Other people's writing
Feb. 2nd, 2005 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyOkay, who wants a banner that'll cause people to defriend you and call you a Nazi? All of you, right? Thought so:
Look, kids, even if you don't agree with the guy (and, while I haven't read On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, I've read some of his other work and he tends to make a lot of sense, even if it's the painful kind of sense), he has a fundamental right to speak his mind. Even if -- especially if -- it makes some people uncomfortable.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lokust has posted Churchill's press release addressing the latest controversy. I strongly encourage all of you to read it.
On a completely unrelated note, here's a really good article by Gore Vidal (as if there are other sorts of Gore Vidal articles) on Iran:
Iran next, then who?
George Bush's apparent desire to create a state of perpetual war spells disaster
Gore Vidal
01/27/05 "The Independent" -- Last week, courtesy of Seymour Hersh and The New Yorker, we learned that a long-held prediction of mine had come true. American forces have been operating inside Iran, thus extending yet further the President's "war on terror".
There is no war, other than the one the President unilaterally is waging against a weak Congress and weak countries with oil. It's true that Congress has given the President certain unusual powers, but as only Congress has the constitutional power to declare war, he is not, as he keeps yapping, a wartime president. Hence his conviction that he can lock anyone up, foreigner or native, and send them off to Guantanamo without due process of law.
This is simply a Bush war. It has nothing to do with the American people. And we were not in danger from weapons of mass destruction. The danger is an Administration that has fallen in love with war because of the special powers war gives the Administration to rid itself of the Bill of Rights and lock up dissenters. We've had some scary times in the past but nothing to compare with this. So what do we have to look forward to?
A disaster, in short. Iran/Persia represents a brilliant culture, one of the greatest the planet has ever known. They do have atomic weapons, and that is why our rulers are pretending that they are longing to blow us up - because we have liberty and freedom and democracy and are so prosperous. (None of these things do we actually have, but this is the official line that we are asked to believe.)
The Iranians have a lot of oil, of course, and a lot of enemies among the neocons, who have pretty much taken over the Pentagon. The President doesn't seem to understand what is happening, but if he does he's seriously culpable. So here we are, in the middle of the unfinished Iraq tragedy, and the President, in his inaugural address, is serenely declaring war on the rest of the world. Instead of talking about how the hell we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, we are talking about going into Iran.
Here we are headed for absolute disaster, yet the American public has no weapons left, legally. If an American citizen were really in trouble - I ask in all seriousness - to whom would he turn? He can't go to his Congressman, because he's helping out GM or whoever paid for his election. He can't turn to the executive branch, because they now run concentration camps and don't like dissent. The courts are pretty expensive and the higher courts are, shall we say, not on our side.
No one has explained why, if Saddam Hussein had all these weapons - which he did not have - why he would have wanted to blow us up. We know why Osama bin Laden hit us. He sent us a lot of unpleasant letters and wrote a long list of things saying why, for religious reasons. He is a religious zealot. And he was doing a religious job. We're doing a job for the oil and gas business. They're the people who are making a lot of money out of all this. Heaven knows how it will end, but we, the American people, are going to be the losers.
Symbolically, it's interesting that regions of the US are rejecting Darwin and evolution. I can see why. We have a substantial minority in the US that hasn't advanced much beyond the baboon. These ignorant folk are full of hatred, which is why they are currently rejecting evolution and going back to the stone age with torture, killing innocent people, attacking countries that have done us no harm. This is insupportable.
In a recent TV programme that we lucky Americans were shown of previous inaugural addresses, our former President Franklin D Roosevelt spoke of Social Security, something he invented for us. Yet his successor, Harry Truman, starts talking about a terrible enemy. In effect, he is starting the Cold War. Roosevelt had made certain arrangements with Stalin and the USSR, which could have kept the world quite peaceful and avoided the Cold War, but Truman was having none of it. He had been convinced by certain people who had made a lot of money out of the war that we should be forever armed, in order to wage perpetual war for perpetual peace.
