Real World Event Discussions

The Demonization of the Opposition

POSTED BY: SoupCatcher
UPDATED: Sunday, August 1, 2004 20:50
VIEWED: 35776
PAGE 9 of 20

PURPLEBELLY

Thursday, July 15, 2004 12:11 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
So, where ARE you?

UK, border with France.
I'm here at lot lately because my Usenet feed's got slow, that's my story anywho.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/poetry/outloud/cope.shtml

DRAKON

Thursday, July 15, 2004 12:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
To me his argument is really the embodiment of demonization, which is to say polarization, which is to say thinking always in terms of black and white. I'm thinking that Drakon's argument is really a fundamentalist one. Fundamentalism is characterized by very strict definitions that the fundamentalist doesn't think are strict at all because, to him, that's just the way things are. Fundamentalists have a very mystified idea of all those words that Signy wants him to define. They mean what they mean, everybody knows that--everybody who isn't dumb, or mental, or playing word games.

Being a fundamentalist would imply religion at some point wouldn't it? Not being religious, nor even Christian, I don't think it fits.

As far as words go, well, I do recognize they are symbolic representations of things. I do know the difference between rocks and the word "rocks". If I use a term in a non-standard fashion, I will define it. When I use them in the standard fashion, and get this "well what does the word 'life' mean?" stuff, well, thinking through all the possibilities, I have come to the conclusion that this was just some game that Signy was playing. He appears intelligent and an English speaker. So far I have not seen anything to indicate otherwise.

I don't see demonization as a product of polarization. There can be good faith disagreement as toward goals and means. Just because you have different ideas does not make you evil. At least that is my view. I see that some do not share that view.

Maybe we are talking different things here. I see demonization as ascribing immoral intentions and/or actions to the other party. Demons are evil. Demons destroy, make people miserable, and kill them. They make things worse. We assign values like "good" and "evil" to actions and intentions, sometimes based on some code of behavior. I prefer the consequentialist approach, the morality of the action is in its effects. It has fewer problems than other methods I have seen.

Quote:
What came to mind were hate and naivete. The lefties are nothing if not kind and gentle and compassionate, aren't they? And if you call a conservative naive, he'll just laugh and blow smoke in your face, right?

I don't think this is right. First off, there is an anti-intellectualism backlash that is growing amongst conservatives. We see that the liberals have taken over the colleges and universities. We get the impression that a lot of what they are producing as deep insight, is useless, ineffective. We see so called smart people hung up with definitions of simple words, wanting to argue them, instead of dealing with the real world problems. It is as if they have forgotten that the purpose of all this mental gymnastics is to aid folks in their daily lives, their constant interaction with the real, physical world. Conservatives prefer a more "common sense" approach.

As for the left, as opposed to liberal, that is a different story. It comes out of Marx's flawed economics, and how he thought the world should be run. Also a confusion he had, (which I think for its time is understandable. You have to remember that Marx did his writing at the beginning of the industrial revolution, when a lot of folks were leaving the farms and heading to factory jobs in the city.) of the new cultural structures that were emerging. He saw them as too much like the old system.

Marx saw the rising burgeious as essentially indistinguishable from the old style bi-polar class structure. He saw them as the new aristocracy, and the proletariat as the same as the peasant class of old. He saw capitalims as maintaining the same class structure as before, with folks who owned the land (and soemtimes the people) ruling, while the peasants toiled on.

Anyway, this is an abbreviated version, this is already too long by far. Essentially Marx did not think the class structure would last, or work for long. And he imagined a world where "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," workers par

DRAKON

Thursday, July 15, 2004 12:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
That's why I really want to talk to Drakon. He (I presume "he") has obviously thought for a long time about a lot of things, and believes and feels deeply. But he's also too close to his own viewpoint to be able to think about it. A little distance is a good thing.

I am a he, last time I checked. And I have spent a lot of time on owl shift, and before that, midwatches in the Navy, where it is dull and boring (and thank goodness. Excitement means you are being shot at, or shooting. And with 16 nuclear missiles, you really don't want to do much shooting)

Why think about these things? Sooner or later you have to come to a conclusion, decide this is how the world works, and try it out. If you are wrong, you can see that, from the consequences of your actions. If they ain't what you expected, then you have a bug in your model, and you can fix it, based on new sensory data. And go on from there. If things work out, that is a pretty good indication you were right.

I see thinking as, well, the one thing humans have going for them. The way a lion has his strenght, or a cheeta his speed. Its a tool to help us survive as individuals and as a species. Off line simulation is far safer than doing things in the real world.

