The Party Line – May 6, 2011
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| By: Gregg Levine Friday May 6, 2011 8:20 am | |
Seriously, spoiler alert.
If you have not read 1984 and don’t want to hear about the ending. . . or if you don’t want to feel anything but elated over the killing of Osama bin Laden. . . then maybe you want to skip this one.
[As always, to view video in a separate window, click "YouTube" on the title bar or follow this link.]
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45 Comments
AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen Greg Levine:
Thanks for the reading and reminder that in the battle for the idea of democracy we don’t have to surrender ourselves in order to have a sense of justice and struggle…and that struggle is our only identity. As long as we don’t delude ourselves that somehow there is “victory” in the fight for an idea, it’s ok to feel good about the small steps toward a larger truth…and that’s what the death of the boogieman of terror is, it forces us to look past the smoke to the truth.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THE STRUGGLE GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
This is the sort of Liberal BS that turns people off to Liberalism. Bin Laden murdered 3,000 innocent people, many US soldiers have died in pursuit. To object to a little relief and human emotion over his death is absurd.
This is the sort of Liberal BS that turns
peopleviolence porn addicted Limbaugh fans off to Liberalism. Bin Laden murdered 3,000 innocent people, many US soldiers have died in pursuit.Fixed it for you. Mr. Levine is objecting to the celebrations and party atmosphere, not to “a little relief and human emotion”.
Blue Texan’s regularly scheduled post is up: Condoleeza Rice Refuses to Admit the Invasion of Iraq was a Mistake [VID]
Sorry, but I’m a Liberal and find this video and your reply absurd. Our economy and Constitutional freedoms are also in the toilet because of 9/11. A little joy over Bin Laden’s death is healthy. Liberals need to step into the real world occasionally and put down the hyper-intellectual pills.
That’s not bin Laden’s fault, that’s the fault of the people who over reacted, starting with Bush and going from there. Maybe you’re not as “liberal” as you think you are. Maybe instead you’re a “liberal” like Lanny Davis or Barack Obama.
Jingoistic partying over death is the sort of BS that turns a whole world off to US-style democracy.
Militarizing “justice” is the kind of thing that makes people doubt America’s commitment to its stated ideals.
Accepting a short-term burst of rah-rah as a substitute for real gain–especially when it is certain to followed by another episode of terror theater sometime soon–is the sort of BS that turns people off to governance in general, and breeds long-term cynicism.
I’m happy to piss off a few anti-liberals in pursuit of real justice and real peace.
Said it better than I could. I’ll leave you to it. :)
Yeah. Damn reflective liberal. I am so turned off by your f—ing thoughtfulness, your ability to ask why, your application of classic literature to try to understand something that is foreign to you. Jeez Louise, can’t you just go out and buy a Bin Dead t-shirt like everyone else?? Jaysus, man, do you have any idea how many hundreds of billions this country wasted trying to get that m fer who was being harbored by one of our closest well paid allies. Why can’t you just let some people be the blood thirsty, no nothings that they are entitled to be after being raised to the age of majority by a George Bush induced national psychosis dependent on living an us versus them reality.
Party on dude. What was the name of that book? Did they make the movie yet, cause I can dig some old movies.
That was the best bit of snark I’ve seen around here in a long time. Well played.
Nonsense. You hit the nail on the head. Much appreciated.
Naw. I can’t. I iz 2 bz readin ma bookz.
It’s absolutely the result of 9/11. Please refrain from Fauxian doublespeak.
I’d rejoice if he were captures. interrogated (under the Geneva Conventions), and he and his enablers tried, convicted and punished.
His death appears too convenient.
Maybe you’re not in charge of the definition of “liberal.” Right after 9/11, people on the left–including Chomsky, if I remember correctly–thought that we ought to treat the attack as a law-enforcement issue (as opposed to an act of war requiring the ground invasion of Afghanistan). Being satisfied that he was killed does not mean approval of the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Amen, brother Gregg, and I mean that quite sincerely.
Iz too bz eating chzbrgrs
US Citizens have felt demoralized for ten years watching Bin Laden happily sail into the sunset while we’re mired in two wars and are being groped by the TSA and wiretapped, exactly what he wanted to happen. So they cheered and yelled the night his death was announced. It’s Human. This Liberal stuff goes too far sometimes.
@nocturnus “Being satisfied that he was killed does not mean approval of the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq.”
Not sure how you came to that conclusion from my post.
