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  • From: James Dasher <jdasher AT ibiblio.org>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] fury over WTC ads
  • Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2004 06:40:52 -0500

Though there were a slew of messages on this topic, I'll use elements from this one as my springboard.

On Friday, Mar 5, 2004, at 15:43 US/Eastern, David R.Matusiak wrote:

YES - i think it was wrong for FDR to use that tack as a campaign slogan.

i believe we must honor our soldiers, living and dead, but i think that using their sacrifice as a political gambit is deplorable.

Unlike Sil (in a different message), I don't think it's possible to interpret the FDR button as anything other than a re-election slogan. Unlike Mr. Matusiak, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Generically honoring "our soldiers, living and dead," sounds great in the abstract, but that begs the more difficult question: what do we do about it?

Just to remind people, a democratic republic (e.g., the United States) is founded on the principle that human happiness in a regime can best be fostered by balancing people's competing interests. Since none of us are omniscient (well, I am, of course, but I do what I can to hide that fact - including making any number of mistakes just to maintain my secret identity as Head Mason In Charge), neither a single person (monarch) nor a small group (oligarchs) can make decisions that will reflect what has come to be called "the will of the people".

Democracy has its own problems - namely, it ultimately devolves into mob rule. Hence the mixture of monarch (president), aristocrats (legislators and judges), and people. We avoid the problems people like Rousseau, and Marx after him, introduced with the concept of the "general will" - the notion that, if you were part of the majority, and someone disagreed with you, then they were wrong - by selecting legislators from certain established populations and geographic regions.

So WTF am I doing going into all that? (Aside from the fact that it's possibly the most succinct exposition on the Western political tradition in perhaps 2,500 years. :)

Whenever we step beyond Mr. Matusiak's generic honoring of the dead, and state specifically what we should do to honor them, we are engaging in a "political gambit". It is, if you will, the nature of the beast of politics in the republic. Even saying we should avoid using the memory of the dead to further political aims is, in itself, a political gambit - a rhetorical device to craft consensus around the proposition that the living should not use the dead to justify taking action.

that, and i think that the whole 1940s/50s way of thinking (which included such greats as "Remember Pearl Harbor") did a whole lot to engender hatred and bigotry towards Asian peoples and Asian-Americans for the past 50+ years.

Actually, their attack on Pearl Harbor did a lot to engender hatred of the Japanese. If by the "whole 1940s/50s way of thinking" you mean the notion that we should bomb the crap out of Japan (popular in the early '40's), or the notion that bombing the crap out of Japan was a good thing (largely popular from the mid-'40's through the '50's, and on into the present), then no: those notions did little to "engender hatred and bigotry towards Asian peoples and Asian-Americans" for any length of time. Japanese, yes - and in the case of Americans of Japanese descent, unjustifiably. Bear in mind that the Japanese were also on a rampaging pillage through most of the proposed Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, and that U.S. troops were hanging out with lots of friendly Asians in China, the Philippines, and assorted other destinations across the Pacific.

The "whole 1940s/50s way of thinking" also included Brown v. Board of Ed/Topeka, the Beats, integration of the armed forces under Truman, the integration of schools under Eisenhower, the defense of South Korea from Communists, and so forth. Hardly ignoble actions, and probably not predicated on a way of thinking particular to any couple of decades, including the two in question. Certainly, the way of thinking that led to these and other actions didn't do much to "engender hatred and bigotry towards Asian peoples and Asian-Americans" for any length of time. Bigotry towards Chinese people was already well-established 100 years prior, and toward other ethnic and minority groups - whether Asian, European, African, Jew, "Mohamedan", Catholic, and so on and so forth - depending on their arrivals to these shores, and the circumstances surrounding them.

i think we have to change things quite a bit (like our attitudes) if we are going to see ANY improvement in our lifetimes. thus, you can see that i am not in agreement with the "Things must stay as they are" party.

I'm guessing you meant that as a jab at the Republicans, since conservatives are the ones who are accused of preferring the past over the future. But I have to say, as a registered "Unaffiliated" and a regular multi-party balloter, that the rhetoric emerging from the Democratic Party sounds fairly unchanged from the last 30 or 40 years, excepting Clinton's first term. The rhetoric from the Republicans, on the other hand, is fairly forward-thinking, anticipatory, and indicative of a willingness to try new things, both domestically and abroad.

If that means using images of the WTC to promote an agenda, then what's wrong with letting voters decide whether you're capable of leading, or prone to reacting? And if it means using images from Vietnam to promote an agenda, again, what's wrong with letting voters decide whether they think you're full of it or sincere?

If you've made it this far, congratulations! I don't have any reward for you, but I will offer an explanation. This thread, like others, suffers from people's tendency to speak in cliches when they lack the time for debate or introspection. Email is not as bad a format as IM, but it's still terrible for getting people past their inclination to shoot from their prejudicial hips. It's too easy to write a couple sentences and fire off a reply. I'm guilty of this myself, and not just via media. That's why, even when I know something about the topic at hand, I tend not to participate. But this morning, the cats woke me up early, and I had time (after reflecting on the various points raised) to compose this reply. It's still a rough draft, but I did use the delete key a few times. :)

Also, my apologies to Mr. Matusiak. To some degree, I used him as a foil. I blame him for making it easy: short, well-spaced paragraphs, each making a separate point. If his paragraphs were a bit meatier, a bit more round-about, a bit too long-winded, I might've picked someone else.

Take, for example, this message. Whoever the guy is writing this thing, I probably won't rebut it, even if I don't agree with it.

Oh, and to forestall any question, for those of you who probably were(n't) wondering: the fewest number of parties receiving my vote occurred last year, during the local elections, when no Libertarians, Greens, or others appeared on the ballot. I won't reveal the exact split, but I didn't vote a straight ticket. And though judges weren't marked by party affiliation, I still knew who they were and which party they "were unaffiliated with". (Yes, I think that rule is a stupid rule.)

PS It was nice putting faces to a couple names on Thursday. For those of you I didn't get to meet - my apologies. Perhaps next time. But, to proffer excuses, I started a new job, and have been climbing into bed before 10:00 p.m. most nights. Oh, and I had to culture the linguine, and count out the seeds for the bird feeder, and tally the number of pixels on my display. (You don't honestly believe everything those manufacturers tell you, do you?)

--
James Dasher





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