Ik, re: Whether it's my family, or yours, or someone else's, a free society will always be more dangerous in some ways than a repressive one (but only in some ways- and if you look at the number of our citizens behind bars, you can see that the government can be quite dangerous indeed)- and quite frankly I welcome the danger if it means we keep the freedom not to be spied on, and not to be followed by the government, even though we have done nothing to warrant such scrutiny.
That's a very complex statement. I know you understand that but it's such an interesting subject that I'd like to broaden it.
Our emotional minds are often at odds with our intellectual minds. In many instances it simply reflects our short term thinking warring with our long term thinking.
How many people get angry and level their boss, knowing intellectually that they'll be sorry but thinking "right now I don't give a shit." Later they KNOW that was the wrong decision but at the time their emotions got the best of them.
That's human nature and it can be, and is, useful in times of peril when society may need members of the tribe to step up and sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole. Many times, however, the emotional decisions we make are just foolish.
All of us have a tendency toward one type of thinking or another. You see that most clearly in some of Michael's posts. He's still very angry about 9/11 but some part of him understands that striking out wildly was the wrong thing to do.
I don't agree with some of the things he says, or the way he says them, but his emotions are honest and understandable and he has too much thinking ability to fail to recognize that some of his responses are due to anger rather than logic.
There are others who are apparently more locked into anger, or maybe fear, than Michael. I understand them because I have some strong tendencies that way. There were many instances in my life where I decided on action when some part of my brain was telling me I'd probably regret it but passion, anger, pride or some other emotion overrode my thinking.
You're apparently on the far edge of the scale, making most of your decisions based on objective, analytical and intellectual grounds.
That kind of thinking can drive emotional thinkers into a frenzy. They don't want to debate the fine points of long term cost/benefits when "our lives are at risk," and they don't want the war chief questioned regarding strategy, tactics or abilities in the middle of a "war."
In addition they don't want the views of the "other side" given any credence and they certainly don't want the other side's character, motives or abilities portrayed in any favorable light, no matter what the facts are.
So their "thinking" while understandable, is distorted.
That's why we supposedly have good, analytical and informed minds representing us in government. Unfortunately in this era of impassioned religious and social issues many of our representatives were elected because they ARE emotional thinkers who aren't fettered by intellectual distinctions.
Theory of evolution, genetic tendencies to be gay, global warming, anyone willing to work can be a success in America...the list goes on with respect to the issues that got some of them elected and science and evidence be damned. So the safety net failed.
What turns most of us away from emotionally charged bad decisions toward well reasoned good decisions, however, are the consequences of our bad decisions.
That's where we are now. Even the most fearful and angry among us are having to deal with the ugly reality that our poor decisions have created. Michael came around fairly quickly. Unclewest had to battle his emotions with his intellect but he's getting on board and the Republicans in Congress along with some of the most conservative Democrats are looking for a politically viable way out of their earlier stances. That won't undo the mess we got ourselves into but it's a start on not getting in any farther.
What we have to hope for now is that we don't get another wallop from terrorists that sets us on tilt again. I believe that Bin Laden and his bunch understand our psych very well and that they'd prefer us to keep overreacting, bumbling around, attacking Islam and making them look like heroes. So far their 9/11 attack has succeeded amazingly well and they haven't needed to strike again.
In my view, the smarter and more rationally we begin to act, however, the greater the risk of another major terrorist attack. That may happen and we might have another cycle of stupid.
But in the end the real damage isn't from losing a certain percentage of our population from terrorist attacks, as callous as that may seem. The real risk is empowering the greatest enemy of free men everywhere....the governments that left to grow in power will control every aspect of our property, liberty and everyday freedoms. And we went a long way down that dark and sour road when we took the first steps to empower our own government to listen in, ignore habeas corpus, lock down information, politicize the attorney generals, and politicize the judiciary.
But maybe we needed this swing of the pendulum to remind us of what it really means to be free, and to be a "thinking" American. Ed |
