This is topic OSC Challenges the Monkey, and the Monkey Responds… in forum Discussions About Orson Scott Card at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
Let me state a few things about myself so you know me a little better:
I am a 32-year-old, heterosexual man with two children and a wife of ten years, and am a proud American democrat. If you were to use a number line to represent political alignment with 0 being non-aligned, 10 being extreme right, and -10 extreme left (go ahead and make your jokes about leftists being negative, I won’t keep you from it ), I would categorize myself as a -6. I consider myself to be an open-minded and empathic person.

I entered the Hatrack forums a couple of months ago as my interest in writing fiction began to pick back up after years of thinking about it but doing nothing. Why Hatrack? Well, because one of the first and very best books on writing I ever picked up was yours, Characters and Viewpoint. This book had been referred to me by Canadian hard sci-fi writer Robert J. Sawyer. He told me most of the books out there weren’t really worth his time, but that Characters and Viewpoint was one in particular that he really liked. Seeing as I like Ender’s Game I thought I’d give it a go, and so I did. Very good book by the way.

After I entered Hatrack (I always want to call it Halftrack, after WWII APCs) I began to read your column. I found some of it funny, some of it good, much of it well thought out, but a great deal of it bitter. I chose articles at random by picking things in the subject line that interested me. Oddly, I never picked anything that held your political views or your views on gays or gay rights. I dismissed much of the harsh elements simply because I didn’t dive into the essays, they were mostly light reading for me as I was waiting for this or that to download off the net.

I came into the forums a few days ago to see if I could glean any new information on the Ender film as a buddy of mine at work had been asking about it. I found the thread about the ’00 interview, and without reading any of the other posts in that thread I jumped into it to see what you had to say about whatever you were being asked. I found the journalist that conducted the interview to be highly judgemental and extremely prejudiced. The media needs to be liberal by its very nature IMHO, but it has a responsibility to find the truth and present it’s findings in an impartial manner. Jerks like this chick or Dan Rather who go out of their way to use their jobs to bash elements they disagree with need to be dismissed, shunned, and made examples of by the entire country. Oh, and while I’m at it, Ann Coulter and Michael Moore need to be shot…many times…in painful areas of the body…and then be allowed to live. It is extremists on both sides that are tearing our nation apart, not just one side or the other. I’m getting off topic though so lets move on.

The article steamed me. Even though the journalist was way off base I could not believe how you answered her questions. I attacked right away on the Hatrack forums and was met with both calm and understanding as well as annoyed and angry posters. I began to talk with others and over time they swayed me slightly to see things a little differently.

You entered the thread and boldly stated your stance on the attack which I conducted. Even though I had stated that I went too far already it was well within your rights to counter the original post because you hadn’t had the chance to yet. Anyway, after you and I exchanged some civil words, you challenged me to try and see something from a different point of view other than my own. I paused. Wasn’t that just what I had done, I thought? Well, you know what, I hadn’t.

You said that I should take the “challenge of empathy” all the while I argued that I was an open-minded person. So the next day I went to work and thought about it the entire time I was there. It wore me the heck out; I work 12.5-hour shifts and had got a miserable hour-and-a-half sleep the night before. I went to bed that night without summarizing any of my thoughts on the matter because I needed to give my mind a break before I could put it all into perspective. I awoke this morn and it all came to me: A person cannot have an open-mind without having empathy for the person who is expressing views counter to their own. It’s near impossible.

Did I have empathy for you when I read ANY of those essays or interviews? No, I had not. Suddenly I felt ashamed. I had spent the majority of my adult life telling myself I was a good person because I could consider the views of others. But somehow I had lost empathy for others. I’ve had the trait in the past, because the moment I realized I had lost it was also when I realized when it had ended: 1996-, during Bill Clinton’s second term.

I was probably a -3 on the political scale at the time, but the right wing’s rhetoric on how evil and damaging to the country the left was galvanized my views and positions firmly on the left without me knowing it. In essence, I had lost my empathy for others. If people were going to call me an idiot for my beliefs, then my feeling was f---‘em, their beliefs were the ones that belonged to idiots. I let slip an important part of having an open-mind. Thank you so, very, very much Orsen (if I may call you that for a moment) for pointing this out to me. You can’t see it or feel it right now, but my eyes have swelled up a bit and a full feeling has entered my heart. And if it makes you feel good, you probably swung me back to a -4 from my -6. I know my scale is a gross oversimplification, but you get the picture.

