Re: War: why everyone wishes it would stop but no one can stop it.


Ian Davis wrote:
In article <1148055924.617542.307020@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<chris.editrix@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Feingold's speech was a breath of fresh air in large part because it seemed
that here was a man both amply able to say what he genuinely thought, and to
say it without apparent fear or hesitation. I wish his career well.

Unfortunately, he's short, Jewish, and divorced, all of which condemn
him more than his rather ordinary liberal stands that now look radical.


Wouldn't know he was short, listening to him on what was a voice only medium.
Being Jewish is what he makes of it. Where I wonder do his loyalties lie..
with God, with the State of Israel, with his own conscience, or with the
nation he is a citizen of. That he is divorced would be I think irrelevant
here. Don't tell me he's left handed too :-)

While I was being flippant, I'm quite serious about what images are
important to the electorate. His religion is not only what he makes of
it: it's what others make of it, too. And people are stepping all over
each other in politics to declare themselves true Christians. As to the
divorce thing, it would be so cool if his sister, a rabbi, acted as
first lady.

had the comma replaced by a period. Engineers have it easy compared to us
programmers. Generally speaking they have to be wrong about the overall
behaviour of the system in order for it to fail. We fail if we mistakingly
press one key, and not the key right next to it.

Your fondness for rules and binary view of the universe now make sense
<g>.

My mother believes in rules and I . . . don't. It took me a long time
to understand that because she was an orphan and had no one to show her
the rules, she had to figure them out for herself, and they make her
feel safe and protected. I, having a safe and loving home, had the
luxury of finding the rules restrictive.

<<snip>>

We are slightly schitzophrenic on this point. It is not an either or
proposition.. I think we see women as multi facetted, one facet of which
is that they are containers for the thing contained. Probably in like
fashion women see men as multi facetted creatures, one facet of which is
their ability to give women children.

<g> Not schizophrenic: complex--or grey.


I think schizophrenic because I don't think we see the complex greyness that
you allude to. Show me a pornographic image and I don't see in the image
a multi facetted human being -- I see what I've heard called eye candy.
Show me a picture of my wife on holiday, and I see a very different
image. The schizophrenia is in being unable to put the parts together
and in doing so see actual reality. The schizophrenia is in living in
very disjoint realities simultaneously and being able to see each in turn
as the present reality even while knowing particularly in the case of
pornography that there ain't anything in the picture that is genuine
except the parts.

I wouldn't bank on the parts being genuine.

I agree that there's no place for wars of aggression. In fact, I see
all wars as wars of aggression.

Still, the argument for imminent danger has some feet. It's apparent
that there was not the threat we feared in this situation, that the
sense of imminent danger for the US has usually, if not always, been
exaggerated. But I think if we'd gotten wind of Japanese plans for
Pearl Harbor, we would be faced with choosing to be the aggressor or
the victim. I'd have chosen to interfere with their act of aggression
by one of my own, philosophic consistence bowing to survival instinct.


The US did get wind of Japanese plans for Pearl Harbor. They watched it
unfold and occur and did what they could to keep those on the receiving
end in the dark precisely because it was of the utmost importance that
it be seen as Japan attacking the US pre-emptively and not vica versa.
The US had cracked the Japanese codes, and knew both what they were
saying and where they were heading.

Ah. This gives some credibility to the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, eh?

Why should I not think that you are a nation like children warned not to swim
who take your swimming trunks along just in case you are tempted, when you
refuse to consider as an alternative locking those same swimming trunks
away, the better to protect oneself from the future temptation of putting
them on.

You have forgotten about us Americans: the lack of trunks doesn't phase
us a bit. We swim in the nude when we are being naughty.

