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MOVING_TARGET
Oct 3/Nov 5, 2007
October 17, 2008
There's a tendency for
present political context
to warp what is "thinkable".
Some examples:
(1)
Consider Jefferson's
remarks on slavery, which Jefferson proposed a way to
seem tremendously wimpy to gradually phase-out slavery:
us in retrospect. he wanted the children of
slaves to be declared free.
Today, long after
slavery has been There were no doubt some
eliminated, and the "personal circumstances"
problem has been (Well, that inclined Jefferson to
solved, we have more mostly think in that direction
sympathy for the solved.) (some of his children were
position of someone slaves) but even so, that's
like John Brown who a pretty good try at
insisted that slavery finding a way out without
was an evil that going through something as
should be eliminated traumatic as a Civil War.
immediately.
If you've got big
Of course, he was slave-owning businesses
willing to go all infesting the economy,
the way to armed they're going to fight
insurrection. hard about reducing the
(Compare value of their investment,
Obviously dangerous to the way but if all you're doing is
fanaticism, eh? And oil has restricting the supply of
to this day, many corrupted new slaves the value of
people would label American that investment will go up
it as "terrorism"... morals.) in the near term...
and yet it's the
justification most And it also helps answer the
often offered for then common objection that
the Civil War. people who've been slaves
all their lives just don't
have the intellectual
equipment to become citizens.
There are problems with
entrenched habits of thought A "meme complex",
that even these gradual A "paradigm"?
solutions can't get around.
For them to work, you
need people to admit And then you have
that they've been in the to get everyone to
wrong and have been for live with a partial
a long time. solution during the
transistion period.
But you know how
it goes:
We are nice people, we
don't do bad things, if we
GOOD_GUYS_DONT_DO_BAD do X it must not be so bad.
JUST_MEN Or more likely these days:
we don't really do X, we
just do x!
(And only when it's
absolutely necessary.
Or really, really
convenient. Or too
good a deal to turn down.)
(2)
Someone accusing Bush of
treason and demanding
that he be hanged is
unlikely to be taken
seriously today, but a
century hence, historians Myself, I just want to see
may look back on this era impeachment proceedings and
and wonder why there a thorough investigation
weren't more such people using state-of-the-art Don't
around. techniques, such as issues of
"water-boarding". this
magnitude
demand
the very
best?
(3)
We all agree that killing
innocent people is *evil*,
but have a strange blind-spot
in admitting that this is
what happens when *we* go to
war.
Central to the modern
"rules of war" is the And "tactical bombing"
doctrine of "strategic often looks a lot like
bombing"... which is a the "strategic" variety
euphemism for the in disguise.
slaughter of civilians.
They promise "surgical strikes"
every time, and deliver wholesale
butchery.
THE_TRUE_FISK
In some future time when "war"
really has been eliminated and Those bastards
only "police action" remains, just killed
this era's political disputes some innocent
are going to look incomprehensible. people!
There's only one
thing to do:
we've got to get
out there and
kill some *more*
innocent people.
To catch up.
We've got to
close the
murder gap.
(4)
Another example:
PROPORTION
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