who would you favor in an Iran vs. US/Israel war?

[Gustaf]

I always will support America, but I will also oppose the war. And I would not at all care what happens to Israel unless they are actually nuked or attacked first.

I'm sure they will be thrilled at your sympathy after they've been nuked.

I'd not support the fascist theocracy. I guess that makes me a right-winger.

[Gustaf]

TNF's comment reminds me of a somewhat famous little two or three minute clip of a televised debate between William Buckley and Gore Vidal (famous because it ends with Vidal calling Buckley a crypto-Nazi and Buckley responding by threatening to sock the "queer" (his words, said with a patrician non-rhotic effeteness) in the "goddamn face"). They're discussing whether or not it was right for police to attack protestors of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, and Buckley (and the moderator) imply that it was, because they were waving Vietcong flags, and a similar hypothetical protest involving Nazi flags during World War II would have been similarly violently dispersed. Vidal, of course, defends their right to wave Vietcong flags, because as he points out there exists the mainstream opinion in America, Western Europe, and the rest of the world that the Vietcong are correct in wanting to organize their country politically as they would like and the United States is wrong.

And I'm just afraid that TNF, who is by all accounts a very left-wing person, is representative of a problematic movement in the American left since the 60s where we are cowed into supporting military efforts that are immoral and wrong, because our opposition would be seen as wishing death on American soldiers. We are so afraid of looking like traitors that we are forced to cheer on American soldiers as they illegally pillage and bomb. Can you imagine, a few years from now when we are bogged down in Iran, anyone on television or in the mainstream political discourse defending some protestors waving an Iranian flag as they're beaten up and carried away? They'd be sold out immediately as the left hurriedly rallied around the American flag. It's really depressing. If a military action is wrong, then I want it to fail, regardless of whether or not the soldiers undertaking that military action are my fellow citizens or not.

Do you know anyone from Vietnam, Lief? Because bad idea as the Vietnam war may have been, the Vietcong was not a good bunch.

It always baffles me how the left is fine with stuff they'd never otherwise accept as long as the US is opposed to it.

[Gustaf]

no, you're forgetting your dialectic, Gustaf: the worst excesses of the VC, the rise of the Khmer Rouge, whatever you could find to legitimately complain about re: the Sandinistas, etc was an outgrowth and directly causally related to US aggression.  and aggression isn't the right word, decimation.  don't split our world into these simple ahistorical binaries for the purpose of propagating caricatures.

Yes, yes. You assign agency only to the people you dislike. It's not particularly novel and it's not particularly sensible either. If anything it's subconsciously imperialist, which is quite ironic.

Congrats on the big words in the final sentence though. You could probably use that in an 'essay' (I assume you'd never write one without quotation marks).

[Gustaf]

no, you're forgetting your dialectic, Gustaf: the worst excesses of the VC, the rise of the Khmer Rouge, whatever you could find to legitimately complain about re: the Sandinistas, etc was an outgrowth and directly causally related to US aggression.  and aggression isn't the right word, decimation.  don't split our world into these simple ahistorical binaries for the purpose of propagating caricatures.

Yes, yes. You assign agency only to the people you dislike. It's not particularly novel and it's not particularly sensible either. If anything it's subconsciously imperialist, which is quite ironic.

Congrats on the big words in the final sentence though. You could probably use that in an 'essay' (I assume you'd never write one without quotation marks).

I think what you may be sensing, if you are seriously trying to sense at all, is that I hold people to responsibility for their own agency, ie, moral responsibility, in more-or-less direct proportion to the quantity and quality of resources at their proposal.  hence I will, without need for apology, hold the US and the West, the epicenter of all wealth and power, to a much higher standard than I will the rag-tag indigenous militias that inevitably will crystallize once the US bombs are dropped -- people will resist by the means that they can.

I suppose you can, again, presuming you presume to be serious, read a thread of Anglocentrism / white man's burden / cultural imperialism into this, but I think to do so you have to prove it a degree back from its outward appearance, as it has a perfectly independent internal logic of its own.  whether or not this is 'infected' with the long threads of Western imperialism, I cannot say, and don't have to as a) you did not levy a serious charge and b) if your crew were to make such an attempt, I would advise them to select a prosecutor with more credibility on such a front than the Mr Lundgren.

Not only do I presume to be serious, I actually am. I just don't take you all that seriously.

I guess your internal logic isn't necessarily racist then, but it doesn't make much sense. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that only rich people are capable of moral agency whereas poor people are more akin to animals whose primitive reactions we cannot judge.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess. I just wish you wouldn't pretend to be some sort of champion for the people you so deeply despise.

[Gustaf]

no, you're misreading.  I stated,

I hold people to responsibility for their own agency, ie, moral responsibility, in more-or-less direct proportion to the quantity and quality of resources at their proposal.

this has nothing to do with capability; I don't touch that topic.  only that, as the great folk-punk artist Pat the Bunny brilliantly said, 'principles are for the well fed': people with fewer resources will have to resort to more crude and broad means of resistance, simply incapable of access to cutting edge war technologies.

Yes - so you are assigning moral agency only to the rich. Thus, you're not arguing White Man's burden but merely Rich Man's burden.

You're basically defining the "Other" as the poor person, too poor to be a proper human being (although still an object of abstract sympathy).

And I think you might want to go with Brecht for that quote - fewer hipster points, perhaps, but I still think it jives better with the whole  pseudo-intellectual thing.

[Gustaf]

I think we're at a dead end as far as the actual debate goes, but I would like to point out that you've taken the time to personally attack me in each of your three posts (while I only attacked you in one, and not using epithets, only description).

Eh...after you devoted a month or something to attack me personally in every post you made, even in discussions where I was not participating you can hardly expect me to have any respect for you.

And I haven't attacked you personally. I observed that you seem to despise poor people and I gave you some helpful advice on how to build your image as a café philosopher. I did say I didn't take you seriously, but that's hardly a personal attack, is it?

[Gustaf]

Not only would I support US/Israel, I'm hoping they start it.

You're an awful person.

You're an awful debater.

I never got the intellectual reasoning behind the idea that one must take part oneself in all actions one support. Why is that?

[Gustaf]

Not only would I support US/Israel, I'm hoping they start it.

You're an awful person.

You're an awful debater.

I never got the intellectual reasoning behind the idea that one must take part oneself in all actions one support. Why is that?

Are you stalking me now or something?

Do you have any arguments that aren't ad hominem attacks? And, no, I don't stalk you. You might be exaggerating your importance to me just a tad, there. You just happened to say particularly bad things on threads I was following.