So there we are, on top of the world, militarily and economically. We have the atomic bomb, and here is Harry Truman saying in 1948 that we've got to watch out there - there's this godless nation intent on world conquest.
But the Russians didn't want anything very much then, except to recover the 20 million people they had lost in the Second World War. They weren't going anywhere at that time, but we saw to it that over time they became frightened and heavily armed. We made them active enemies, and we've been creating enemies ever since. Now we are going to take on one billion Muslims. Brilliant. One billion people who will really deeply and truly hate us. And it will take several generations for us to bring them around, if possible.
George Bush doesn't compare with previous presidents. He doesn't come from any established system that we've ever tried before. He wasn't elected the first time and perhaps not truly the second time. Certainly, he was not elected on any issues, like the morality of the war or the wisdom of the war, or the techniques that we used in waging that war.
I would have thought that, at the moment since about 56 per cent of the people think we should never have gone to war with Iraq and those numbers were indeed rising as we approached the election, we would have voted against this President. Instead of talking about the war, we were talking about abortion and homosexual marriage. What great topics to be discussing for a great people on the march with atomic weapons! There was so much else to talk about, but neither Bush nor John Kerry were going to do so because they both approved of the war, and their advisers - or certainly Kerry's - had told them to do so. No wonder people don't care to vote. They seldom have much to vote for. But often a lot to vote against.
There was a huge, unrepresented anti-war party at the last election. We, as a people, have generally believed in minding our own business, not in attacking other countries - "enough to do at home" and all that. But we now have a government that is not remotely a democracy but we're trying to export it elsewhere. I suppose that on the ground democracy is a nice word. We treat it like ketchup. Put it on everything. We're bringing it to Iraq, we say.
The result, once more, is perpetual war for perpetual peace. The spirit of Harry Truman marches on. After war with Iran, who's next? Russia? Or someone else? God help us if we make China angry. There are a great many more of them than of us.
This war will end in our defeat, and that is why I want us to get out of it as soon as possible. I want us to try and bring the troops home and try and invent a more realistic education system because I am convinced that democracy, too, may one day come to the US, and I want us to be alive to celebrate it.
And speaking of non-issues (or issues that should be non-issues), I think I have finally come up with a term for my stance on gay marriage: Militant apathy. I am willing to fight like hell against any law that causes me to have to form an opinion about other people's marriages or sex lives. (For the record, I don't care whether people want to get married in groups or to their cats, either.) I don't care so much that if the government actually passes a law banning same-sex marriage after the courts already legalized it, you will see me out in the streets marching. Not because I like marriage or I think it's oh so sweet to see people declare twu wuv forever, but because I'm so irritated at the religious Right for putting me in the position of needing to argue for what is, in most cases, an archaic and dysfunctional institution.
Look, kids, even if you don't agree with the guy (and, while I haven't read On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, I've read some of his other work and he tends to make a lot of sense, even if it's the painful kind of sense), he has a fundamental right to speak his mind. Even if -- especially if -- it makes some people uncomfortable.
lokust has posted Churchill's press release addressing the latest controversy. I strongly encourage all of you to read it.On a completely unrelated note, here's a really good article by Gore Vidal (as if there are other sorts of Gore Vidal articles) on Iran:
Iran next, then who?
George Bush's apparent desire to create a state of perpetual war spells disaster
Gore Vidal
01/27/05 "The Independent" -- Last week, courtesy of Seymour Hersh and The New Yorker, we learned that a long-held prediction of mine had come true. American forces have been operating inside Iran, thus extending yet further the President's "war on terror".
There is no war, other than the one the President unilaterally is waging against a weak Congress and weak countries with oil. It's true that Congress has given the President certain unusual powers, but as only Congress has the constitutional power to declare war, he is not, as he keeps yapping, a wartime president. Hence his conviction that he can lock anyone up, foreigner or native, and send them off to Guantanamo without due process of law.
This is simply a Bush war. It has nothing to do with the American people. And we were not in danger from weapons of mass destruction. The danger is an Administration that has fallen in love with war because of the special powers war gives the Administration to rid itself of the Bill of Rights and lock up dissenters. We've had some scary times in the past but nothing to compare with this. So what do we have to look forward to?