So with my old friend empathy and I firmly embracing each other once again, I set out to re-examine your and my points on that thread just as I promised:

1. You said you disliked the fact that you could disagree with homosexual marriage but then be labeled a homophobe and a gay basher because of it.
My thoughts: Yes, this is exactly what I did. For shame, because I realized that’s what I do with everyone on this topic. It is possible to be against certain aspects of a group without having any other opinions (or maybe even good or bad ones) for that group. You changed my views. People who want to keep marriage what it is are just that, they are not necessarily homophobes; they are just people whom value marriage and what it currently stands for

2. Communism.
My thoughts: Again, although I thought I wasn’t calling you a Marxist, I was. Like marriage, it is possible to believe in X, without holding Y or Z in high regard or contempt as well. My buddy empathy at work again.

3. The charge that: “Why doesn’t it seem to occur to you that maybe I am EXACTLY the man you thought I was from my fiction…”
My thoughts: You know what, you’re right yet again. What I saw in your writing is exactly what I see here: A man who can use empathy and understanding to keep an open mind on other possibilities and views that are not necessarily his own. But where I lacked empathy for you, you fail to show that you have it yourself by the way you express your point of view in your essays.

Summary:
You feel extreme leftist America has taken empathy as their own and labeled those that do not agree with them as wrong. I counter with my own experience: Maybe both the right and the left’s extremes have hoarded that word for themselves. Not because they want to destroy the country, but because they too have lost their way. So much name-calling and opinion-bashing has been going on that maybe both sides have galvanized and not figured out yet that they threw their empathy out the window. I challenge you now: It is the responsibility of all of us who still have our empathy intact to do our best to get others to see things from a different perspective. Not so we can push our own values, but so we can heal the wounds and find common ground. If we can get enough on both sides to do this, then maybe we can go back to arguing our values while patting each other on the back and having a beer together. So what this means is I’m going to use my empathy with those I used to argue with and you’re going to be more diplomatic when you criticize others in your essays. Agreed? We cannot make a difference in other people by acting the way we have been. I know you think you are being candid, but honesty can still be achieved without being so dang blunt. So I put it to you now: Can Orsen Scott Card, a man who showed a blind, closed-minded, left-winger that he was indeed closed-minded through the use of compassion and diplomacy do the same when he writes about things he disagrees with?

…and you thought you were wasting your breath.

Blessings my friend.

[ May 23, 2005, 04:53 AM: Message edited by: Exploding Monkey ]
 

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Posted by alluvion (Member # 7462) on :
 
wishes Exploding Monkey well.

may I light yer fuse?
 

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Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
 
I am stunned. EM, I don't think I've ever seen so much self-awareness, so quickly done. I applaud you and your open mind!

(BTW from another thread I remember: OSC doesn't go by "Orson.")
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by alluvion:

may I light yer fuse?

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You may not. It's C4. Here, let me hand you the detonator...
 

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Posted by Bekenn (Member # 6602) on :
 
This monkey gets my vote of confidence.

I have found exactly the same phenomenon in my reading of OSC's essays and the reactions that they receive. Speaking as one who is probably around the +4 mark on that scale, maybe higher, maybe lower, I usually agree with the positions OSC actually holds in his essays... and it is my position that a lot of what he says gets misunderstood in part because of the knee-jerk associations that people tend to make, but also because of the way he phrases his positions.

I've always assumed that this is a matter of space available in which to present a point, mixed with the fact that his target readership (Rhino Times readers) typically agrees with his views anyway, so he feels less of a need to explain the process that leads to those views, but the potential for misunderstanding is nonetheless vast:

1) When OSC puts quotes around the "marriage" when referring to homosexual unions, it's very easy to picture the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons gesturing with the fingers of his hands and speaking very sarcastically in scorn of everyone who would propose that the idea is anything other than preposterous. People who already are annoyed simply because OSC's position is different from theirs will gravitate towards that interpretation of his meaning, and the stronger they disagree with his position, the harder it will be for them to ever see that word in quotes without assuming the worst possible hate-filled voice behind it. But it is my interpretation that the quotes do not indicate scorn, but are instead simply a shorthand reminder that he believes the word doesn't apply to homosexual unions.

