face starvation" is proof that one is a naïve ideological dupe. Meanwhile, all critics of the military who are not currently jailed for tax resistance are hypocrites.
None of this concern-troll casuistry is remotely honest or morally heartfelt, which is why it will go cheerfully on and on.
@9:08x2
1) The following action is combative:
A) Claiming that not all those who work for the U.S. military are volunteering to kill without question.
B) Threatening to kill someone and urinate on their corpse because they disagreed with you on the internet.
2) Quotation marks should be used:
A) Around your interpretative paraphrase of someone else's arguments.
B) Around a direct quotation of what someone else said.
Unfortunately, you chose "B" in each instance. See this one after class.
@2:09
Posit that you're completely accurate about this one. This one is an awful "concern-troll." With that understood, let's free ourselves of the need to insult this one and focus on a substantive question: Does one need to be currently starving to be legitimately concerned about it?
Does a hypothetical woman need to be being currently raped to be concerned about rape?
If she is not being raped right then, should we say that her fear about walking through the bad section of town late one night is unfounded?
Let us assume that this woman's friend had too much alcohol to drink, and could not, therefore, drive her home without an unacceptable level of risk. And that this woman had her last $80 in her purse, and knew from an acquaintance that it would cost at least that for a taxi ride home from this part of town.
The woman sits in the corner, worrying about dark shapes in the alleys along the walk home.
Someone comes up to her and asks what she's worried about.
"Being raped on the walk home," she replies.
He listens to her situation, then snorts. "You're not really worried about it. You know you're going to take the cab, even if it costs a lot."
Upset, she turns away. He's right...I'm going to have to take the cab...but I'll be out of money until next Friday! Maybe I could just drive with Ginger...no, no, she's loaded; I have to call!
She makes the call. Out to the curb she goes, to stand huddled against the base of the streetlamp, watching shadows.
At last the taxi pulls up. She climbs in, greets the driver, and fumbles in her purse. "Oh my god," she murmurs, her fingers catching.
The driver hesitates five feet shy of the stop sign on the corner. "Somethin' wrong, baby?"
"I...someone must've taken my cash!"
She makes her eyes wide and pleading, but he ignores her as he focuses on a different part of the rearview. With a sigh, he puts it into reverse and begins backing up toward the bar. "No problem," he says sarcastically. He slams the door on her apology as she toes at the sidewalk.
She heads back inside to look for Ginger. Blood like ice, she suspects Ginger's already gone home.
* * *
1) Was the central character "really" afraid of being raped, before she called the cab?
2) Was the central character's fear of walking home through the high crime area unfounded? Could it be said to have legitimately affected her actions at the time?
3) Would your answers to (1) or (2) above change if the central character had found money in her purse and been able to pay the cab driver?
4) This essay is meant to illustrate how individuals do not always have the benefit of "hindsight," or knowing what will happen later, as they think and feel in their current situation. Discuss whether or not, at the end of the selection, the central character should still be worried about rape, or if she should not, and explain why you feel that way.
5) Do you believe that Ginger will be willing to give the central character back the money she stole from the central character's purse while the central character was in the bathroom? If you had known that this was how the money vanished, would your feelings on personal responsibility in question (4) above change (if applicable)?
i'm 9:08. you corrected my punctuation and my rhetoric. i assume then that you don't take issue with the substance of my remarks: that your morality is indecipherable, thus you don't have a substantive moral objection here, thus you're only in town for the show (YOUR show).
but just to further my point, couldn't my threat to kill you and piss on your dead body be explained away by how close to starvation i am? because i am more or less broke.
no, right? i'm at fault regardless of my finances. one shouldn't threaten to kill people and piss on them, and the economy has fuck all to do with it.
on the other hand, when considering the soldiers who actually killed innocent strangers and actually pissed on their actual corpses, one's judgement of them and their deeds suddenly must be tempered with an appreciation for how tenuous their situation would have been at home. i mean, yeah they murder people for a living, and seem to be devoid of humanity in their enjoyment of defacing the remains of their victims, but that doesn't mean you know WHY they signed up! maybe they were poor.
you see? relativism and absolutism, each when convenient.
ps how do you have so much time on your hands? with all the fights i see you picking around the internet, i don't see how you'd have time to shit, let alone work. rather far from starvation, methinks.
9:08: "the relative: 'that guy who murdered (at least) 17 innocent unarmed non-combatants in a single night deserves sympathy, understanding. without context, his actions cannot be judged.'"
This one didn't say that. The particular guy in IOZ's example, or the peeing guys, may not deserve "sympathy" as you seem to be using it. That doesn't mean that all those in the employ of the U.S. military are undeserving of sympathy.
Additionally, someone can deserve sympathy and still have taken a wrong action. For example, an abused child who grows up to become a child abuser may be a terrible person deserving of judgment, but also deserving of sympathy.
To you, does a sin lose one all worth?
Can there be no action or circumstance so dire that someone might be driven to sin in an understandable way?
May we consider these questions without setting up the current corporate media examples as the only possible lens through which to consider military volunteerism and personal choice?
Because there was once a black guy who raped a white woman, completely unprovoked, and that still doesn't justify tarring all black men as rapists. Or even all black men who volunteer to live in urban areas, work night shifts, and wear bulky jackets on their way home.
9:08: "a few weeks ago you responded to a post about feminism and anarchy by bemoaning...the dangers of the feminist holocaust wherein women cut off lots of penises."