But, it can work against you. You get hung up in word games, or indecision for any reason, your jammed. The 'verse keeps rolling and you become unable to respond, to act. Usually this results in the 'verse running over the top of you, which ain't a lot of fun.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"

HKCAVALIER

Thursday, July 15, 2004 2:39 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by CapnHarbatkin:
Sorry for jumping in so late here.

I've just spent 2 hours reading and considering this thread and I have a real problem with Drakon stating things over and over and over again as facts with no offered proof.

I can't believe no one has called him on any of the dozens of unsupported assertions he's made. I'll just take two around the prison scandal as a start...

Drakon's Assertion:
"Second, again we are talking about bad guys, folks who have gassed Kurds, killed both civilian Iraqis and US troops, terrorists and thugs. "

My offered evidence that this is not true:

" Many of the prisoners abused at the Abu Ghraib prison were innocent Iraqis picked up at random by US troops, and incarcerated by under-qualified intelligence officers, a former US interrogator from the notorious jail told the Guardian."
( http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1211374,00.html)

"Military officials said 70% to 90% of the Iraqis swept up for interrogation were arrested by mistake, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-06-09-our-view_x.
htm

Thanks Capn, I know that a lot of what Drakon asserts as fact is bs, but as you've seen, his posts are soooooo very long and each one contains soooooo many outrageious details that it's hard to pick any one out. And URL's are not my strong suit.

So I've tried to approach the discussion in terms of principles. Besides, in my experience, discrediting someone's post and offering proof really just causes the discussion to go off in a "my sources can beat up your sources" kind of direction, you know?

So anyway, Drakon has said repeatedly that the liberal opposition to war with Iraq is inconsistant with the liberal sympathy for "the little guy." That a "true" liberal would support ouster of Saddam. Well, I hate to say it, but I think the reality of our situation is a little more complicated than Drakon would like.

Be advised: I'm gonna use a really wonkey, Oprafied analogy to make my point.

Okay. Say you live in an apartment house and right across the way lives a woman who's boyfriend beats her. You've seen the police over there more than once but you can tell that the woman refuses to press charges, so the boyfriend is never arrested. When the cops leave, he beats her all the more for calling the cops.

So you decide to be a hero. You go over there yourself and beat the living crap out of the boyfriend and tell him that if he ever comes back you'll kill him.

So right off the bat things start to get crazy. First off, this woman doesn't even thank you! I mean, you put your life on the line for her (okay, not really, you're a black belt in karate and the guy was drunk, but still!) You could see the look of relief on her face when you first came in and pulled her brutal boyfriend off of her, but she turns around and starts screaming at you to stop hurting her boyfriend and she jumps on you and starts smacking you around the head. Then, when you rebuild her coffee table which he broke and put in a new window that he punched out, she just glares at you, like you're some kind of invading army!

So you leave her alone to sort out her new life now that you've ousted her evil boyfriend.

Then what happens? First of all, her very oldfashioned family start coming by to berate her about not having a man. Her whole community rises up against her for being some kind of faithless wife. And before you know it, she's shacked up with a new abusive boyfriend. Now is this boyfriend worse than the old one, or better? Who knows?

What you do know, is that you were a short-sighted jackass to think you could barge into her life and change it without taking into account the long term issues and cultural sources of her problem.

This is why many of us could predict exactly what is going on in Iraq today, when the administration couldn't. And this is how a nice liberal person, with some knowledge of human

HONEY

Thursday, July 15, 2004 2:57 PM

HKCavalier wrote:
"So I was thinking: What is it that liberals are busy disowning about themselves and projecting onto conservatives? And what do the conservatives deny in themselves and blame the liberals for?"

Pathology is pathology, no matter what the political slant. No one party-leaning has a greater claim to it than the other. Not saying "all liberals" or "all conservatives" are pathological! Just some...

HONEY

Thursday, July 15, 2004 3:15 PM

Drakon wrote:
"Trying to blow off my arguments because you don't like them, well that don't sound too mature to me. "

You can't honestly believe that. I've stopped the discussion with you because you continue to mischaracterize my position -- as you have just done again. It's like banging my head against a wall -- it's only "mature" to figure out it ain't doing any good to discuss this with you and then quit doing it.

If anyone out there would like to discuss the actual facts and would like to figure out ways to salvage the situation so that we can reclaim the title of "good guys" honestly, please feel free to engage me in this thread or any other. Drakon, I am formally inviting you to not participate, due to your track record with me.

TOMSMEAGOL

Thursday, July 15, 2004 4:08 PM

I apologize in advance for the length of this post.

Drakon--

Believe it or not, I'm going to start this post by defending you...

Quote:
Quote:
Mental health care professionals have three words to describe persistently splitting the world into black and white: "Borderline Personality Disorder," a.k.a., chronic inability to mature.