2) Specific to homosexual issues: Card doesn't spend enough time elaborating the difference between homosexual actions and homosexual inclinations. Thus, because he states his opinion that the one is morally wrong, a natural assumption is made that he believes the other is wrong also, and therefore any person who experiences these inclinations must necessarily be evil to a greater extent than the rest of us. Read his articles without that assumption in place, and a very different picture of the man behind them will emerge.

3) OSC almost never makes plain the distinction between "the fanatical Left" or "extreme Leftists" and "the average Left." In fact, you almost never see anyone on "the Left" referred to except with one of those two adjectives, which makes it seem very much like he doesn't believe it's possible to be "Left" without also being "fanatical" or "extreme." In this way, the adjective backfires: instead of being a clear separation of extremist from common, it once again just makes Card look scornful. Just a simple parenthetical appearing after the first use of either of those phrases in an essay would solve this issue completely.

4) The phrases "everybody knows" and "anyone who has any knowledge of history" are always rather foolish to use, because the fact is that not everybody knows, and most of us simply don't take the time to study history to the same extent Card has... and there's nothing stopping even someone who has from reaching a different conclusion, perhaps based on different sources or different base assumptions about human nature. When using one of these phrases, the statement following should always be qualified or explained in someway; otherwise, it makes it seem as though Card is just covering for lack of a valid argument. Unjustified arguments always appear as arguments without justification. (I mean, c'mon, everybody knows that.) In the event that an explanation would take too much space, simply include a reference to someone else's version of that explanation, be it in a book or (preferably) online.

These are examples of where I believe people's misconceptions and assumptions about Card's attitudes originate. In most cases, I believe these are easy enough to fix, and I'm actually rather surprised he hasn't done so yet. It's not just a matter of diplomacy; it's a matter of making sure that people properly understand what you're actually saying, and to date the articles simply haven't shown much of an effort in that direction.

Of course, I could be wrong. It's possible that OSC really does just hate anyone who identifies himself as gay and believes that anyone who didn't vote Bush is a traitor to all of humanity, but I prefer charitable assumptions to uncharitable ones.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Nicely done, EM. And Bekenn, for that matter. Yay for sensible newbies/lurkers!
 

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Posted by BannaOj (Member # 3206) on :
 
Wow, sensible is possibly the highest compliment Tom Davidson gives out. You should be quite flattered, even though he meant it sincerely.

AJ
 

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Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :
 
Good to see you again, Bekenn.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
While I appreciate everyone's votes of confidence greatly, I'm going to wait for OSC's response before I start patting myself on the back.

After realizing I had a lack of empathy for others I had to go back to my old gaming clan and apologize to them as well. I attacked members there for their views on the clan's policies and left on very bad terms. I had violated the trust of the clan's leader by disclosing personal information to the other members that he told me in personal confidence. I am so ashamed for the person I used to be. I look at the posts I made in that first thread here and I don't even see the same person anymore.

But is this not the point of life anyway, I tell myself? Self-improvement is something we should all strive for. I'm just glad you all could help bring me to my senses. Thanks to all who participated in that thread and showed tolerance for my ranting.
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"I'm going to wait for OSC's response before I start patting myself on the back."

You may be waiting a while. He doesn't often engage in conversation on here, per se.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
That's okay. I'm just glad I've made a change for myself.

I understand why he would be like that. Any celeb that opens themself to the public will have lots of people hounding them. Just wait till the movie hits. I'm sure it will be much, much worse for him.
 

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Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
 
"celeb"

ha! He would laugh at that!
 

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Posted by Bekenn (Member # 6602) on :
 
Thanks, Moose!
 

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Posted by Dr. Evil (Member # 8095) on :
 
EM-

I have had the "open-minded" discussion with friends for years. I have often been called a close-minded person by individuals with much more liberal viewpoints than my own. This led to me asking the question about the definition of being "open-minded". Open minded does not mean "accepting", rather it means listening to as many differing viewpoints and very importantly, making a decision based on those viewpoints.