A disaster, in short. Iran/Persia represents a brilliant culture, one of the greatest the planet has ever known. They do have atomic weapons, and that is why our rulers are pretending that they are longing to blow us up - because we have liberty and freedom and democracy and are so prosperous. (None of these things do we actually have, but this is the official line that we are asked to believe.)
The Iranians have a lot of oil, of course, and a lot of enemies among the neocons, who have pretty much taken over the Pentagon. The President doesn't seem to understand what is happening, but if he does he's seriously culpable. So here we are, in the middle of the unfinished Iraq tragedy, and the President, in his inaugural address, is serenely declaring war on the rest of the world. Instead of talking about how the hell we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, we are talking about going into Iran.
Here we are headed for absolute disaster, yet the American public has no weapons left, legally. If an American citizen were really in trouble - I ask in all seriousness - to whom would he turn? He can't go to his Congressman, because he's helping out GM or whoever paid for his election. He can't turn to the executive branch, because they now run concentration camps and don't like dissent. The courts are pretty expensive and the higher courts are, shall we say, not on our side.
No one has explained why, if Saddam Hussein had all these weapons - which he did not have - why he would have wanted to blow us up. We know why Osama bin Laden hit us. He sent us a lot of unpleasant letters and wrote a long list of things saying why, for religious reasons. He is a religious zealot. And he was doing a religious job. We're doing a job for the oil and gas business. They're the people who are making a lot of money out of all this. Heaven knows how it will end, but we, the American people, are going to be the losers.
Symbolically, it's interesting that regions of the US are rejecting Darwin and evolution. I can see why. We have a substantial minority in the US that hasn't advanced much beyond the baboon. These ignorant folk are full of hatred, which is why they are currently rejecting evolution and going back to the stone age with torture, killing innocent people, attacking countries that have done us no harm. This is insupportable.
In a recent TV programme that we lucky Americans were shown of previous inaugural addresses, our former President Franklin D Roosevelt spoke of Social Security, something he invented for us. Yet his successor, Harry Truman, starts talking about a terrible enemy. In effect, he is starting the Cold War. Roosevelt had made certain arrangements with Stalin and the USSR, which could have kept the world quite peaceful and avoided the Cold War, but Truman was having none of it. He had been convinced by certain people who had made a lot of money out of the war that we should be forever armed, in order to wage perpetual war for perpetual peace.
So there we are, on top of the world, militarily and economically. We have the atomic bomb, and here is Harry Truman saying in 1948 that we've got to watch out there - there's this godless nation intent on world conquest.
But the Russians didn't want anything very much then, except to recover the 20 million people they had lost in the Second World War. They weren't going anywhere at that time, but we saw to it that over time they became frightened and heavily armed. We made them active enemies, and we've been creating enemies ever since. Now we are going to take on one billion Muslims. Brilliant. One billion people who will really deeply and truly hate us. And it will take several generations for us to bring them around, if possible.
George Bush doesn't compare with previous presidents. He doesn't come from any established system that we've ever tried before. He wasn't elected the first time and perhaps not truly the second time. Certainly, he was not elected on any issues, like the morality of the war or the wisdom of the war, or the techniques that we used in waging that war.
I would have thought that, at the moment since about 56 per cent of the people think we should never have gone to war with Iraq and those numbers were indeed rising as we approached the election, we would have voted against this President. Instead of talking about the war, we were talking about abortion and homosexual marriage. What great topics to be discussing for a great people on the march with atomic weapons! There was so much else to talk about, but neither Bush nor John Kerry were going to do so because they both approved of the war, and their advisers - or certainly Kerry's - had told them to do so. No wonder people don't care to vote. They seldom have much to vote for. But often a lot to vote against.
There was a huge, unrepresented anti-war party at the last election. We, as a people, have generally believed in minding our own business, not in attacking other countries - "enough to do at home" and all that. But we now have a government that is not remotely a democracy but we're trying to export it elsewhere. I suppose that on the ground democracy is a nice word. We treat it like ketchup. Put it on everything. We're bringing it to Iraq, we say.