And accusing those who disagree with you of some sort of pyschological problem, to dismiss their views and their voice, well that does not strike me as too mature either.

I agree. That was a very cheap shot and totally invalidated the original poster's criticism of you.

However, you also said in your reply...

Quote:
Trying to blow off my arguments because you don't like them, well that don't sound too mature to me.

Gee, Drakon, isn't that basically what you've been doing this entire time? That's a bit hypocritical of you, I'm afraid.

Quote:
For something like 200 years, Carthage kept attacking Rome, invading the Roman Empire, and generally being a pain in the butt. Rome got fed up with it, and destroyed the city, killed or enslaved its population and dispersed the survivors throughout the empire. And salted the earth, so the city could never ever be rebuilt. It may have been brutal and repulsive and well I am sure you can come up with all sorts of negative descriptions. But one inarguable fact is that Carthage was never a problem again.

That's true. Carthage wasn't a problem again. But does that make it right? If your brother constantly picks fights with you, destroys your belongings, and heaps non-stop verbal abuse upon you, does that mean you're justified to kill him so he won't do it anymore?

Quote:
I don't want it to come to that. And I doubt you or anyone else does either. That is why the middle east is going to have to change. And soon too. Combine suicidal terrorist tactics with WMDs and you have a major problem. A few people can wreck death and destruction on a large population, on scales undreamed of in human history.

I'm glad you don't want it to come to that. And I agree, WMD in the hands of terrorists is not a good thing.

Quote:
If the situation gets desperate enough, if the governments that use terrorism to deflect their population's anger away from their home grown problems don't change, it may create the will needed to commit such a horrible act. That is one reason why Iraq must succeed.

I disagree. I don't think we would ever devolve to mass genocide. If we did, we would be no different than Nazi Germany. And I agree that Iraq needs to succeed. I think we probably have very different definitions of success, but I agree that it would be wrong for us to allow it to fall into a state of chaos.

Quote:
First off, there is an anti-intellectualism backlash that is growing amongst conservatives. We see that the liberals have taken over the colleges and universities. We get the impression that a lot of what they are producing as deep insight, is useless, ineffective. We see so called smart people hung up with definitions of simple words, wanting to argue them, instead of dealing with the real world problems. It is as if they have forgotten that the purpose of all this mental gymnastics is to aid folks in their daily lives, their constant interaction with the real, physical world. Conservatives prefer a more "common sense" approach.

Anyway, That is a brief (no really) thumbnail of how some on our side see things. We see modern day lefties as confusing the political and cultural structures here in America as identical to the ones that have existed in Europe. Which leads them to think that American conservatives are trying to conserve the same things as European ones had in the past. Instead of a completely different paradigm. That misunderstanding also contributes to the demonization from the left. Which gives rise to the old saw about how liberals think conservatives are evil, and conservatives think liberals are stupid.

I am not so sure. There are some (Hitchens comes to mind) on the left who

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SIGNYM

Thursday, July 15, 2004 4:34 PM

Drakon, you spent far too much time with 16 nuclear warheads, thinking about horrible things with no reasonable feedback for your musings. I hope to God you still AREN'T babysitting those warheads 'cause friend, you need a change.

It's not the panic that in your posts that troubles me, or the fact that you blatantly mistake the facts. Everyone gets frightened (staring into the void too long will do that) and everyone makes mistakes. It's the "hamster on a hamster wheel" quality of your posts- you reiterate the same concerns over and over, impervious to either facts or logic. I can show you, point for point, where you're wrong and you'll turn around within two posts and reassert the same thing.

Am I concerned with the same things you are? YES, I AM. You're not the only one who thinks about security. I think about it a LOT. I was NOT AT ALL surprised by 9-11 because for the previous five years I'd breathed a sight of relief each year and think "Well, we ducked another one." I actually warned fellow bbxers about biowarfare just two weeks before the anthrax letters- a warning that got me followed by the FBI for a couple of days, seeing as how I am also a scientist. I would not be surprised about a radiological or chemical release in the upcoming months. (But I hope that doesn't happen! O'wise I'll be disappeared by Homeland Security!)

But I also realize that at the technical/ security end there's only so much the USA can do, unless we want to turn ourselves into a clone of Stalinist Russia. Even Israel can't deal 100% with the "Palestinian problem". I think it was the Shin Bet that stated the only ones who can stop Palestinian suicide bombings are the Palestinians themselves. The answer is not JUST more and better security because every security measure has a counter-measure.

Nobody here is arguing that we should just kick back and let terrorism continue. But what we need are EFFECTIVE tools against terrorism.