Most often I find that people have been trained or told how to think or act in a certain way and they will stick to that. I am guilty of it myself and I think the number of people who are constantly re-evaluating their thoughts and actions are far and few between.

I enjoyed your post as it offered a very introspective approach to thinking.
 

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Posted by Pelegius (Member # 7868) on :
 
Know, if Mr. Card will just respond.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Dr. Evil:
Open minded does not mean "accepting", rather it means listening to as many differing viewpoints and very importantly, making a decision based on those viewpoints.

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quote:

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Clinton looked us straight in the eye and lied to us. More than once. He committed perjury on more than one occasion. He knowingly had others lie for him. He disgraced the most powerful office in the world.

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*polite cough* Um....
Okay. I won't say it.
 

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Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
You won't say the everyone in the world believed that Iraq had WMD's (including John Kerry, the French, the UN, and every intelligence agency in the world)? You won't say that no one knows where Iraq's WMD's went to? You won't say that Bush would not have had to make Iraq comply with UN resolutions if Clinton and the UN had done their jobs properly instead of reaping huge profits from the Oil for Food program and letting Hussien openly flaunt the UN? That's OK, I can say it for you.
 

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Posted by Dr. Evil (Member # 8095) on :
 
"...and there was much rejoicing....yaaaaay!"
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 

 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
"That's OK, I can say it for you."

I'm relieved. I was afraid for a moment that there would be a yawning gulf of silence. Listening to you patronize me has spared me that awkwardness.
 

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Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
Heck no, we are a chatty bunch here at Hatrack
 

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Posted by Pelegius (Member # 7868) on :
 
Um, DarkKnight. The U.N. said that they couldn't find any "Weapons of Mass Destruction." If Iraq had these unconvitional weapons, they have myssteriousl vanished from the face of the Earth. Maybe the aliens took them.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
Bad news DarkKnight,

ALL politicians lie to you. Period. Get used to it. Not one of them has ever ascended to power without having this trait.

What you need to ask yourself is when does the lie cross the line? In my opinion, Clinton's lies over getting some tickle time are much less of a concern to me than say, the lies regarding the Regan administration and the Iran-Contra affair. And I'm not making political distinctions here BTW. I'm not saying Clinton is better than Regan; I'm just pointing out how they all do it and how some lies are worse than others. You have to decide between the ones that are worth having an uproar over and the ones are not.

We shouldn't have to tolerate this at all, but it is one of the truths of the world we live in.
 

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Posted by Anna (Member # 2582) on :
 

quote:

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You won't say the everyone in the world believed that Iraq had WMD's

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Not to nitpick, but I'm well placed to say that the French were 98% sure there weren't.
 

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Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
Umm, Anna, France supplied Iraq with all kinds of weapons and technology before the first Gulf War. French companies, along with many other companies, helped Iraw develop technology to create WMDs. So yes, the French knew.
 

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Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
I agree EM that all politicians lie, my point was that Clinton's lies and scandals that were actually major things went mostly unreported. Lewinsky was focused on and the others overlooked. Sorry about the Iraw instead of Iraq in the above post, haven't had my coffee yet
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 

quote:

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I agree EM that all politicians lie, my point was that Clinton's lies and scandals that were actually major things went mostly unreported.

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I hate to ask this, but where were you living at this time? I was actually working as a journalist when these scandals were in the news, and "unreported" is not a word I would use to describe them, especially given how fictional most of them were.
 

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Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
Washington state for most of it. I do miss the whole Pacific Northwest area, it's very beautiful out there! Seattle was a great city to go out and have fun in, big enough to have a 'big city' feel yet still on the small side so you can feel safe walking the streets at night. If you ever get the chance to have lunch (a lot cheaper than dinner) in the Space Needle I really recommend it, they have a revolving restaurant
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Hm. It's possible that Seattle in the '90s may well have been one of two or three places on Earth that did not print every single report of every single hiccup from the Clinton era. *grin*
 

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Posted by Ryoko (Member # 4947) on :
 
Tom, out of curiosity, when you say you were working as a journalist at this time, what sort of work were you doing? (i.e. newspaper, magazine, etc.)

Were you covering politics?
 

