[lit-ideas] Seeing the madness...
- From: Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 09:47:24 -0400
Ursula wrote:
Cheap trick number 103.2
Write an analogy that looks good on the surface and hope no one will
notice where the situations aren't analogous.
If Sarah had wanted the man arrested, she might be wise to cry 'rape'.
If Officer Collins had wanted those men dead, he'd be wise to finger
them as assailants -- maybe even shoot himself with their gun so as to
be convincing in court.
Lawrence Helm answered:
Right, but she really was raped and she has to go through a court
trial trying to prove it. The lawyers of her rapist put her on trial.
It’s happened time and time again. Fortunately she is always
vindicated because when you look at her history you see she has no
motive. The few who fit your scenario don’t take it to trial.
See, but maybe she wasn't raped. Maybe she just wants him branded the
bad guy because he dumped her. Motive enough for some. Don't you watch
television?
And no answer for the Sgt. Collins scenario which was anyway more analogous?
I’m trying to help some mad people see their madness (which may be mad
in itself). What motive, even if he had the means which he didn’t,
would a president have for getting 19 educated Middle easterners to
steal three airplanes and fly them into the Pentagon, the White House,
and the Twin Towers? And how stupid would someone in America have to
be to think he could get away with anything, let alone anything like
that. (And lest you say Bush was stupid, remember he had a higher GPA
than Al Gore.)
That's us also...trying to get the mad people to see their madness. Bush
is certainly morally stupid, and probably mentally as well (What's GPA
got to do with intelligence anyway?). But that's beside the point as
none of the conspiracy theories suggest that Bush masterminded anything.
As for the educated middle easterners, they are all conveniently dead.
We are supposed to be free, but you can’t open a door in Washington
without bumping into a reporter. Do you think Bush never heard of
Richard Nixon? Did he never hear of the Iran/Contra business? Also, we
don’t have people so dedicated that they are willing to keep secrets;
so unless Bush did it all by himself, he could expect someone some day
to eventually spill the beans.
But by then, the world will already have been remade in their image.
Already, there is no way to go back to February 2003, never mind back to
August 2001.
What would he want so much he would be willing to do that?
This is part of the problem. We just can't imagine that an American
President (or his administration) would do such a thing for money and
power.** We'd have no problem believing that some backwoods dictator
would do it. We'd have no problem believing that some Russian premier in
the bad old days would do it. We'd have no problem believing that some
Medieval potentate would do it. We had no problem believing that Hitler
burned the Reichstag to frighten the Germans into supporting him and his
agenda. But today? In America? Can't be. What we have here is a failure
of imagination...
** There's also the theory that Bush sincerely believes that he is on a
mission from God to save the rest of the world's oil for America and
that history will find him a hero for the bold risks he took to get it.
I wish it was all a bad dream and the hundreds of thousands of dead
could see this bright May morning.
Ursula
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