Who I feel sorry for...

[booley]

I don't normally do a thread with just my rants. i admit it seems self centered and self indulgent.

But I felt like an exception to that rule. If it bothers you, by all means, you don't have to respond or even read this. It is a rant and I make no apology for that...

I am liberal in part becuase i think humans need to treat humans better. Hate breeds hate, you can't stop people killing people by killing people. War does not bring peace in the end.

And so frankly I have been going through a kind of horror overload. I't 's becoming hard to feel more for one group of murdered over another. I mean, do cons really think that we are supposed to forget about hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dying becuase Hundreds of Americans have died? (hell, at least the Americans had a fighting chance...for whatever that was worth). Am I really supposed to not feel horrible for kids who have been mutilated and killed, conscripted soldiers that were burned or buried alive but then become conveneintly outraged becuase this makes enough people to do something equally horrific to Americans? Is that how Conservative Compassion works? Compassion, but just for people who look like you? (and you wonder why we think of most cons as bigots)

Sorry, it doesn't work like that.

No, I have not gone to see the Nick Berg beheading. No, I have not gone to see the pictures of Paul Johnson's beheadings. I do go to this one site that lists the coaltion soldiers killed in Iraq but thats becuase I have friends there and I know Shrub isn't going to go out of his way to tell people who have died for his little war. The reason is simple. Becuase I already have seen such atrocities and hardly need to be reminded that War is cruel, evil and horrific. That 'War Crimes' is an excercise in redundency. Becuase when the war started (when Cheney and Shrub were still telling us what a 'cakewalk' the war would be) I did look at pics of the war, of the war dead (all Iraqi at that point) and saw a lot of horrible things. Especially one kid. He was lying peacfully, his expression hard to make out. But what struck me was his arms. I kept wondering, "Where were his hands? And what was that spongy black/grey stuff that was lumped around his arms?" Then I realized, that stuff was what was left of his arms, the flesh burned and twisted and holed like so much burnt plastic, puffed out like an old pillow put through a shredder. He had no hands. He was way beyond pain.
Yes, I guess I am a Wussy though it's not that I am incapable of nihilistic rage. Hell, in my darker moments,I think we should evacuate jerusalem and then nuke it so no one can live there, the violence upsets me so much. and I guess, That certainly is nto that different then the rants of Con's to nuke Falluja. Knowing this about myself I know better then to get myself in a lather. I have no need to work at being outraged at human sadism and evil. it gets shoved in my face easily enough.

I have to be careful about my outrage. Becuase it's that kind of outrage that led to Abu Ghraib. It leads to Beheadings and Suicide Bombings. I won'tgo that far 9what chance would i have to do so anyway) but then I'm hardly the first to think that. Some of them worked at Abu Ghraib.

As I said, evil breeds more evil. How many "good men" have committed horrors to "stop" evil?

So, just for the record and admittedly for my own peace of mind, let me just say who I do (and do not) have compassion for...

I feel sorry for the Hundreds of Thousands of iraqis that have been burned, bombed, shot, beaten, raped, poisened, given grotesque birth deffects from DU from the last war, and generally have suffered as badly if not worse from US policy as they did from Saddam (Do Cons really think Americans toturing and killing Iraqis is less evil then Saddam doing so?)

I feel sorry for the Soldiers that been killed. Though I adamantly oppose what they are doing there, I have been in the military. I know how much choice they really have. I know human nature and how easily large groups can enforce thier will on individuals. And it doesn't help that they were lied too. It doesn't help that they were manipulated.
Thier willingness to sacrifice for what they beleived to be a hgher ideal is noble. That thier sacrifice has been turned wasted and misused and seen as nothing but a PR issue by Shrub and company just makes it even worse. How can you tell somebody that everything they sacrificed and died and killed for was a lie?

I feel sorry for the people who died in 9-11. None I knew personally but two of my friends did almost join them but for a twist of fate. I remember reading that three of the victims were two gay dads bringing thier new adopted son home for the first time. (after that I purposely avoided obsessing on it all )
Again, horror overload.

And yes, I feel sorry for Berg and Johnson, they were trying to make a living. I do not know of any evil they did to deserve what they got. I can understand the rage of thier murderers without having to justify or condone it. (a subtlety often lost on the cons here it seems)

I can even feel sorry for the other arabs and others of the middle east who will undoubtidly suffer and killed in even greater numbers in the future.

and finally I do have sympathy for Nancy Reagan. I never liked her but I respected her going against cons for her stance on stem cell research. Her motives were undoubtidly a bit selfish but understandable (and good things don't always happen for selfless reasons) I've had a grandfather and mother die from cancer. My mom couldn't even talk in her last days. So I sure as hell know what it's like to have a loved one die from a slow debiliating disease.

BUT I do NOT feel sorry for Ronald. He lived a long life (at least 70 years being functional) His policies led to MILLIONS of deaths. He supported DEATH SQUADS, used Negreponte and others ot cover for GENOCIDE, increased the numbers of the POOR and did so much other bad shit to list them all would be impossible Who knows how many people would be alive today if he had just acknowledged AIDS.
I don' t feel happy he's dead. But I don't feel badly either. except for this feeling of being cheated. Becuase Reagan got away with it all. He as good as killed more people then anyone here can ever name or know, his policies and politics have damaged our furture and will cause people not even born yet to have to bear a cost.
And He is being WORSHIPPED?! His memory is being WHITE WASHED? AND he never owned up to what he did.

And I will admit that when Shrub and Cheney and Delay and Gingrich and the rest finally kick the bucket...

I won't feel Happy. I won't feel Sad. I will feel, if anything Cheated. becuase I know they will never have had to own up to the evil they did while alive.
(maybe we will get lucky and there is a Just God. Who knows)

To the cons who feel that I am being "hateful" or "extremist" or whatever stupid charge they feel will shut up thier critics I can only say sorry..

But I am not obligated to feel saddened that mass murderers, thieves and demogogic bigots died of natural cuases after a long, comfortable life.

[Hoping4Change]

1. Very well said. I detect no rant . Thanx for sharing your thoughts.

[booley]

3. I was afraid I was over the top

but frankly I was getting so sick fo the way cons used things like compassion as a rhetrocial device.

We have to free the Iraqis by killing them?

we stopped the torturing and raping by torturing and raping?

we have to support the troops by cutting thier pay, under-equipping them and keepinthem there until they go crazy or get killed?

you can see the same with thier arguements with taxes, the poor..whatever.

It's like all they care about is the wordplay. Corpses of the dead are just a prop to them. Actual actions that would help people are just beyond most of them.

Can anyone think of any republican plan or bill that in the last 50 years that didn't help only the rich and powerful?

And when you call them on it, they use the most idiotic arguements to try to claim that it's really non-conservatives that are lacking compassion.

I'll calm down but for now I am so sick of these sick excuses for human beings. Human beings they are...but I wouldn't want to admit we share the same species.

[Hoping4Change]

4. Not over the top at all, I found your post to be trenchant.

This administration has been so wildly extreme that I think it is not on;y impossible remain calm and unbothered but also to detached from the crimes being perpetrated.

[booley]

5. so you are saying

..that I need to be even more outraged then I already am?!

I like your advice!

[greekspeak]

2. So it was a rant...

Sometimes we need to rant. And what you said I feel.

As a SCHOLAR of the Bible, I know a little bit about apocalyptic literature. It was written by the have nots as a way to make evil people get their come-uppance, at least in effigy. Gotta have some answer why the evil go unpunished. I do hope that someday the cabal are tried for the evils they have done in the name of this country, and we are not all left to write our own apocalyptic literature.