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Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
yea, Seattle is pretty laid back. My impression was that the Monica story was covered to death, and the other stories were mentioned but not beaten like a dead, decaying horse like the Monica one.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by DarkKnight:
Washington state for most of it. I do miss the whole Pacific Northwest area, it's very beautiful out there!

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My wife and I are in the process of moving to Portland from here in Southern Cal.
 

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Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
 
Again, people forget that there is a difference between a mistake and a blatant lie.

Every member of congress looked at the same evidence that Bush did and they all came to the same conclusion: the use of force was an option that had to be given to the President.

Did every member of congress lie? Or did they make a mistake?
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
Every member was swayed by intel that was presented as hard fact when it was very, very shaky at best. Even Dubyah has admitted the intel was not very good. Yet he pushed hard for war.
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
Colin Powell gave a terribly complelling presentation to the U.N. detailing, through things like radio intercepts, how they knew that there where WMD and that the Iraqis had a active program to hide them from the inspectors. Even he came out later and said that this information was obviously fraudulent. He called for an investigation of how he was handed this information and told that it was accurate. Suprisingly enough, this investigation never materialized.
 

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Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
EM, I think you like living up there lots of people moved from SoCal to Portland and even to Seattle. It's a different world, but you can adapt I spent about 9 months near Vallejo
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
I love it. I took my wife up last year so she could see it while we did some scouting on real estate. She likes it a lot too.

Portland's architecture reminds me of San Fran and New York mixed together. I love the miles and miles of nature up there. It's my kinda thing.

I live in the valley right now. The air quality here is awful. It's so bad that my kids get hospitalized every year for asmatic bronchitis. This is our main reason for leaving California. We have lots of other reasons too, but this is the big one.
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 

quote:

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Every member of congress looked at the same evidence that Bush did and they all came to the same conclusion: the use of force was an option that had to be given to the President.

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Doesn't the power to declare war lie only with the president?
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
No, the decision to declare war lies only with Congress. The President has the right to move troops around and such.

However, that statement is either a mistake or a lie, as neither did every member of congress vote to allow the use of force nor were they all privy to the same information that the President had.
 

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Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
 
Ah. thanks mrsqucky
 

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Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
 
Actually, not all politicians lie.

Just the ones who keep getting reelected <grin>.
 

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Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
 
""So?" I answer back, "You don't know anyone that has ever cheated before? Did you discredit their entire professional career because of it too?"

Did I not say that this is the exact sort of thing liberals always say? He was a sexual harasser. He took away her job. He took away other women's jobs. Both for having "sex" with him and for not having "sex" with him. Monica was removed from the Whitehouse before the reelection campaign. How can a true liberal be okay with having a sexual harrasser in charge?

But anyway, I guess both sides circle their wagons when the captain is under assault. (post edited)

[ May 26, 2005, 07:22 PM: Message edited by: mothertree ]
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
But by the same turn of the coin, how can a true conservative be okay with having a murderer in charge? As you said though, captains and wagons.

I was making a generalization about the whole scandal. I wasn't addressing anything you said specificly. Sorry if it looked like I was debating. I can see now how you may have discerned that.

Oh, and I like Gore too. I have to give the man credit for sticking to due process in the '00 election rather than acting like a little baby and pulling out all the lawyers. It disappointed me, but it was big of him to do that.

[ May 26, 2005, 10:54 PM: Message edited by: Exploding Monkey ]
 

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Posted by socal_chic (Member # 7803) on :
 
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Exploding Monkey:
[QB] But by the same turn of the coin, how can a true conservative be okay with having a murderer in charge?


There are those of us who do not see him as a murderer....that's a pretty horrific thing to say about someone.
 

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Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
 
Wait, I'm confused. Where is this monkey? Exactly? And why is OSC challenging a monkey to a fight?
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
Yes, it is a horrible thing to say. I truly wish it was not so.

I mean that sincerely too.
 

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Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Orson Scott Card:
Actually, not all politicians lie.

Just the ones who keep getting reelected <grin>.

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Might OSC be referring to our current president? Who, if I remember correctly, he was supporting during the election. Or did I miss something very important.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
I think he was generalizing and making a funny at the same time. He probably is referring to Bush, but he's referring to all the others on both sides of the political spectrum as well.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by SteveRogers:
Wait, I'm confused. Where is this monkey? Exactly? And why is OSC challenging a monkey to a fight?