You and I would say it different ways and arrive at the things said by
different means but I am not sure that we'd really be saying two different
things. I argue from a basis of law, because I see law as our collective
effort over centuries to codify this internal voice we hear which tells us
that this is right, and that wrong. Most certainly on occasions the law
can be an ass.. but that said, listening to law is listening to an the
very expression of our own inner humanity, and this is quite deep enough
an authority to have and to hold my respect and regard. Listening to law
is listening to what we as a species have come to understand and to codify
regarding the very nature of what constitutes right and what wrong. Support
a war of aggression and you are effectively saying that those who at Nuremburg
declared that wars of aggression constituted the supreme war crime were wrong.
On what basis can any of us do that, when they having lived through five years
of war, and found war to be hell, knew the nature of war so much better than
you or I.

My own encounters with the law do not incline me to see it as an
expression of our humanity but rather as a system of limiting the
ability of one party to harm another.


Is not our desire not to harm others what distinguishes us from those
who have no qualms about causing harm to others.

That seems like an easy yes. However, the older I grow the less
confident I am of being smarter or more morally/ethically "evolved"
than others.

. . . I think changes made to the Constitution can
either improve it or degrade it. I haven't the knowledge or experience
to hazard a guess as to the overall trend. What I do see is some pretty
silly amendments being proposed now, especially language to define
marriage and restrict civil union as contracts between a man and a
woman only.


The ones who own the words decide what use may be made of them. Words
are very powerful. A society which greets each other with Shalom or
Salam (Peace) is going to be perhaps periodically reminded that words
are not just words but stand for something.

Well, let us pray that happens soon because they are looking like the
calico cat and the gingham dog right about now. . .

You say hallo to me and
I'll know that you are saying Hallaluja. Say Good Bye and I'll know
that your actually saying "God be with you".

But I may not have the same understanding you do. We are living in a
Humpty Dumpty world in which words mean what we say they mean,
regardless of history and dictionaries. "Clean air" means "pollute
away," in one piece of legislation.

Well the suggestion that I was being naive in wanting to see legislation
that restricted the power of presidents to commit the greatest crime on
earth, among other things. I don't understand the seemingly wide spread
opposition among Quakers for both accepting that starting wars of
aggression is criminal, and for insisting that those who start such
wars be treated by the societies they exist within as the criminals they
are.

I was suggesting that you were naive in assuming that people weren't
trying to "fix" this, not in wanting better legislation.

I didn't know that any were trying to "fix" this. Can you point me at what
it is they are actually doing. I know what I have been trying to do here
the last six years, but am given the little any other has said here about
what others are trying to do I am operating in a near complete vacuum.
As a Quaker forum this one seems to me remarkably remiss in rarely if
ever saying anything about what is actually going on in the alternative
Quaker universe out there.

Hundreds of thousands of people are participating in Move On's
petitions, drives, other actions--there's a new one every day. People
have beefed up efforts to replace incumbant senators and congressmen
everywhere. Every week people in my community continue public
demonstrations against the war that have been going on as long as the
troops have been in Iraq. High school students set up non-recruitment
booths across from military recruitment booths at their high schools
here. Friends are involved in all those activities, often in leadership
roles. Some have asked others to serve on area draft boards so that in
the event of reinstatement, which some of us fear, there will be people
who will strive not to place the burden equitably and not mainly on the
less privileged.

Please tell me more about this wide-spread Quaker opposition. I haven't
seen it here in Wisconsin--quite the opposite.


I haven't seen anything but opposition to what I say on this forum. There
is not one I respect here who hasn't told me in no uncertain terms that I
am wrong.

Ah. I thought you meant opposition to efforts to stop this and other
wars. You are talking about people opposing you or your ideas or your
ways of presenting them.

I'm the one whose
Timothy earlier asked "surely you can't be on their side". I'm also the one
who earlier was told by my wife that if I couldn't support Canada when Canada
was at war then perhaps I should go back to England. I'm the one who has been
compared to David Duke, and called the Fascist despite my strong opposition to
fascism. I'm the who is told privately "And it doesn't matter anyway who wins
because all USAmerican politicians are evil crooks, unlike our ever virtuous
neighbors to the north." I don't have the thick skin that perhaps others
perceive me as having. The last six years have been rough ones.

