[extropy-chat] feeling more better

Mon Jul 11 18:36:39 UTC 2005

After a year away, I'm happy to see progressive thinking people still 
debating the morality of this issue.

Few people have claimed that Al Quaeda or Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein 
are great people.  Although the tendency to confuse the three has tended 
to justify quite a lot of pundit-bullshit.  But few people will claim 
that GW Bush is a great person either.   The question is whether or not  
we should be going out bombing all the bad people and whoever happens to 
be standing within 20 miles of them.  As this policy is obviously 
ridiculous, and the policy of pre-emptive war is now obviously not such 
a good idea, I think it's time to announce that history has in fact 
judged as our own moral sensitivities should have before we started 
shocking and awing in downtown Baghdad.

If there are secret aspects of this war, we will likely only -really- 
find them out 40-years later (since we refuse to believe the things we 
already know, like the Downing Street Memo and Downing Street Minutes 
and the untimely death of weapons inspector David Kelly, etc.), as we 
did with Pearl Harbor.  No conspiracy-theory is needed to understand 
what is going on now, though.  In America, a conservative revolution is 
taking place - a war on personal liberty, economic prosperity and 
anything else we can give a name is scourging the US for its decadence 
(we get the leaders we deserve, in some ways).  Control of economic 
interests so tightly held in small groups of bankers amounts to a class 
war and as we learned in Malachi, if you've read it, no justice, no 
peace.  Welcome to the world without justice.  If you want peace, 
provide justice.

What qualifies one as a conspiracy theorist is that one is suspicious of 
the established power-order of one's own country (like Jefferson, 
Lincoln, Washington, MLK, et. al.).  One is not a conspiracy theorist if 
one is suspicious of the established power orders of a different country 
- especially if we can think of some good other reason to be at war with 
them (say, if they have lots of oil or something).  The belief, in fact, 
in Al Quaeda is just a classic conspiracy theory (vaguely identified 
people and groups of people secretly conspiring to destroy our country) 
targeted at the current "them" of our nationalistic hatred - the 
Conservative (oil owning) Muslim.

If you wish to characterize someone as a "religious thug" I suggest Mr. 
Bush is the world's most dangerous religious thug, persecuting his 
"apparently religious" war (for the sake of the poor Christian 
sucker-soldiers who go to kill off the infidels in this new crusade for 
the oily-land  cf. the Mayberry Machiavelli on whether you should invoke 
the name of God when going to war) on apparently defenseless countries 
worldwide.  "The only new thing in this world is the history you don't 
know."

Consequently, your contempt for intellectual pursuit stated so nicely in 
the language of among the most ruthless imperial killers in the history 
of the Western World has its obvious roots in your own psyche.  A 
universal solution to every puzzle - smash it, burn it, then throw it 
away.  Unfortunately, if the puzzle is alive and has cousins, as we've 
found out, this isn't a good idea.  Don't underestimate your enemies.  
Had you taken the time to think this through ahead of time, you may have 
realized that.  But with a policy of refusing to think, it's hard to see 
how any language could help the situation.  Pugilistic thugs rule the 
world, this we know.  In the few occasions where intellectuals have 
attempted to take over the world with their idealism in the modern era 
(China, Russia) we've had bad times.  In fact even the American 
Experiment is showing itself to be a failure - here we are dominating 
the world through economic and both over and covert military imperialism 
riding on an "elected" government selected by the top 1/400,000,000th of 
our population (Scalia).  But simply aquiescing to this as "human 
nature" I would think is against extropian principles, certainly against 
the Christian principles of justice, mercy and faithfulness.

With kind regards,

Robbie Lindauer

beb_cc at yahoo.com wrote:

> Samantha, I dont know how to communicate with you as we both speak the 
> same language but I cannot express my difference of opinion with you 
> at all. It is as if I came from another planet. You write as if I have 
> taken a definite position on the war. Such is not the case, I don't 
> know what is going on, and every time I ask a dissident or conspiracy 
> theorist for info on the secret aspects of the allied war the 
> inevitable reply is forthcoming, "do your own research". It is so 
> predictable, thereafter the personal attacks start. But though I have 
> severe doubts concerning the allies, I have no respect for al qaeda or 
> bin Laden whatsoever. I see no intrinsic difference between the 
> 'Werewolves' terrorists of 1945-6 Germany and al qaeda, bin Laden is 
> just a religious thug. BTW if you don't like the designation 
> 'terrorist' then substitute 'freedom fighter', the name 
> Islamo-militants call themselves or are called means nothing. For 
> starters you would have t! o fill me in on grave allied secrets, which 
> you can't do. We could start with a morals discussion of the Hiroshima 
> and Nagasaki bombings of 60 years ago, but we would go nowhere, being 
> intellectuals. Morality aside, /soldiers do; intellectuals perseverate/.
>  
> >If I were to express my abhorrence in a similar way then I would wish
> >that you and those who agree with you would be at ground zero if such
> >a thing was done. But since I understand what you apparently miss I
> >would not wish that on you. What you are missing is that all "those.
> >people" are all potential immortals. Exactly why do they deserve to
> >miss eternity for some real or imagined stupidities of their
> >(relatively) *very* early childhood? We who have not learned yet to
> >truly understand indefinitely long life or understand its requisites
> >are willing to kill all too easily.
>
> - samantha
> >
>
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