I Want You to Pay
When knowledge is limited - it leads to folly...When knowledge exceeds a certain limit,
it leads to exploitation
--Abu Bakr
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The WaPo today has an interesting triumvirate of editorials today critical of President Obama, using words like shamelessness, pure politics, no good reason regarding his decisions on our current wars. (Charles Krauthammer is the expected lone hawk, and his is simply a generic attack on the War Powers Act.)
Eugene Robinson, erstwhile Obama cheerleader, has consistently turned away of late. He wrote:
WaPo cartoonist Anne Telnaes offered an update on the Uncle Sam poster (above) in line with Obama's philosophy.
Eugene Robinson, erstwhile Obama cheerleader, has consistently turned away of late. He wrote:
"In essence, we are using military means to pursue political ends that lie beyond our reach. Obama should realize that this makes no earthly sense . . . There was no evidence [in Obama's address] he had considered the possibility that the war is being perpetuated not by rational pursuit of our national interests but by its own inertia (Why Does the Afghanistan War Go On?).
WaPo cartoonist Anne Telnaes offered an update on the Uncle Sam poster (above) in line with Obama's philosophy.
Labels: afghanistan, obama, uncle sam
posted by Lisa at 8:34 AM
14 Comments:
americans never met a war they didn't like even if it's just for bitchin' rights. fools rush in...
tangential off-topic back-story thread re violence and terror...
Hi Lisa,
I sat and puzzled over the Abu Bakr quote until my puzzler is sore, but understanding comes not.
Ghost Dansing,
I couldn't hit the start button on your second offering. I'm too squeamish.
Dave
Gee, UC.... what's the worst that can happen?
G.D. --
Thank you for sharing the Nazi rape story -- horrific and unspeakable, the absolute degradation and obliteration of humanity, committed by erstwhile civilized Germans. It should be required reading for everyone.
UC,
I only ran that b/c I couldn't think of anything better. Oddly, it ties into G.D.'s link. I would challenge his first presumption: Limited knowledge may lead to folly OR exploitation. It doesn't take genius to exploit opportunity and one's fellow.
However, there is something to the latter: When people feel themselves clever, they imagine they have license to take/ do what they wish (=exploit). Perhaps they do it differently from the first group in that they are more organized or scheming with their actions.
The unspoken but necessary part of the syllogism might be that increased knowledge demands an increased sense of humanity, to avoid its exploitation.
Hi Lisa,
You're right, Exploitation is not rocket science, even though a certain cleverness seems necessary. Thanks for bringing me up to speed on the quote.
While we're on the subject of Nazis:
I was struck by a manifest shallowness in the doer [Eichmann] that made it impossible to trace the incontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the doer . . . was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous. There was no sign in him of firm ideological convictions or of specific evil motives, and the only notable characteristic one could detect in his past behavior as well as in his behavior during the trial and throughout the pre-trial police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but thoughtlessness . . . . Is wickedness, however we may define it, this being “determined to prove a villain,” not a necessary condition for evil-doing? Might the problem of good and evil, our faculty for telling right from wrong, be connected with our faculty of thought?
Hannah Arendt, in The Life of the Mind
Dave
Ghost Dansing,
How did you know that I'm a huge Toni Basil fan? She's about my age, and HAWT!
Dave
Dave,
I have always contended this (hence the success of the psychopath, et. al.) Only the thoughtless can be cruel, for to have a compassion for another means one cannot subject him to the most hateful behavior of which one is capable. To do so would be to recognize oneself in the victim's place, and that would be untenable.
It is the degree to which we can distance from another that we can dehumanize her.
Hi Lisa,
That is exactly why literate people aren't psychopaths. Literature allows us to learn empathy.
No man that ever read Justine or Juliette, de Sade's catalogs of abuse, could ever harm a woman.
Dave
Dave,
One would hope. But Ted Bundy had a high I.Q., and many of the Nazis were learned and cultured monsters.
While literature is a wonderful portal to humanity, I don't know how one teaches compassion to a psychopath. (There are actually programs that attempt just that.)
Dave,
I thought Justine was a training manual for misogynists.
jim
Hi Lisa,
But I just have to wonder whether Bundy was well-read. I don't know what's in an I.Q. test. I'm afraid to take one and be tarred with an I.Q. lower than my shoe size.
Jim,
If it's your goal in life to be a first-class, champion bull moose, gold-medal winning misogynist, then definitely, de Sade's work should be in your shopping cart at Amazon.
I'm back to work for a couple of weeks. Not much time for comments, but I won't miss a post.
Dave
Dave,
Your differentiation of intelligence from being well-read is a valid one; Bundy was apparently poorly-read.
Dave,
It's not my goal- it's my destiny.
jim
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