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Wisdom from Jim Wright Follow

#1 Sep 11 2016 at 9:06 AM Rating: Good
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Jut I was going to make a thread were I was going to share the last essay I had read on Jim Weights blog, but our power had gone out and when it came back I couldn't get Alla's to reload in my browser.

Today on his Facebook page he posted the following.

Jim Wrights original post got taken down by Facebook after someone complained about it. It's now up on StoneKettle Station with additional commentary.

Quote:
Jim Wright
43 mins · Pensacola, FL ·

You're expecting some kind of obligatory 9-11 post, aren't you?

Here it is, but you're not gonna like it.

15 years ago today 19 ********* attacked America.

They killed 3000 of us.

And then ... America got its revenge for 9-11.

Yes we did. Many times over. We killed them. We killed them all. We killed their families. We killed their wives and their kids and all their neighbors. We killed whole nations that weren't even involved just to make goddamned sure. We bombed their cities into rumble. We burned down their countries.

They killed 3000 of us, we killed 300,000 of them or more.

8000 of us came home in body bags, but we got our revenge. Yes we did.

We're still here. They aren't.

We win. USA! USA! USA!

Right?

You goddamned right. We. Win.

Except...

Every year on this day we bath in the blood of that day yet again. We watch the towers fall over and over. It's been 15 goddamned years, but we just can't get enough. We've just got to watch it again and again.

It's funny how we never show those videos of the bombs falling on Baghdad today. Or the dead in the streets of Afghanistan. We got our revenge, but we never talk about that today. No, we just sit and watch the towers fall yet again.

Somewhere out there on the bottom of the sea are the rotting remains of the evil son of ***** who masterminded the attack. It took a decade, but we hunted him down and put a bullet in his brain. Sure. We got him. Right? That's what we wanted. that's what our leaders promised us, 15 years ago today.

And today those howling the loudest for revenge shrug and say, well, yeah, that. That doesn't matter, because, um, yeah, the guy in the White House, um, see, well, he's not an American, he's the enemy see? He's not doing enough. So, whatever. What about that over there? And that? And...

Yeah.

15 years ago our leaders, left and right, stood on the steps of the Capitol and gave us their solemn promise to work together, to stand as one, for all Americans.

How'd that promise work out?

How much are their words worth? Today, 15 years later?

It's 15 years later and we're STILL afraid. We're still terrorized. Still wallowing in conspiracy theories and peering suspiciously out of our bunkers at our neighbors. Sure we won. Sure we did. We became a nation that tortures our enemies -- and our own citizens for that matter. We're a nation of warrantless wiretaps and rendition and we've gotten used to being strip searched in our own airports. And how is the world a better place for it all?

And now we're talking about more war, more blood.

But, yeah, we won. Sure. You bet.

Frankly, I have had enough of 9-11. **** 9-11. I'm not going to watch the shows. I'm not going to any of the memorials. I'm not going to the 9-11 sales at Wal-Mart. I don't want to hear about 9-11. I for damned sure am not interested in watching politicians of either party try to out 9-11 each other. I'm tired of this national 9-11 PTSD. I did my bit for revenge, I went to war, I'll remember the dead in my own time in my own way.

I'm not going to shed a damned tear today.

We got our revenge. Many times over, for whatever good it did us.

I'm going to go to a picnic and enjoy my day. Enjoy this victory we've won.

I suggest you do the same.


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Tomorrow I'll post here the StoneKettle Station post, that I had originally planned to post.

note: I removed a friend's name that showed up in the cut and paste among the people who liked this post, as she isn't someone who would want her name pasted all over the internet.

Edited, Sep 11th 2016 8:01pm by ElneClare
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This Post is written in Elnese, If it was an actual Post, it would make sense.
#2 Sep 11 2016 at 11:05 AM Rating: Good
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If it was up to men like this, we'd all be speaking Chinese by now. Like this: 杰米又不会写又不说理, 而且他喜欢鸡奸化狗!
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#3 Sep 11 2016 at 11:12 AM Rating: Good
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It really is insufferable when people say "we" when they mean "I".
#4 Sep 11 2016 at 11:55 AM Rating: Good
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Not a fan of royalty, Allegory?
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#5 Sep 11 2016 at 6:39 PM Rating: Good
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Kavekkk wrote:
Not a fan of royalty, Allegory?

