Eric, Well, we are at war and I'm impatient with hearing the same anti-American plaint. After being away from the discussions for a few days and not willing to strain my eyes unnecessarily, I merely skimmed the notes but it was enough to see a pattern. The pattern of most of the notes was one of hostility toward the U.S. I expect our enemies to be hostile toward us; so it is reasonable and logical for Islamist and Islamic Fundamentalists to be hostile toward us. It is also logical for those who supported Soviet Russia during the cold war to be hostile toward us. Just because the USSR lost the Cold War doesn't mean that its supporters are automatically going to fall in love with us. Doesn't a pattern of hostility toward the U.S. on a given matter coupled with no hostility toward an enemy engaged in far more egregious examples of the same matter indicate a predilection? It strikes me that it does. I can't claim to have charted his notes, but it seems to me Omar exhibits such a pattern. Doesn't he cherry-pick the news looking for articles especially hostile to the United States, our military, our administration etc. One he just referred me to compared our government and military personnel to Nazis. What do people think when they see Dirty Harry? When I watched that movie I saw the San Franciscan government as crippled. It wasn't equipped to deal with the killer holding the city captive. In every case the mayor and chief of police did what was legal and politically correct, and the killer kept on killing. Dirty Harry did what was necessary (including some torture if I recall correctly) to stop the killer and save as many innocent lives as possible. Omar's author would call Dirty Harry a Nazi engaged in evil, but the people who admire Dirty Harry obviously wouldn't. They see the SF government as coddling criminals and neglecting citizens. They admire Dirty Harry for doing the right thing. If you were in that kind of trouble would you want the Chief of Police or Dirty Harry looking out for you? And since you are in that kind of trouble would you prefer Al Gore or George Bush looking out for you? Lawrence -----Original Message----- From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Eric Yost Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 11:34 PM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The torture graph Lawrence: No guts, no willingness to fight, too timid by far, Osama says. And true to his assessment we anguish over the fact that we are human, that a small percentage (as occurs in every fighting force) is going to misbehave. We say never mind about the enemy, what about those of us who misbehave? We say never mind about the people trying to blow us up, what about the use of excessive force in trying to find out whom our enemy is. Eric: People don't really think we're at war. They think it's a bad dream that will go away if they can only pin it all on Bush. It's a creepy kind of nihilism, and I think it comes from the feeling of being betrayed by the government too many times. Remember around the time Nixon resigned, the government WAS the enemy for many people. We believed our own Cold War propaganda too much perhaps, and Vietnam/Watergate showed us up as suckers. The nihilism is also fashionable since it gives a sort of glamor to alienation. ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html