Bill: Both, it seems to me, are functions of bigotry. Why? Because the essence of bigotry is to reduce the complex, varied, human individuality of a human being into a racial cipher. It is to smelt the irreducible complexity of a person into a racial caricature. It is to deny individuality; it is to give someone no space to think for him or herself, to free to be a person, and not a mere member of the group.
Win: What a joke. Nobody around here would ever, ever dream of applying that kind of bigotry to the Arab / Muslim world. Never. Never in a million years. It just wouldn't happen among the fine minds of the righteous right. People like you just don't think that way, eh, Bill? No matter what demands the needs of W's war propaganda machine might place on the local advocates, they would roll over and die before ever exhibiting a hint of bigotry.
I don't know if I qualify as exhibiting bigotry but I feel extremely intolerant of people who recruit children to murder themselves and others.
And, I've got very hard feelings towards those who gas whole villages and thousands of people. I've got itchy, nasty feelings towards those who murder thousands of people in New York and say they'd like to do it to me because I'm not like them. Am I a bigot?
And I suppose its not just bad manners, but bigotry, of me to point out that the emotionally monotone, psychopathic bastards who do these things and say these things are islamic sect members and often are in or from the middle east and that their evil behaviour has lots to do with their belief systems? Perhaps it's bigotry if I call them islamofascists?
And I guess if I keep saying that it's really a very poor idea to back off from a murderous, totalitarian dictator who is desperate to get WMDs, and keep saying that it's a good plan to depose him, then I'm just, only part of W's local war propaganda machine. It couldn't be you just don't agree with what I say, but rather than digging up a decent argument, you just say I'm W's tool? Naw, I'm sure you're above that kind of intellectual dishonesty.
And if I keep saying that the corrupt people who reduced the citizens of Afghanistan to an even more deprived state than war with the Russians did, and put half that population under house arrest, and want to turn me into a bare assed, diseased 7th century peasant, are a menace, then am I a bigot?
Is this what you're saying, Win? You only have to answer yes or no.
Don't bother posting me a lecture on internet etiquette regarding nazi talk, and for sure, not the wife beating canard, because we've got a bit beyond that, haven't we? |
