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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lou Weed who wrote (136873)	6/17/2004 4:04:08 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

What's amazing to me in this whole fiasco is that the very same people who are abhorred and shocked by a blow job will rationalize that anal rape and sexual humiliation are considered "non-torture" and therefore deemed acceptable to inflict upon non-American detainees....How about that for morality? Michael, let me paraphrase and state the "you simply fail to understand the importance of hypocrisy in America." In all seriousness, however, I think there is a certain type of personality/thinker who suffers from dual failings. The first failing is that they tend to see things in terms of absolutes. Things are good or bad, right or wrong and the scale is not one that allows for any "relativism." The "goodness, evil, rightness or wrongness" of a thing is set in stone. Whether it's the "way we've always done things," or the way "god says things must be done," or the "way trusted leaders say things are," there is very little room for tolerance or even understanding. The second failing is that those they see as on the "right side" can be "right" even when they make serious mistakes and might appear to rational thinkers to have been "wrong." If their [you choose] morals, religion, political affiliation or some other litmus test was satisfied then there is plenty or room for excuses, tolerance or forgiveness. Those on the "wrong side" are, however, "swine" who don't deserve an audience and THEIR motives in criticizing the righteous are never pure, never motivated by good motives and can be totally dismissed as emanating from "evilness..godlessness..immorality..communism, etc." I don't believe people choose to be that way, I think their minds simply fall into those thought patterns genetically. That doesn't mean they won't ever change their view of who is "good." Such people tend to be radical and extreme on one side and they will, when their circumstances change, turn just as radically to the other. How many of the radical right wingers state proudly that they used to be radical left wingers? I suspect that many of us who are capable of seeing both sides of an issue, are equally proud of the fact that we've never prematurely jumped and landed in the bushes on either side of the trail that leads through the wilderness of silly ideas.