So you feel embattled yourself, like you are fighting a war single
handedly?

You remind me of my father. He was a man of strong intelligence and
conviction, with a utopian view of the world. He knew how things should
be, how they could be, and it drove him mad that others couldn't see
it. For years he was bitter, and he and I could barely speak to each
other because I was just like him, only with an opposing viewpoint.

I don't know exactly when he changed but at some point he lay down his
weapons. He couldn't defend the truth and one right way alone any
longer. You know, they say a pessimist has a more accurate view of the
world but an optimist is happier. I'm glad that my dad spent his last
two decades being happy instead of right.

Now I, his opinionated daughter, am working in the same direction.

Don't worry too much about using wrong words. In the current political
climate I am sure that every word written here gets read by someone
somewhere the better to stay one jump ahead of "evil" Quakers. My
concern is not that I use the wrong words, but that I am gravely
misunderstood. As I've said before my only hope is that those
that police this news group better see who I am and who I am not
than most who contribute to this forum have.

Oh, yikes! If people who have been listening, speaking with you, and
holding you in the light misunderstand you, why would you expect
someone expressly looking for threats to do otherwise during a swat
perusal?

Yes well it is rather a forlorn hope. But I am not the one making up
the choices here. How does one reconcile childhood resolve to ever
oppose fascism, with plans to visit the Grand Canyon with my wife,
when the doing one might interfere horribly with the other. How at a
deep emotional level does one resolve the desire to protect that which
one loves and as our national anthem says "stand on guard for thee" when
the very ones I seeks to guard label me the enemy. America is as much
my home as Canada. You can't be Canadian and not know that. But I
am horribly disenfranchised because its not permitted for me to be the
one who cares about America. On 9/11 I cared deeply enough to spend the
day trying to work out how to give blood.. I cared deeply enough to
donate to American Friends knowing that I'd just waived the ability to
make my donation tax deductable. I cared enough to phone up Toronto
Airport and say that I'd take any American who found themselves stranded,
and then rush round trying to get the house in ship shape order for them.
And it hurts like hell even three years later to know that I cannot know
your pain and must eternally be seen as the outsider. I was in Logan Airport
a mere week before that 9/11 attack. I could as easily have been on those
planes as you or any other. As I say it is a forlorn hope. But that
does remain my hope. That those charged with the responsibility for
distinguishing friend from foe do a better job of doing so than those
here have to my mind historically done.

I don't have any answers for you. Some of us are led to be outsiders,
others are born there. I've made my career around my outsiderness;
sometimes that works, others not. You don't sound like any kind of
enemy to me. However, none of us likes to be scolded and told that our
ways are terribly wrong, all of them, and we must repent and swear off
alcohol and vow to remain virgins and work tirelessly for all good
causes and on and on and on.

It's all too overwhelming for me. I believe that every important reform
comes from the bottom up, not the top down, so I concentrate more on my
own sphere of influence.

I try to be kind (not an easy task for me) and sometimes I try to see
things as others see them. I feed my children good food and innoculate
them with liberal-humanist-Quakerish notions. I go to meeting and I
listen with my heart when I'm able. I write checks, small ones I'm
afraid, for a few worthy causes. I try to find better ways to speak
truth to power, ways that can be considered. I write letters to
congressmen and stand in the dark with others holding a candle against
the dark of this war. I talk and laugh and cry and drink dark beer with
a couple good friends, walk my dog, and call my mother more often.

As Garrison Keillor says, every day is a new day. You take some small
steps and this gives you courage.

It's almost enough, for me at least.

Personally, I think "they" must fall asleep all the time, and with good
reason.

If you think monitoring SRQ is bad pity the ones monitoring the other
newsgroups. Those are very much more boring but arguably far more
important.

I think "they" don't need to worry too much about those of us who spend
too much time keyboarding away in the land of Usenet <g>.

But then, I don't think they need to worry about Quakers. Go figure.

Christine

.

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