all the rage
This is an old post I was writing last week that I abandoned when: a) it got so over-covered you could say it was 'beat to death', and b) I realized it was going to require that I stop and think, which I try to avoid. I return to it because, I forgot to delete it.
Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), finds it necessary to tell us he's heard all he wants to.
as I watch this outrage, this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners...I'm probably not the only one at this table more outraged at the outrage than the treatment
Senator Critical of Focus on Prisoner Abuse
He goes on from there to rant about his outrage at the many ...humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over... It probably seems like I took that last quote out of context and it would look better in context. No, it would show that is his way of referring to the Red Cross. He has no use for the Red Cross himself: they don't carry reptile blood.
The good Senator, sincere in his feelings and feeling the need to share them gets expanded treatment for his theme in the next day's Washington Posts Style section
The Scandal Scandal? Sen. James Inhofe's Opposing View. This makes sense, his problems seems more like a "lifestyles" issue to me, than news.
Between this article, an Alternet piece
Waiting for 'Torture Fatigue' and some fill-in "jitney" coverage by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post Wed. and Thu.. I hear a plea for everyone to have a little "perspective" on this war. Either that or maybe the sound of people rounding up the usual suspects
Abu Ghraib Denial, Part 2 - Right-wing culture warriors are on the case. By Timothy Noah.
Perspective.
Yesterday Al Jazeera was carrying a headline Bloggers doubt Berg execution video I saw this on the Google news page. If this is any indication the Arab media has as little taste for rigorous self examination as anyone else. I used to think al Jazeera wanted to be the Fox news of the middle east; headlines like this led me to think they doubt the need to be as classy an operation as Fox. Perspective may be up to us.
What is the meaning of this perspective then?
The implicit case inside all these pleas for perspective is that what we have done is not bad, not so bad at least. When we are done trying to deny or mitigate what we have done, we will turn to what some other has done and tell you: now this is bad. Yes it is bad. So this perspective asks that we be aware of others behavior and judge one act in terms of another. The issue of who is better - better seemingly a comparative term and exercise (an indistinction of common usage) is something, that I believe, really sorts out separately: determined by individual independent choice and action. One party's evil, cared for and nurtured, does not make another party's good.
Following evil apace down the path of humiliation, violence, murder, and destruction, devoid of human empathy, regarding that some kind of absolvement lies in the distance between you and them. In the long run this leaves only one indistinguishable group on that road. Distance and difference on that path are meaningless. In the short run it defines you as a follower. Those ahead of you determine and direct your actions, because your acts are in reaction to theirs and you justify yours by theirs. It is ensured that you will eventually pass every way point they pass, inevitably because there is ever only one choice on that slope: Down. Fundamentally this is not human endeavor directed towards justice searching towards the good. It is a game of circles and lines. Take any atrocity imaginable and try to keep it outside the diminishing line you stand by. It will always be behind you; inside your chalked circle.
There is an almost pleading tone to this NYT editorial from last week The Abu Ghraib Spin, unheeded.
The military and administration circles their wagons and try to express uniform puzzlement and paucity of information
Military denies pattern | csmonitor.com in the
gray zone of war (notwithstanding with some defection Army, CIA want torture truths exposed) while those outside step up the sibilant murmur of small asides trailer-park porn as they work to divide the previous "us" to provide a further them who can be pushed out into the wilderness.
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