On Aug 17, 2005, at 10:46 AM, Dan Minette wrote:
[I elided the quotes from Benzimm because there's no point arguing with
someone else's words]
That is the core of the argument: the neocon caused us to go to war
for the
sake of Israel is a anti-Semitic argument. Gautam, Zimmy, and I are in
full agreement on this.
Two things: One, I don't think pointing to *any* power cabal and
suggesting (even insinuating) that they've somehow seized control of
the US government is indicative of any kind of ism, though it might be
a sign of deranged thinking.
There's plenty of that afoot; the far right thinks the "liberals" have
too much control; the far left thinks the "conservatives" have too much
control. The Klan and neo-nazis think "race traitors" are calling the
shots and the tinfoil hat crowd believe it's all aliens and/or mind
control.
I can readily identify two hallmarks of the thinking being done by
*all* the aforementioned groups: (1). Belief that there's some kind of
shadowy group which is brokering power or controlling tone and purpose
in any given setting; and (2). Willingness to seize any scrap of data,
regardless of how tenuous, and proclaim that it is "proof" or at least
"evidence" of such a shadowy group's existence.
A correlate of (2) is the willingness to quote out of context, distort
or falsely attribute statements whenever it's convenient to do so, and
then refuse to accept any later corrections or retractions by
suggesting that the "true nature" of a given person's thoughts was
somehow "betrayed" a la a Freudian slip.
But all this behavior is skating the edge of paranoia.
Two, it seems to me that of the three people you've mentioned, one is
hair-trigger sensitive to anything that might seem even vaguely
anti-semitic; one appears to be using that argument solely to tar an
opposing viewpoint with an ism to make it look ugly; and one appears to
be sliding into willingness to believe in Vast Conspiracies working at
all levels of US government and social structure.
Sensitivity to anti-semitism, when one is Jewish, is understandable.
It's easy for me to put myself into that position too, to see how it's
possible to be, perhaps, a little *too* willing to see an ism where
none may be intended.
And we're talking about an old bigotry, one that has deep and vicious
history in places where one would hope it couldn't grow, let alone
flourish. But the problem with a charge like this one is that it's very
easy to make, and frankly I'm not willing yet to make such a charge.
Nor, I believe, should any Jewish person -- because it becomes a bit
too much like crying wolf, and because the very sensitivity we're
talking about here might distort perspectives sufficiently to prevent
an objective (reasonably so) determination of motivations being made.
It's entirely feasible that Sheehan, *assuming she made the statements
attributed to her* (that has yet to be verified), was intending to
target what she saw as a power group without any thought as to any sort
of ethnicity or other ism that might be attributed either to that group
or to her (alleged) statements.
Put another way, I sometimes think that the ACLU gets a little too
strident in some situations. They've certainly done a lot of good
protecting the rights of a lot of minorities (including mine), but I
retain the right to criticize them without being accused of being
anti-this or anti-that. Just because I sometimes question the decisions
made by the ACLU doesn't mean I hate gays, blacks, Jews and so on, any
more than my willingness to wonder about the utility of some ADA
provisions means I hate the handicapped.
As for a willingness to align to a charge because it's politically
expedient: Sorry, but I see more than a little evidence of this here.
There's obviously a lot of smearing going on from supporters and
detractors of Sheehan, which is pretty convenient because it takes
attention away from the core issue: An unjustified war, one that the
current administration is guilty of leading us into.
It's awfully convenient to be able to fling mud rather than address the
main topic, and that's what I see a lot of happening here,
unfortunately. It's extremely disappointing.
Finally, there simply are not Vast Conspiracies controlling any angle
of life in the US. Believing that the "left" is somehow able to control
thought in the US is as foolish as believing that a "neo-con" think
tank is doing the same.
If there *is* anything like a power cabal pulling strings in this
country, it is what it *always has been*: Constituted of the
extraordinarily wealthy. But even that claim doesn't hold up long under
scrutiny, I think.
(For example: If you really want to look at who's got power and
discredit the idea of centralization of power, try looking at
self-defined clusters of people. There are several: The religious, the
rich and the umbrellas that cover minorities are just three, and there
are times when these loose aggregates appear to clash with one another,
or even appear to be in support of some goal or other that suggests a
sort of organized, strategic thinking.
(But if you look into the details of only these three tenuous sets, you
see immediately that they're composed of constituents which have wildly
variant agendas. This doth not an effective conspiracy make, yet we
tend to want to see them anyway, possibly because of our ancient
pattern-recognition software.)
Turning back to where you got your information, the question is not so
much
why someone who gives an interview in Vanity Fair is well known, its
why an
undersecretary of defense would be in a position where Vanity Fair
would
think he's newsworthy. His profile was originally raised by his
opponents,
with anti-Semitic innuendo.
Do you have references to back this claim, or is it entirely off the
cuff? (Not that his opponents raised his profile; that may well be true
-- but rather, that it was an anti-semitic plot.)
--
Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books
http://books.nightwares.com/
Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror"
http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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