No, but if you like, please do dredge up the historical record and provide what this one said that warned of the dangers of a feminist holocaust including penis-cutting, or what this one said that made you read that in.
ps this one has two jobs, three kids, and a spouse who likes to hit every few months, so the output you're seeing is because i'm just that good
It goes cheerfully on and on.
arka , .. " .. . good " ? .. at the end of 9:51 .. . what does the good mean as you are using it here .. / no one with two jobs and kids plenty .. has time to comment at length at many blogs and do their jobs well at the same time .. / and anonymous 10:23 , you have newly defined ..cheerfully .. thank you .. amused by my own thoughts on seeing that .. .
"Judging all contract killers for the actions of a tiny few is like saying all black men are rapists."
This shit is stupid and boring. Can someone call Child Protective Servics?
"no one with two jobs and kids plenty .. has time to comment at length at many blogs and do their jobs well at the same time."
o yes, that's true
Well, anne, that's not exactly true, now is it? Men with two kids, two jobs, five houses, four wives, several thousand heaps of porn, et al., have plenty of time to fuck around on the interwebz.
I can have four wives *and* porn?
you've missed the point on that one nony 5,54 , .. i said do well .. ,
Mitt Romeny leaves comments at Ioz!
Nonny 2:43, most of the military is not contract killers; they're just bureaucrats subject to military discipline, extrajudicial law and fewer workplace protections. They may wear uniforms, but otherwise, they're paper shufflers and organizers, no more guilty of atrocities than their non-uniformed domestic counterparts, and simultaneously, less guilty of being dishonest about it.
Those who actually walk around combat zones with guns make up a very small proportion of the military. Slurring military "volunteers" (just like "volunteer American citizens" or "volunteer American military financiers"--e.g., taxpayers) as contract killers is a highly erroneous judgment.
Speaking of erroneous judgements, Arka, nobody pays taxes voluntarily, and nobody goes to jail for deciding not to join the military.
So, if somebody joins the military (a combat unit, knowing full well this will lead to deployment to Afghanistan) when he could have taken another, albeit less glamorous job, it's not a "slur" to call him a contract killer; it's just being less dishonest about it.
Here's where the logic breaks down.
System outline
Paying taxes because one would otherwise be imprisoned has definition coercion.
Taking military job to avoid starving on the street is not coercion.
You errors seem sourced in several places:
1) Those who join the military can attempt to obtain certain assignments, but not control them. Therefore, someone can join the military hoping to be a requisitions officer, but be assigned to a "combat zone" when they would have preferred otherwise.
2) Those who join the military do not always have the option of a "less glamorous job." Sometimes the option is "no job."
As to #2, this is the arrogant, high-flung claim that Dubya made when he was explaining why we needed to have "guest worker" programs to allow workers in to do jobs that "Americans didn't want." All the lib'ruls derided him then for not saying the truth: that Americans did want the jobs, but that the companies wanted to use non-citizens so that they could reduce workplace protections and offer significantly reduced wages and benefits.
There isn't always a job. It isn't always a "choice," unless you accept starvation on the street as a valid choice.
The reason this argument keeps spinning its wheels is that, instead of reducing it to its basic elements--admitting that there aren't always jobs available--the "contract killer by choice" contingent keeps ignoring the fact that it's not always a choice. There is a very good argument there, where one could argue the morality of deciding to starve instead of deciding to kill--but we can't even reach that point, because the associated dissonance of admitting that infantry grunts are often killing in order to dodge starvation is too painful for the assorted anonymi to acknowledge.
Or, from another angle, are you disputing that? Are you claiming that there are, in fact, always living-wage jobs available for all Americans, and would be if all the military employees were immediately laid off?
Those poor, poor boys, forced to slaughter women and children to avoid starvation in the streets!
How can you hold them accountable for even the worst atrocities when the alternative is STARVATION?
Starvation! IN THE STREETS!
Actually there was a guy in my home town who enlisted because he was on the brink of starvation.
He did two tours of duty in the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle.
Anonymous 1 and Anonymous 2, Socratically speaking, are you positing as fact that no one joining the military is otherwise at risk of being without money for food and shelter?
still sticking up for the downtrodden, are we?
instead of incessantly blathering on about the REALITY of poverty, you should go talk to some poor people. we tend to be less into letting one another off the hook for doing horrible things. that's kind of, like, bourgeois paternalism, ya know?
Q: Socratically speaking, trollity troll troll?
A: Hahaha! Toot toot troll troll!
@10:31, can one lesbian, or seventeen lesbians, speak for all lesbians?
If a Hopi tribesman apologizes for the Battle of Custer, does that mean Custer is no longer bad?
If Barack Obama says that black fathers are failures, does that mean black fathers are failures?
If a poor person says that poor people should not be "let off the hook" for a choice, should all poor people be kept on the hook?
Because this one knows at least three regularly homeless who think the system isn't fair and can force you to do bad things. Their opinions do not invalidate yours, nor validate mine.
This discussion almost makes it seem as though this one suggested poor people should be not held responsible for atrocities upon working for the military. You might refer to this above:
"#40-B: Individual soldiers may still rightly, and should still, be criticized for wrong acts.
Despite #40-B, #40-F: all soldiers should not be considered to have joined the military as an unweighted choice based purely on personal philosophy."
This one can't be the only one in the world who fails to find delight in winning arguments by (1) having more friends right then, or by (2) sticking fingers in ears and going "nannee nannee buttface troll dyke muslim!" Wouldn't you find it more interesting to explore troublesome issues than ones you already have an easy time with?
Cheerfully on and on.
O'Brien said it best, but the face is still here.
The jackboots are "facing starvation," so they have every right and a perfectly clean conscience.
Now hold still.
They're not all facing starvation in that sense; see above. Remember: all soldiers should not be considered to have joined the military as an unweighted choice based purely on personal philosophy. That does not mean that they have every right to do anything, nor that they warrant no moral judgment for a bad action.
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