DRAKON

Thursday, July 15, 2004 9:30 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TomSmeagol:
That's true. Carthage wasn't a problem again. But does that make it right? If your brother constantly picks fights with you, destroys your belongings, and heaps non-stop verbal abuse upon you, does that mean you're justified to kill him so he won't do it anymore?

I really hate saying this, but right or wrong ain't got nothing to do with it. It is a fact of nature, you put almost any life form in a desperate enough situation, they will fight back to the best of their ability, with anything and everything they got.

Look, I don't want that to happen any more than anyone else. But I can foresee it coming to that, if things get bad enough. That is one reason why success in Iraq is so important. It will prevent that kind of genocide. It will prove Zarqiwi wrong, that Islam and democracy are not incompatable, that their culture can be made less of a threat to us, without destroying it utterly.

What will it take to get there? I wish I could say. If someone told me 4 years ago that some folks would commit suicide by crashing planes into a skyscraper, killing thousands, I would have thought you were crazy, that nobody was that stupid or insane. I'd like to think I am wrong here, that no matter what happens, what atrocity is visited upon us, that it will never come to that. But again, I am not so confident as before. I have had that frightening sentiment expressed to me a number of times already.

Quote:
I disagree. I don't think we would ever devolve to mass genocide. If we did, we would be no different than Nazi Germany. And I agree that Iraq needs to succeed. I think we probably have very different definitions of success, but I agree that it would be wrong for us to allow it to fall into a state of chaos.

There would be one big difference. We would be alive, while Nazi Germany is still dead. And it would be justified as a matter of necessity. Everyone would hang their head, and cry about it. But in the end, it will be chalked up to, "well they shouldn't have started it."

Quote:
How are your statements above not in themselves demonization? You accuse the left of spouting hurtful and stereotypical rehtoric, yet you yourself use it as a "valid" argument.

In this piece, I was attempting only to describe what I see as a common perseption amongst conservatives. I was trying very hard not to make a judgement call here, but only describe the perception. That is the way a lot of us see things. And that perception is what you have to fight against, if you want to change it.

Now whether that perception matches reality, that is another topic for discussion. It was a bit simplified, and still rather long winded, but I think it is a more or less acurate picture how the political left and liberals are seen by conservatives in general.

Quote:
Contradict yourself much? How can you say first that it is OK to criticize the president (albeit if it's relevant and constructive) and yet later claim that it is wrong to ever criticize the president publically? And by the way, regardless of whether you think you're contradicting yourself or not, I happen to strongly disagree that the president is not open to criticism, even in a time of war. If the president does something that I feel is inappropriate or incorrect, I have the right as a citizen to disagree with him, even in a public place. If the framers of the constitution hadn't felt the same, they wouldn't have felt the need to include the first amendment.

Yes, you have every right to say whatever you want. That ain't the issue. Do you want to change things? Do you want to help? Do you want them to listen to you, or do you want to get blown off for any number of reasons?

You are not going to change anyone's mind against their will. You have to be persuasive. You have to give them the impression that you are not a moonbat, that you are not implicitly working for their destruction.

So whether it is your right or not, is immaterial. Some things work, some don't. And ain't no law going to ch

DRAKON

Thursday, July 15, 2004 9:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
(But I hope that doesn't happen! O'wise I'll be disappeared by Homeland Security!)

Grin, and I am the paranoid one.

You are having difficulty convincing me, partly because I've read Usama statements, and those of Zarqiwi, and others on the other side. You can do the same. They are on the web these days. Those guys want us dead, or in submission to their ideals of how life should be. Ideals that, well, I don't think I would survive long under. Probably most folks around here would not.

And I would strongly disagree that you have ever laid out any kind of point by point rebuttal. I have gotten plenty of snide comments, whining, and word games. But not really a whole lot in the way of argument, or logic.

Quote:
But I also realize that at the technical/ security end there's only so much the USA can do, unless we want to turn ourselves into a clone of Stalinist Russia. Even Israel can't deal 100% with the "Palestinian problem". I think it was the Shin Bet that stated the only ones who can stop Palestinian suicide bombings are the Palestinians themselves. The answer is not JUST more and better security because every security measure has a counter-measure.

There is one that does not have a counter measure. I have outlined it earlier. It is a horrible one, and one that I think you and I can agree we would not want to see happen.

You are right, they have to change. Israel's wall has proven pretty effective, but even a 90% percent drop in suicide attacks is not 100%. Now how do you bring about that change?

Quote:

Nobody here is arguing that we should just kick back and let terrorism continue. But what we need are EFFECTIVE tools against terrorism.

I agree completely. We already have one, but like I and others have said, we don't want to use it. We need more.

Which again is the reason why Iraq has to succeed as a democratic and free nation.

"Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"