The result, once more, is perpetual war for perpetual peace. The spirit of Harry Truman marches on. After war with Iran, who's next? Russia? Or someone else? God help us if we make China angry. There are a great many more of them than of us.
This war will end in our defeat, and that is why I want us to get out of it as soon as possible. I want us to try and bring the troops home and try and invent a more realistic education system because I am convinced that democracy, too, may one day come to the US, and I want us to be alive to celebrate it.
And speaking of non-issues (or issues that should be non-issues), I think I have finally come up with a term for my stance on gay marriage: Militant apathy. I am willing to fight like hell against any law that causes me to have to form an opinion about other people's marriages or sex lives. (For the record, I don't care whether people want to get married in groups or to their cats, either.) I don't care so much that if the government actually passes a law banning same-sex marriage after the courts already legalized it, you will see me out in the streets marching. Not because I like marriage or I think it's oh so sweet to see people declare twu wuv forever, but because I'm so irritated at the religious Right for putting me in the position of needing to argue for what is, in most cases, an archaic and dysfunctional institution.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 01:26 am (UTC)I think his statement clarifies the Eichmann comment a bit. I find it distasteful, but not so much that it discounts everything else he has to say.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 05:53 am (UTC)--Kynn
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 05:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 06:03 am (UTC)shrug
--Kynn
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 06:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 01:43 am (UTC)Sounds like Churchill has a lot of good stuff to say, the problem is that comparing contemporary political wrongs to the Nazis or the Holocaust is, IMO, always a bad idea for the left; because whatever you have to say immediately gets lost in the flame war over whether it's appropriate to be using the Nazi comparison. Just. Don't. Go. There. It's not worth it. There are plenty of other colourful and effective ways to condemn western iniquities without bringing teh Nazis into it.
(Of course, it's quite all right for the right to call Saddam or Arafat or Ward Churchill or whoever the new Hitler, that's not being offensive and inappropriate, that's just being patriotic.)
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 01:49 am (UTC)Churchill does, justifiably, bring up the Holocaust in Pacifism as Pathology, but that has more to do with strategies for oppressed people than comparing anyone to Nazis. But in 90% of cases, it's just a shameless appeal to emotion.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 05:56 am (UTC)Why is Ward Churchill being hounded from his job, and Rush Limbaugh is still on the air?
As
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 01:45 am (UTC)My comments:
If you say things innocuously, no-one notices. If you say things in a manner that draws attention, everyone gets hung up on things that are far from the point. The question is, how do you bring it to the attention of people that they are the instruments of oppression and de facto genocide on a world-wide basis, even if they are just (as they see it) doing their everyday office job?
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 01:52 am (UTC)So in answer to your question, I have absolutely no idea. But if you figure it out, let me know.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 06:43 am (UTC)I was made uncomfortable by the remark, and that's why I think voices like Churchill's need to be heard more often, it's easy to shake up a white, middle class person but when a person is shaking up leftists you know they are asking some questions that are going to the roots of the system.
But the problem is that most of the people who are rabidly calling for his head on a platter are nationalist cretins from the American rightwing. Even the Leftists who are offended by his remarks and think he's wrong seem to be respecting his right to academic freedom.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 01:52 am (UTC)That their actions in some indirect way really do enslave much of the world is difficult to lay at their doors, because that tends to perpetuate the illusion that the unjust system of which their activities form a tiny part is transformable by their individual action. I don't think that's true, though it sounds fatalist to say so.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 03:08 am (UTC)Essentially, if someone knows something, like, say, that they're in an abusive relationship that they can't fix alone, you can't say "Dude, you're in an abusive relationship, and you can't fix it." Until they're ready to admit that, they won't hear you. They'll deny and excuse and whatnot.
When things have become so bad that the consequences of admitting that the relationship is beyond repair are less horrible than those of staying in the relationship, then they'll actually use the words on their own---they won't need telling.
