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On being a soggy liberal
Oct. 20th, 2005 09:38 amThis posting is a relocated answer to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lproven here on the subject of spraying pigs' blood at Muslim terrorists.
Liam said: They want to kill us and in return you want to /understand their motivations and cultural context?/ I sit amazed.
"They" are people. Just like you and I. The idea that "terrorists" and "rapists" and "cabinet ministers" and all other identifiable subgroups of humanity that do evil and (apparently) incomprehensible things are somehow different from "us"; that we, living through similar events, placed in equivalent situations wouldn't react in a similar way is a nice, comfortable illusion. It's "them" that are bad'n'wrong, not "us". "We" would never behave that way.
Sorry.
Yes "we" would.
I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't protect ourselves against attack from anyone and anywhere that attacks us: what I am suggesting is that we maybe look at longer term preventive measures by seeing why some people feel so (otherwise) powerless and angry that they want to attack us and maybe, just maybe, see if it's at least partially because we've backed them into a corner after a couple of millenia of political, military and commercial (to the extent that those three things can be separated) violence.
In what way is using someone's own insane beliefs to prevent them from committing a crime a "lynch mob mindset"?
By dismissing another world-view as "insane", you implicitly dismiss those who hold that world-view which, in turn, renders them "other" and safe to insult, abuse, incarcerate and kill as a collective group. That sounds to me very like the state in which black people were (and to an extent still are) in parts of the US; the state in which gay people are to a significant (but I hope) minority of people in this country; the state in which, increasingly, anyone of a Semitic (or, indeed, Brazillian) appearance is in this country.
Oh, and leaving aside for a moment the spraying of pigs' blood, it would also be nice if the measures taken by our government purportedly to counter the "threat of terrorism" (1) did so, rather than increasing that threat and (2) weren't just more steps to screw down the rest of the population and, as far as they can get away with it, abolish the rule of law using external threat (enemies are necessary to government) as a handy covering excuse.
lproven here on the subject of spraying pigs' blood at Muslim terrorists.Liam said: They want to kill us and in return you want to /understand their motivations and cultural context?/ I sit amazed.
"They" are people. Just like you and I. The idea that "terrorists" and "rapists" and "cabinet ministers" and all other identifiable subgroups of humanity that do evil and (apparently) incomprehensible things are somehow different from "us"; that we, living through similar events, placed in equivalent situations wouldn't react in a similar way is a nice, comfortable illusion. It's "them" that are bad'n'wrong, not "us". "We" would never behave that way.
Sorry.
Yes "we" would.
I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't protect ourselves against attack from anyone and anywhere that attacks us: what I am suggesting is that we maybe look at longer term preventive measures by seeing why some people feel so (otherwise) powerless and angry that they want to attack us and maybe, just maybe, see if it's at least partially because we've backed them into a corner after a couple of millenia of political, military and commercial (to the extent that those three things can be separated) violence.
In what way is using someone's own insane beliefs to prevent them from committing a crime a "lynch mob mindset"?
By dismissing another world-view as "insane", you implicitly dismiss those who hold that world-view which, in turn, renders them "other" and safe to insult, abuse, incarcerate and kill as a collective group. That sounds to me very like the state in which black people were (and to an extent still are) in parts of the US; the state in which gay people are to a significant (but I hope) minority of people in this country; the state in which, increasingly, anyone of a Semitic (or, indeed, Brazillian) appearance is in this country.
Oh, and leaving aside for a moment the spraying of pigs' blood, it would also be nice if the measures taken by our government purportedly to counter the "threat of terrorism" (1) did so, rather than increasing that threat and (2) weren't just more steps to screw down the rest of the population and, as far as they can get away with it, abolish the rule of law using external threat (enemies are necessary to government) as a handy covering excuse.