Last time I looked, summary execution of an unarmed man was not in the liberal rulebook. Notice that I didn’t say innocent.
There is a decent case for saying the rules have evolved to new realities, but they must be consistant, and we, as a nation, are just not that into consistancy.
As for blaming OBL for the post-911 world, it was his stated intent, but he couldn’t have done it without us.
Most effective $500,000 project ever.
And, tomorrow, when they are still getting wiretapped by the NSA and groped by the TSA, then what? All that cheering becomes what, exactly?
I quit using the term “interrogate” with Americans as it typically has been redefined in their minds to mean torture. This is even true among some folks who are attorneys. Now I use “legal techniques of questioning which do not in any way involve torture.” After the stunned looks and silence, I then entertain questions.
That’s funny, I’ve been demoralized for ten years (that would include 8 bushies and 2 obamas,) because I’ve seen the emotions of the country played with like a fiddle by cynical leaders who convinced us their actions were “getting the bad guys” when all the while they were falling into the bad guys plan to a t. And those cynical leaders did it while waiving the flag and using the memory of the dead Americans who died here without explanation and who died in Iraq without explanation. Bin Laden did not sail off into the sunset, he perhaps climbed every mountain, forded every stream . . . But before he did, he knew that the empire’s reaction to his scheme would eventually crush the empire. And guess what? It has! 12%(Florida) unemployment, no money for poor children, disable persons, seniors, the poor. No more to educate or build. Politicians who are more worried about a woman’s womb since the time of Mary.
Bin Laden won and all we got was a broken country, a shredded constitution and his corpse.
I don’t see much to cheer about and I don’t get the cheering. If you cannot understand that Liberals stand for humanity and not inhumanity, then you may not be a liberal.
Our economy and Constitutional freedoms are in the toilet because of the fear-driven War on Terror — we’ve taken OBL’s bait, and harmed ourselves. Now, ecstasy and relief is causing even liberals to brush aside questions about how his killing jibes with the law, whether that of the U.S. or the international community. Was he killed after he was captured? Should he have been tried for crimes or treated as a military opponent? These questions haven’t been resolved in a serious way, but few people are addressing them right now, or demanding that our government do so in earnest. This is how freedoms go down the toilet.
Your understanding of cause and effect needs some improvement.
9/11 happened. I would agree that those 3,000 people died as a direct result of what happened on 9/11, that IS cause and effect.
But, as Margaret has pointed out, nothing forced us to react in the specific way that we did. The event of 9/11 didn’t cause us to shred the Constitution. Bush did that. And Obama is doing that.
There is already talk of rescinding parts of the Patriot Act and pulling out of Afghanistan. If it doesn’t happen, there was still nothing wrong with going down to ground zero and venting some healthy emotion.
I understand all that. I also understand that it’s ridiculous to object to US citizens venting anger/ joy over Bin Laden’s death. Liberal PC can be just as nauseating as Conservative fear mongering.
Other than Torquemada, since when and according to whom has celebrating someone else’s execution or death been considered healthy?
Thank you, Gregg Levine. I needed that.
Liberal PC is rooted in concepts like probable cause, objectivity, scientific method, and all the stuff that made the Enlightenment great. Emmerson and Thoreau were giant pains in the ass too, but being a liberal is an intellectual affliction, and not a PR-game.
Wow– you are eyeball deep apologizing for revenge and violence as well as being the only one wearing the “Political Correctness” here which is that of a war hawk as you apparently do not believe anything spoken to the contrary is either real or of value. If you were even willing to do the thought experiment of having the executioner’s gun pointed at your head with your complete inability to avoid that bullet, the brittle shell of anger you wear like an armor would crack and you might find within yourself a change of heart and mind.
DOWN WITH LI’L BRO
DOWN WITH LITTLE BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH POPPY1
My parent’s generation arrested the WW2 war criminals and brought them to trial at Nuremberg – or at least, as many as they could. They had a trial, presented evidence, passed judgment and carried out sentences for criminals who killed far, far, far more people than OBL did.
I guess that generation is made of better stuff than current generations.
Fine post, excellent reaction, just my own.
Thank you, Gregg.
Not my USA.
@mzchief “since when and according to whom has celebrating someone else’s execution or death been considered healthy?”
They’re celebrating the fact that he’s dead and can no longer fund or orchestrate Al Queda attacks, and that he paid the price for what he did, whether you agree with that price or not. It’s quite healthy.
@mzchief The absurdity of your reply is exactly what I’m talking about. It’s human emotion. Get over it.