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I started the fight in this thread.

He challenged me to try and see things from a point of view other than my own.

...and we're supposed to meet after school in the parking lot. Come one, come all.

[ May 26, 2005, 10:55 PM: Message edited by: Exploding Monkey ]
 

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Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
 
re: murderer in charge.

Let's see, I'm pretty sure that the total number of people killed in any of Bush's campaigns is still less than the average number of abortions annually in the U.S. alone. Sure these continue under Bush, but I'm sure you are counting murder here as deaths permitted by policy and not actual murder. I'd dare say there are more "partial birth" abortions (or D&X, if you prefer the clean medical term) each year thant the number of Americans who have died in Iraq.

Hmm, I didn't see that there was a second page.

I guess this again gets us into the lying thing. Yes, all politicians lie. If someone will point out where the thing that really really bothered Card about Clinton was that he lied, I'd be interested to read it. Clinton, again, was not being tried for lying. He was being tried for Sexual Harassment. He committed perjury, which is a specific act of lying under oath.

I think you're probably familiar with the phrase "When Clinton lied, nobody died." Unless you count the several bombings he ordered in order to get the congress to declare themselves united behind him during the hearings. I guess sometime I should try to articulate more specifically how angry that slogan made me.

Did Bush say something that turned out not to be true? Possibly. Saddam Hussein was on the loose in Iraq for 9 months after the war began, and has strong support with the Syrians- He is a very smart, if ruthless, man and when he got wind of the WMDs being a lynchpin of Bush's perceived success. I believe he gave most of them to the Syrians, who now comprise the most resistance to Iraq's democratically elected government.

We also know he had WMDs because we provided him with quite a few when he was our ally against Iran. But I guess it all depends on the media's definition of a WMD. Our previous alliance with Saddam was a terrible mistake, and it is the real reason I believe it was our job to remove him from power, because every minority or dissident citizen that Saddam murdered was blood on our hands. However, since Americans don't have that long of an attention span, Bush went with the WMD bugaboo. I think he made a mistake in doing so, since it was then very easy for the media to say of the tons of ordnance that have been found in Iraq "but it's not a working nuke, so it doesn't really count as a WMD."

[ May 28, 2005, 01:59 PM: Message edited by: mothertree ]
 

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Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
 
When Clinton lied -- making sure that the term "genocide" was never used in public, although it was on internal memos -- some 800,000 Rwandans died.

When he promised to work to make abortion "safe, legal, and rare," some 1.5Mx8 = 12,000,000 died.

So it would be fairer to say, "When Clinton lied, only about 13 million people died."
 

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Posted by TL (Member # 8124) on :
 
The phrase "when Clinton lied nobody died" is ridiculous in itself. It's okay to lie if nobody gets killed? Lying is wrong. Lying to the American people when you are President is worse. If people are DYING when you lie, something is so terribly wrong!
 

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Posted by ssywak (Member # 807) on :
 
Wow, Mothertree, I'm so glad you don't waste any time on actually verifying anything you say.

Yes, we gave Saddam Hussein weapons during previous administrations (well, not "gave"..."sold") But most of them (and, now, apparently all of them) were removed at the close of Gulf War I.

Bombings that Clinton ordered to rally Congress behind him??? Any websites besides Hannity & Limbaugh support this claim?

Tons of Ordnance? Any of it work? At all? Shall we include the patched together R/C plane as an unmanned assault aircraft, too?

And maybe we should say, "When Clinton lied, spermatazoa flied"?

[ May 28, 2005, 10:02 PM: Message edited by: ssywak ]
 

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Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
 
Oh! Good point. I forgot about the impeachment bombing of Iraq. But I never knew the death toll from that.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
Heh. Actually, I’ve never heard that saying before.

I’m not going to bother getting into the whole abortion thing for several reasons, one of them being the fact that the entire “when does life begin” thing would overcomplicate issues and draw us off of our current focus. So to get back on track with my Bush comment: I was referring to the loss of human life in Iraq.

