From: MaxPlumm@aol.com
Date: Sun Jun 08 2003 - 04:22:47 MDT
Harvey Newstrom replied to me:
MaxPlumm@aol.com wrote,
> If you had taken a moment to step off the Condescension Express, Mr.
Newstrom,
> you might have noticed that I never once mentioned President Bush in my
> original reply to Damien.
"That's just plain misleading. While it is true you didn't mention
President Bush by name, you clearly criticized Damien's concern with
"American missteps" and suggested he research "the Saddam Hussein regime"
instead."
No, it is you who again are being just "plain misleading". On the first
point, by "American missteps", I referred to civilian casualties inflicted by
Coalition forces in the field, given those would be the dead bodies Damien sought
to have included in the photo history. In regard to your assertion that I
suggested he ignore those deaths, let us refer back to my original post to Damien:
Then no doubt you are currently at work preparing in your view a more
appropriate pictorial compendium of the just concluded war in Iraq. One would hate to
think you are merely concerned with American missteps, however, so no doubt
you are ALSO (emphasis added) preparing a pictorial compendium of the Saddam
Hussein regime and its legacy. You'll find no shortage of dead children there.
I certainly did criticize Damien's concern with "American missteps", but only
because he showed a single-minded concern for what the West did wrong and
ignored the innocent victims murdered by the Hussein regime. The context in which
I mentioned the other evil regimes was, as I said earlier, heavily sarcastic,
but I was and remain appalled that he is more concerned with the plight of
American pot smokers than the victims in Pyongyang, Hanoi, or Havana's gulags.
> I have never read a post of Damien's in which he refers to a Vietnamese
Communist
> "re-education camp omelette", a Castro or Mengistu's "famine omelette",
or even
> a Saddam Hussein's "oily omelette". The crude criticism is reserved
solely for
> the Bush administration.
"The current thread is about the Iraq war. It is unfair to attack Damien
for not criticizing other regimes that are not involved."
Last time I checked, Saddam Hussein's regime was (albeit briefly) involved in
the Iraq war. In regards to the other odious regimes, they merely serve to
illustrate the fact that Damien somehow approves of a world and moral view in
which a despot may deliberately murder or destroy hundreds of thousands to
millions of people, but the West may not inadvertently kill hundreds to remove said
despot.
> So clearly your analysis that
> my thinking consists of Bush=good, arrogant extropians=evil is clearly
incorrect.
> If anyone is guilty of oversimplification in this instance, it is clearly
you.
"I don't think so. The more you rail against communists in other regimes
instead of discussing Iraq, the more I think you are using binary thinking
of "us-versus-them" to lump all of "them" together."
Please illuminate for those of us not occupying your higher plain of logic
and reasoning specifically why it is inappropriate, or an "oversimplification"
to list the Saddam Hussein regime amongst a "them" list of similar murderous
and barbaric tyrants ranging from Hitler to Mengistu Haile Mariam.
> Since it is apparent you are more than willing to share your ever cogent
and
> not the slightest bit pretentious insights with us, Mr. Newstrom, I
humbly
> request that you tell me how my "position" as an anti-communist (indeed,
> everyone's favorite at that) is so flawed.
"This is the oversimplification I am talking about. Where in the world did
you get the idea that I thought your anti-communist position was flawed?"
Hmm, let us return to your original post to me:
"I also noted that the previous note somehow was connected with
anti-communism AND (emphasis added) several other binary us vs. them
worldviews."
You directly state that anti-communism is a subset of binary "us vs them"
worldviews. You then commented on your perceived value of binary world views
thusly:
"Strange. It's like some people see reality in black and white, while
others see whole continuums of grey and colors."
Given these concise observations, one must draw the conclusion that you
consider binary worldviews flawed, or incorrect. Since you directly assert that
anti-communism is a binary worldview, the negative implications of your comments
are obvious. So, you must then either directly acknowledge that my position
as an anti-communist is not flawed, or conversely you must define why it is
flawed, which despite a clear enunciation of why I hold such a "binary worldview"
in my previous post to you, you chose not to address it in this post.
Regards from a country without "Democratic" in its name,
Max Plumm
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