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FirmhandKY -> RE: Accountability -- IRAQ WAR (5/13/2007 9:27:33 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cloudboy
I agree. The 2004 election surely did not hold this administration accountible. Frankly, I think the Republican faithful see the Democratic party as the real enemy, more dangerous than Communists or Al Queda. I kind of got something out of this pulitzer prize winning, Jane Smiley quote,
"The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry...I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 millions have not...Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states...The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America...The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do - they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable...Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are - they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence."
So, I surely, surely do hold the American voting public accountable too. The voters blew it in 2004.
The voters didn't "blow it". They just voted in a way that you disagree with.
Smiley's comments are exactly inline with "progressive" thinking about people who disagree with them. To a "progressive", if someone disagrees, it is because their opponents:
1. Are ignorant (or misled), and/or
2. Mentally deranged, and/or
3. Evil.
Totally missing is the possibility of an honest disagreement due to differing values, a different culture or a differing opinion based on logical principles.
This is one of the most disturbing things about such "progressives" as Smiley - the inability to see a disagreement as anything other than for base causes. It is one of the first steps to dehumanizing your opponents, which makes it very easy to believe yourself justified to "make them" see and do things your way when you are in a position of power.
Or to start killing them, or sending them to "re-education" camps "for their own good" or "the common good".
This is an inherent problem with much of the modern left's philosophical base, and one of the main reasons that I'm not generally recognized as a liberal - which I am.
Those "progressives" such as Smiley, I do indeed see as a bigger threat than I do AQ and Communists, for they are deceptive (perhaps unintentionally so) and part of the society and political system I support. They debase and destroy from within, while pretending to the very virtues that they would subvert.
FirmKY
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