I wonder though why neither you (mothertree and Will B) chose to rebuttal against my remark that Bush is a murderer? All you replied with were examples of Clinton’s supposed follies in regards to human losses. I myself was making no distinctions between Bush and Clinton at first until mothertree said, “How can a true liberal be okay with having a sexual harrasser in charge?”

I thought it was kind of prudent to show a counterpoint to MT’s comment. I didn’t mean for it to become a teeter-totter of he-did-this and he-did-that. Those arguments go nowhere IMHO.

So when mothertree said “I guess both sides circle their wagons when the captain is under assault,” she was right on as far as it goes with me. Like I said earlier, I was already in a mindset where I didn’t want to hear anything the right had to say about it.

But you two don’t strike me as the closed minded person I used to be. So I wonder, why (and how) can a pro-Busher support a man that for all intents and purposes is indeed a murderer?
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
Probably because we don't consider him to be a murderer.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
Let me rephrase. How do you justify his actions in Iraq then? And don't give me the whole tired "freedom" thing either. There are lots of repressed peoples on this planet that we do nothing about.

I have a hard time seeing our nation right now as anything other than a global bully. What stinks about that is this administration’s choices have allowed the jihadists to exploit that that very image.
 

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Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
 
I'm not going to give you anything. Read some old threads if you're interested. But don't expect us to grant your premises.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
Uh, oh-kay.

I was not suggesting that.
 

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Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
 
>I wonder though why neither you (mothertree and Will B) chose to rebuttal against my remark that Bush is a murderer? All you replied with were examples of Clinton’s supposed follies in regards to human losses.

I had several reasons for not refuting "Bush is a murderer":
* I didn't notice this claim
* It's not worth addressing, since there's no evidence that he's a murderer
* It's not possible to prove a negative (since I haven't witnessed every minute of Bush's life)
* I see hundreds of claims, and wouldn't have time to refute them all

You've since rephrased this as "how do you justify his actions in Iraq" -- a very different question, but ok.

I wasn't sure, back when the nation was discussing whether to invade Iraq. I did think the US was to blame for leaving Hussein in charge in '91. And for bombing Iraq for the next decade. I didn't see a way out short of war -- Hussein was clearly not going to stop executing Iraqi citizens, or evading UN inspections. I didn't like the way the US was letting the Iraqis suffer from our preserving Hussein's rule (see _Out of the Ashes_ for how the US not only allowed, but actively assisted, Hussein's survival after '91).

It was learning about what Hussein was doing to his citizens that convinced me the war was justified. In the first year of the war, in November, I checked the numbers: even the worst casualty estimates showed that we had saved lives by stopping Hussein's executions. It may be different now, if you count "killings by anti-American terrorists" as "killings by Bush," bizarre as that is.

Iraq would not have been the first country to need intervention to protect the lives of its citizens, but despite what I wanted to see happen, nobody was willing to stop Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Fortunately somebody (Bush admin) was willing to stop Sudan: they stopped the killing in the southern Sudan, getting autonomy for the region, and they're stopping a starvation attempt in Darfur. Doesn't show up on the news much.

So I *am* giving you that same old "tired" freedom -- and human life -- thing; but _I'm_ not tired of it, and neither are Iraqis, and neither, I think, should anybody be. The fact that people in China, say, aren't free, does not show that it's evil for people to be freed somewhere else.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
Thanks Will for your input. Dagonee seems to think I was fishing for something that I was not, but what you posted was exactly what I was looking for: A different take on things outside of my own.

I don't agree with your point of view, but I can see where you are coming from. I am fully aware of the horrible relationship we kept with Hussein though. It's a shame things went that way. I agree he should have been taken down in '91, but I understand Bush I's perspective on that situation. The UN mandate was satisfied, so mission accomplished. It's hard to make tough decisions like if it's necessary to invade or not when you’ve already reached the stated objective. There are so many other factors to consider beyond taking down a scumbag like Hussein.

I have been wondering of late if Bush II will be seen in the same light as Eisenhower was long after the Korean War was over. DW got a lot of flak for Korea, but hindsight showed his actions to not only be just, but very important in maintaining the balance of power between the US and the USSR. From my point of view at this time I'd have to say no to Bush II's actions, but history often looks different after the dust settles.
 