Most people have a fair bit of emotional capital invested in thinking they're decent people who don't hurt people. So if you try to tell them things that upset their views, they're going to resist you, because resisting you is less horrible for them than the consequences of admitting that their activities support mercenary soldiers, killing squads, abuse of children, etc.
So pointing out that by remaining silent they're colluding, by supporting certain businesses they're supporting conditions of slavery in a way that they can't ignore is bound to hit resistance.
All of this is of course a long-winded way of saying "I don't know either," unless you can figure out a way to convince them that the direct consequences of refusing to know these things are more dire than knowing that they're responsible would be.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 02:14 am (UTC)CJ
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 02:35 am (UTC)I love your icon as well -- and often empathize with the sentiment!
CJ
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 06:00 am (UTC)It starts with gay marriage. It ends with the repeal of abortion rights -- hell, it probably doesn't even end there, but keeps going. That's why this has to be fought. Not because it's THAT important that gays can get married, but because it's THAT important that we stop the fascists before it's too late.
--Kynn
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 06:55 am (UTC)That being said, if some wants to get married I think they should be able to and with equal rights as straight couple have.
But in the larger sense, I think it's even more important to support the right to marry becuase I think that
no subject
Date: 2005-02-04 04:43 am (UTC)for sure.
although i don't think i have any responsibility to waste my time supporting the 'right to marry' when the marriage movement ignores my very existence and wants to shove me under a rug. when i can't walk down the street safely. when if i wanted to get married (for some strange reason) i would have to do so as a woman, cause i have to have expensive surgery to be legally recognized as myself. just cause i'm a homo too doesn't mean i owe anyone shit.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-04 04:38 am (UTC)also, please refrain from telling me how i should be understanding my own oppression.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-05 01:08 am (UTC)When did I tell you how to understand your own oppression?
--Kynn
no subject
Date: 2005-02-05 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-05 11:30 pm (UTC)I think gays understand their own oppression quite well. What I'm getting at is that it's part of a bigger picture, aimed at shutting down unions, abusing immigrants, denying health care to everyone, dismantling social security, and taking away reproductive rights.
If I saw more queers (in America, mind you) taking those bigger concerns more seriously, and not just going "MARRIAGE IS TEH PATRIARCHY," then I wouldn't even have to make this point.
Just like immigrants and Muslims and blue collar workers and others have to understand it's not just about gays getting married. It's so much, much bigger than that.
I think that marriage laws should be equalized, sure. The fact that gay couples have lesser rights than straight couples pisses me off. But the goal of the right is not just to shit on committed gay couples. They're just the easy targets, so far. Each success just makes the next group of us easier to pick off.
(This is why I wrote in a newspaper column last year that the California grocery workers on strike were fighting for all of us. Because ultimately it's a gay rights issue, it's an immigration issue, it's a reproductive choice issue, it's a freedom of speech issue -- why? Because the opposition is united against all of those causes.)
--Kynn
Re: Marriage
Date: 2005-02-03 09:10 am (UTC)It's a silly religious institution and the government should get out of the business.
If people think they need some sort of contract to govern shared assets, then they should be able to write a contract.
And if people with kids split up, there is always a market for them.
Re: Marriage
Date: 2005-02-03 11:56 am (UTC)My wife and I didn't get married for religious reasons. We didn't do it so that we could govern our 'shared assets'. We got married because (OMFG!) we love each other, which is the only reason why you should get married, if at all. Please note that I did not say that everyone who's in love should get married, just that love should be the defining factor.
Re: Marriage
Date: 2005-02-05 11:33 pm (UTC)It may make perfect sense to separate government from the religious-and-relationship concept of marriage, but it's not going to happen, and in fact, it's the wrong approach to take for exactly the OMG reason.
Remember, the extremist right doesn't really give a shit about gay marriage. They don't want to stop committed gay couples from being married, they want to stop committed gay couples from being accepted in society. The marriage issue is but one way they are attacking the whole concept of being queer.
--Kynn
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 01:08 pm (UTC)in some ways this is the best thing to have ever happened to him
no subject
Date: 2005-02-03 07:50 pm (UTC)