@armchair 21st Century PC can be quite nauseating and based on the idea that we’re all veals.
No, they are not merely having thoughts and emotions as they could do that in the comfort of their own homes. Instead, they went out to act on thoughts and emotions in public and it is a slippery slope acting those out. They had a choice but they didn’t chose this (Cairo, Feb. 3, 2011) which comes from different thinking and the associated emotions.
Give it up. You can’t reason with these angelic Christlike Gandhians. They see no distinction between Osama/al-Qaeda and your run-of-the-mill miscreant. The reason right-wingers can stereotype liberals as suicidal where national security is concerned is these sort of voices raised in righteous indignation.
Oh, nocturnus, Jim was just making crystal his true position(s) just as you are proceeding to do now.
Thanks Gregg,
it’s a difficult topic. As a nation, we are viewing this thru a lens which has been warped by the events of the last decade.
What we need right now is less heroics and more healing.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/bin-laden-justice-or-vengeance
Andrea LeBlanc: First of all, I think justice is found in the courtroom, not on a battlefield.
Andrea LeBlanc’s husband was killed on 9/11 in one of the planes that hit the towers, she said, “I’m Looking for Justice, Not Vengeance.”
(I guess I can’t use html here?)
My gut feeling is one of outrage that this terrorist and
mass murderer was assassinated when he could have been
captured and treated just as Synoia suggests. As it
happens, the luck of finding Osama bin Laden “unarmed” gave
a precious window of opportunity to greet him with swift
and overwhelming nonlethal force before he could grab a
firearm or a possible suicide bomb. It wouldn’t have been
pretty for his daughter to watch, but much nicer than a
gratuitous assassination.
Of course, bin Laden wasn’t your run-of-the-mill criminal,
nor was he, I would add as a Jew, Adolf Eichmann, whose
execution in 1962 I deplored, although I welcomed the trial
and conviction. And the same would go for Hitler himself if
he hadn’t committed suicide. Give them natural life
imprisonment, interrogate them humanely, and learn all
about their psychology you can for future reference.
So my gut reaction, for the last half century, is that it’s
good to capture and imprison mass murderers and war
criminals: it celebrates our own life-affirming values as
best we can and acknowledges through stern but humane
punishment the awesome truth, at once dreadful and
splendid, that “the worst of the worst” are also our
brothers and sisters, as bin Laden’s daughter might tell
us.
I am not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Osama Bin Laden planned the 9/11 attacks, that he knew about them before they were carried out, or that he was executed in the mansion Sunday night. He was never charged with complicity in the 9/11 attacks and never admitted responsibility for them, although fake bin Laden tapes mysteriously surfaced at various times with fake admissions. He never was tried and we never saw the evidence against him.
His execution, assuming he was executed, was not justice. It was the equivalent of an old fashioned lynching without a trial and Jim’s comments that celebrating his execution was “healthy” sicken me.
I did not believe it was possible for Obama to further lower the bar for conduct in contempt of the rule of law, but he did.
Execution without a trial is never just and celebrating it is irresponsible, unjustifiable, immature, and really really dumb.
Good video log. I agree with the sentiments expressed. After all of the water under this bridge, I can’t understand the lust for one more drop of blood, even of the ALLEGED “mastermind” of al Qaida, and of the September 11 attacks. As usual, Glennzilla has a thoughtful piece over at Salon where he asks where the “Bin Laden exception” ends.
For me, the attacks began a whole process of opening my eyes to the world. I had always considered myself liberal or left-of-liberal, but also sensible and pragmatic. If I was driving at all during mid-September of 2001, I probably honked in response to a flag-waving, let’s get’em! exercise. By October, though, it had worn off, and I was wondering why the sensible leaders in government and media weren’t taking charge, and when those pickup trucks were going to lose the double-barreled old glories and shut the hell up. I lost my job (in the works since before the attacks) and followed through with the plan to live abroad a while. That provided a perspective that is more difficult to obtain at home.
As the wars began (we had actually long been at war with Iraq in all but name and action figures) and continued and morphed, I lost more and more of the pragmatic and sensibleness I prided myself on. Now I realize that the real trait was more akin to laziness. I didn’t want to deal with a problem if it wasn’t on fire.
Although I wasn’t even a young man in 2001, I feel as though I had my childhood taken. That can be a good thing, but only when things really begin to change for the better. Don’t see that happening soon, but there are green shoots or birth pangs or whatever, in Latin America (particularly South America), Wisconsin and the Middle East.