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Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
 
EM, is Clinton a murderer for bombing Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia?
Will B, Bush couldn't go into Iraq because of conditions the coalition setup before the war started. The coalition could not invade Iraq because it was formed to free Kuwait and stop once that was accomplished. I believe it was specific about NOT invading Iraq. My thoughts are that Bush would have been ripped apart if he had gone in after Saddam. He did exactly what was agreed upon and still gets flak about it.
Clinton bombed Iraq (or murdering Iraqis) for the next decade because Iraq kept shooting at planes that were patrolling the no-fly zone.
Also, the UN sanctioned Iraq, not the US. The suffering of the Iraqi people is tied to Saddam and the UN's abuse of the Oil for Food program, not the US.
 

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Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
 
EM,
Some unsolicited advice. When you are going to post something, stop and think to yourself what effect you want it to have, and whether or not it's likely to have that effect. For example, the Bush = murderer thing. What did you want to come out of this? Was this actually a worthy, responsible goal? Did you achieve it and were you likely to achieve it? Is there perhaps another way you could have gone about pursuing this goal that may have yielded better results?

From my own perspective, I don't see anything productive coming out of that, but that's just me.
 

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Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
 
along the lines of what Squicky said...I do find it ironic that in a thread where a person announced how he decided that he needed to be more open minded to people he disagreed with, he called the president a murderer...and then single out two people that disagreed with him and said:

quote:

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But you two don’t strike me as the closed minded person I used to be. So I wonder, why (and how) can a pro-Busher support a man that for all intents and purposes is indeed a murderer?

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quote:

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Originally posted by MrSquicky:
EM,
Some unsolicited advice. When you are going to post something, stop and think to yourself what effect you want it to have, and whether or not it's likely to have that effect. For example, the Bush = murderer thing. What did you want to come out of this? Was this actually a worthy, responsible goal? Did you achieve it and were you likely to achieve it? Is there perhaps another way you could have gone about pursuing this goal that may have yielded better results?

From my own perspective, I don't see anything productive coming out of that, but that's just me.

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I didn't mean it as an attack, but I can see how it could be taken like that. I guess my problem in expressing ideas through text is I am often expressing my emotions at the same time. This is something I need to work on for sure.

Man I sure do love my fellow Hatrackers! That's twice now that someone has pointed something out to me about myself that I had not noticed on my own.

I think I'll rename this the "EM Introspective" thread.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Lupus:
along the lines of what Squicky said...I do find it ironic that in a thread where a person announced how he decided that he needed to be more open minded to people he disagreed with, he called the president a murderer...and then single out two people that disagreed with him

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Rome wasn't built in a day Lupus. I'm finding that it's a struggle to stay consistant sometimes. But as I just said above, I need to also seperate emotions from ideas.
 

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Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
 
I honor that sentiment.

Inconsistencies are worth pointing out, but it's also worth noting that they aren't hypocrisy if admitted. For myself, I want the freedom to admit mine.
 

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Posted by Exploding Monkey (Member # 7612) on :
 
I’ve been having to remind myself at times to keep an open mind and to use empathy and understanding when speaking with others. For the most part I have been successful, but now and then I find myself slipping into my old habits and I have to stop myself and say, "No, that's not how you do it Keith. Let's try that again."

I was trying to drum up a little serious conversation on the Bush issue, but it did come off too brash and challenging as others have pointed out. I really appreciate MrSquicky's comments on the matter. There are a lot of intelligent and level headed people on this forum; that’s why I keep gravitating back to it.

And speaking of intelligent…Dagonee,

I just do not know how to take you. This is twice I have felt your comments carried hostility toward me. In our first encounter it was understandable, but this time I felt you didn’t even bother to try and see anything from my point of view. You just came in with a single statement and when I tried to engage in conversation with you all you did was throw up a wall and leave the thread. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I was expressing myself poorly? Did you even bother to try and discuss that with me? I know you’re not the forum therapist, but you don’t seem to be much of a diplomat either. Don’t take this the wrong way. I mean it sincerely and respectfully. I can see when you post on this forum that you posses a clear mind with strong values that you can express intelligently. I just wonder why you don’t use that to better effect when you talk to me. I guess what I am saying is I’d like to converse with you on a more respectful level than either of us appear to be doing. What do you think?
 

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