An Unenviable Situation rocks:
How many times can I say this? We have no real Left in this country because the workers are the subject of discussion and not the participants. We are bonded together only by desire. Alterman’s hard-on for the middlingly sincere Springsteen only proves the point. His contempt for the unwieldy and profane is obvious, but that is what you have to grasp if you want to play politics in this country, or even enjoy its culture.
“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin’s Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin’s Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
Remember this, then read the following paragraphs from a post David Neiwert wrote on Orcinus:
As Patrick Nielsen Hayden has suggested, virtually the entirety of the RN&F series has been in gross violation of Godwin’s Law. It’s pretty hard not to mention Nazis and Hitler, at least by implication, when one’s focus is a clearer understanding of fascism and how its essence remains alive in American society.
However, I haven’t been posting out of ignorance so much as impatience with these kinds of protocols. As someone whose reportage on many occasions has been on the subject of very real neo-Nazis, the idea that I’d lose an argument just by writing factually about the undercurrents they represent is nonsensical.
For that matter, I’ve always viewed Godwin’s Law as symptomatic of the larger problem I hoped to confront with this series: Namely, an almost frightened refusal by most Americans to come to grips with the meaning of fascism, and how that blind spot renders us vulnerable to it.
Like so many people, David misunderstands Godwin’s Law: it doesn’t mean you cannot talk about Hitler, nazism or fascism. It means that in the heated atmosphere of many Usenet discussions comparisons of your opponent with Hitler or fascism are easily made. It’s like the overuse of “fascist” for anyone you don’t like and is the slightest bit autoritarian. Factual discussions of Hitler and co have never been subject to Godwin’s Law. I suspect that Patrick Nielsen Hayden was somewhat tongue in cheek when he described David’s series on “Rush, newspeak and fascism” as a “Godwin’s Law violation”.
Eschaton wrote:
I’m a bit tired with all the hand-wringing about what the anti-war people should do. Aside from not elevating the degree of civil disobedience above the slightly annoying, I think contuing to protest is just fine. The reason people protest in the first place is because they feel it’s their only avenue of political expression. Their elected representatives aren’t providing a voice, the media isn’t providing a voice, so the only possible way to register objections to the current war is public protest. In addition, as many people can attest, the state and local democratic parties are largely in shambles and/or unwelcoming to new participants.
If it was wrong two days ago it’s wrong today. This is my last obligatory “I support the troops and hope they come home safely.” That’s a given, and there’s no conflict between wanting them to stay alive and not wanting there to be a war.
I don’t think any anti-war protesters are under the illlusion that they’re going to change any minds this week. That isn’t the point – the point is to register objections the only way they can.
Hear, hear.
Don’t fall into the trap of letting our opponents decide for us what we can and cannot do. Don’t think that blind support for the war now the fighting begun, is “supporting the troops”. The only way to support the troops is to get them the hell out of there. Those four US and eight UK soldiers who died in that Sea Knight crash would not have died if they hadn’t been in Iraq, that US marine killed in combat would still be alive if Bush hadn’t started this war.
Apart from that, I personally am a lot less concerned about the fate of “our boys” than I am about the fate of innocent Iraqi civilians and Iraqi conscripts, some of which are as young as fifteen. It’s a given many more of them will die, who had no choice in being in this war, then will the US and UK soldiers now fighting Bush’s war.
Eschaton on the use of torture:
We are not living in the world of ’24’ or a James Bond movie. There is never going to be a situation in which the noble CIA agent knows that the red digits on the timer of the nuclear bomb are counting backwards and he has 90 minutes to determine the location and disarm the thing before Los Angeles blows up. However, if there is such a situation no law enforcement agency or court in the country will prosecute Kiefer Sutherland for saving us all by whatever means necessary, and he would have my full blessing to pull out the thumb screws and go to work.
What we’re talking about is torturing innocent people based on what they maybe possibly might be able to tell us. Innocent people? Yes. Last time I checked people were innocent until proven guilty, and frankly our intelligence agencies haven’t exactly proven their ability to perform their stated job description, let alone assume the role of judge and jury too.
(Personally, I believe that even in such a Hollywood “a nuclear bomb is going to explode in Denver!” situation, torture is still not justified and should certainly be prosecuted afterwards.)
Ampersand on the folly of not raising
taxes when needed:
Why are they so desparate to cut costs? Because conservatives in Oregon refuses to do the sane thing and raise taxes a little. In fact, just a few months ago conservatives were claiming no essential services would have to be cut off.
Well, who cares if this guy spends the next forty years in a coma? The point is, we’ve save ten bucks a month in taxes, so that makes it all worth while.
Well, no… we didn’t exactly save any money on this one. You see, given Mr. Schmidt his desperately-needed anti-seizure medication would have cost the state $400 a month. But now that he’s comotose and requiring 24/7 hospitalization, the cost to taxpayers (via Medicare) is over $3500 a day. Good going, conservatives.