Didn't we fight a war over that kind of thing?
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#6 Sep 12 2016 at 7:17 AM Rating: Good
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Wright wrote:
Frankly, I have had enough of 9-11.
But just not enough to keep from blogging about it, apparently.
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#7 Sep 12 2016 at 10:46 AM Rating: Excellent
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Quote:
It's 15 years later and we're STILL afraid. We're still terrorized.
Well yeah, that's how you know it was an inside job!

Smiley: tinfoilhat
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#8 Sep 12 2016 at 12:43 PM Rating: Good
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I won't care to speak for the author of that post.. but there is nothing really happening now that I wasn't pretty much thinking was going to happen 15 years ago.
People were going to be idiots. Here we are, still being idiots.

Did people really think this was actually for "revenge"? I was singing at the front of where I worked on 9-11 with people with candles.. but I still would never put a 9-11 sticker anywhere.

The people that are unable to recognize the false polarity viewpoint are stuck in an artificial mold...
Yes 9-11 was horrible (like any sane person would agree).
Yes, the USA is run by hypocrites (just like every other country)

People want to take every issue and blend it together into a giant stew of political discontent.
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#9 Sep 12 2016 at 5:51 PM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
Quote:
It's 15 years later and we're STILL afraid. We're still terrorized.
Well yeah, that's how you know it was an inside job!

Smiley: tinfoilhat
Jet fuel can't melt steel memes.
#10 Sep 13 2016 at 8:25 AM Rating: Good
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Hulk Hogan and Obama did it.
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#11 Sep 13 2016 at 9:38 AM Rating: Excellent
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It's like this Obama guy has been everywhere the last couple of decades. Someone should tell him to run for President. He seems like the type of person who could get stuff done.
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#12 Sep 13 2016 at 5:46 PM Rating: Decent
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I think it's a mistake to ascribe one motivation (revenge) for the actions taken by the US in the wake of 9/11. I think there certainly were some who wanted to get revenge, so they supported actions which seemed to head us in that direction. I think there were others who wanted justice. And they supported those actions, but only to the point where they were about getting those directly responsible for the attacks (Taliban and Al-queda specifically). I think that others saw the 9/11 attack as a way to build solidarity with the rest of the world. We were now victims, and thus could join with other nations who'd been victimized rather than standing tall as a superpower. And for that group, anything aggressive moved us away from victim to oppressor and was opposed. And there were yet others who saw the attacks as the result of a decade of US withdrawal from the world (so basically the opposite of the previous group), and saw a host of actions in response as valid, not just those which punished those responsible, but which established the US as a global power, in the presumed hope that this would push the "bad guys" back from the gates of civilization for a while longer.

I don't know if any one of these is 100% correct. In fact, I'm certain that none of them are. But those are at least a sample of reactions and objectives I've observed since 9/11, and it's certain that I'm missing even a few more. To simplify it down to just "revenge" is a very very simplistic way of looking at things. We're not a people with a single hive mind. We're a collection of individuals, all of which have slightly different ways of looking at things, and each with a small impact on the decisions our leaders make. So yeah, it's a lot more complex than that. And whether we have accomplished anything positive or not is not something we can definitively say because that would require us to have a single definitive objective. And in this matter, I think it's clear that we don't.

Edited, Sep 13th 2016 4:46pm by gbaji
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#13 Sep 13 2016 at 6:58 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
I think it's a mistake to ascribe one motivation (revenge) for the actions taken by the US in the wake of 9/11.
ONE motivation? Nah.

HUGE motivation? Yeah.


You have a sister, right?


Let's say some scum did a horrible thing that eventualy resulted in your sister's death.


You want justice.
You want things to be righted.
You want the perpetrator to pay.

Right?


You also want some mother fudging revenge...and lots of it.


Is revenge the ONLY motivator?

NO.

Is it a huge part of want you want?

Yeah.


X300 million.
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#14 Sep 14 2016 at 7:39 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
We're not a people with a single hive mind.
I want to believe that, but then you post.
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#15 Sep 14 2016 at 7:43 AM Rating: Excellent
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"We're not a people with a single hive mind", said Gbaji, before going on to explain in five hundred posts exactly how liberals think...
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#16 Sep 14 2016 at 8:53 AM Rating: Excellent
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I think we saw 9/11 as a good excuse to expand our influence in the middle east and remove regimes that were a thorn in our side while securing better access to material wealth, spreading our values, and getting a new generation of recruits to our armed forces some combat experience. I mean destabilizing the whole region has been pretty beneficial to us in general. We've created lots of problems for other people and generally reaped the rewards.

We obviously sold it to the public by harping on the revenge/justice/democracy/etc angle of it all, of course, but it seems to simplistic to assume that's the primary motivation for what happened.
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#17 Sep 14 2016 at 9:54 AM Rating: Good
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All violence is a failure and a tragedy. Perhaps Mr. Wright is speaking to the lengths people go to pretend it is anything but that?
(or he's just a commie)
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#18 Sep 14 2016 at 10:00 AM Rating: Excellent
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Kelvyquayo wrote:
All violence is a failure and a tragedy.

Video game violence is fun Smiley: thumbsup
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Belkira wrote:
Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#19 Sep 14 2016 at 10:04 AM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
Kelvyquayo wrote:
All violence is a failure and a tragedy.

Video game violence is fun Smiley: thumbsup


Whenever I nuke a city in Civ, there is a part of me weeping inwardly at what I have become.
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#20 Sep 14 2016 at 3:21 PM Rating: Good
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Kelvyquayo wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
Kelvyquayo wrote:
All violence is a failure and a tragedy.

Video game violence is fun Smiley: thumbsup


Whenever I nuke a city in Civ, there is a part of me weeping inwardly at what I have become.
Gandhi?
#21 Sep 14 2016 at 5:40 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
You have a sister, right?


Let's say some scum did a horrible thing that eventualy resulted in your sister's death.


You want justice.
You want things to be righted.
You want the perpetrator to pay.

Right?


Sure. But if my sisters death occurred because she works in a part of town where there's a super high crime rate, I might *also* push for greater policing in that area, and perhaps looking into the socio-economic causes of that increased crime and violence. Because just addressing one symptom of a bigger problem doesn't prevent the next person's sister from being killed in a horrible manner.

Which, at the risk of pulling this back to the topic at hand, is why just going after the Taliban and Al-queda was not seen by many as "doing enough". The perception was that we had allowed this region of the world to fall into increasingly radical thinking and methodology, and those methods were spreading to more parts of the world. Just going after those who caused 9/11 could be seen as a very limited form of justice. And it could also be motivated by revenge. But IMO, neither is really the correct full response.


Quote:
You also want some mother fudging revenge...and lots of it.


Is revenge the ONLY motivator?

NO.

Is it a huge part of want you want?

Yeah.


I think you and I may be coming from different mindsets. Sure, I'd want that one person or group to pay, but that would not be more than a small part of my motivation here. Some of us actually try to look at the bigger picture.

Interestingly enough, this is one of the reasons why I constantly talk about liberal projection on conservatives. You see us wanting to do more in the Middle East and label it "angry", and "hateful" and "revenge", but I suspect that's because those would be your motivations for doing those things. We really don't think that way. We think in terms of fixing the problem, not just reacting to one instance of it. I suspect this also affects perceptions of things like BLM and policing in black neighborhoods as well. To a liberal, increased police action must be motivated by a hate of those they police and those they arrest. It seems as though liberal thought is dominated by the negative viewpoint. For conservatives, we're looking at the good that policing can do, and how to make those neighborhoods better places. So we don't attack the police. We look for ways to change the crime rates so that policing those neighborhoods don't result in such disproportionate outcomes.

Cross thread shenanigans? Maybe. But there is a common theme here. We literally see the world through different eyes. We really ought to understand that and take it into account when judging each other actions and decisions. We don't "hate" people when we propose some course of action which appears on the surface to affect them negatively. We simply don't agree about what course of action will be best to take. We can apply this to social welfare programs as well if you want. Same exact difference in thinking. You're looking at this person right there and what's going on with him. We're looking at the bigger causes of why he's there in the first place, in poverty, needing help. And we seek to fix those base conditions rather than merely treat the symptoms of the result.

And I'll repeat that no, my primary motivation would not be revenge. Not even a small percentage would be. I'd want to fix the problem so the next person doesn't suffer. I happen to think that's a better way to respond to such things. Don't you agree?
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#22 Sep 14 2016 at 5:55 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
"We're not a people with a single hive mind", said Gbaji, before going on to explain in five hundred posts exactly how liberals think...


There are pretty clear patterns of behavior though. And it's not wrong to point them out when you see them. Like, as I mentioned above, liberals assuming that conservatives must have personal emotional and negative reasons for everything they do. What's the old saying: You see most in others that which you carry within yourself.
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#23 Sep 14 2016 at 6:00 PM Rating: Good
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Did you forget what you wrote?
gbaji wrote:
I think it's a mistake to ascribe one motivation (revenge) for the actions taken by the US in the wake of 9/11.
I was responding the fact that you wrote that others are ascribing a single motivation for the countries actions. An idea i think is silly.



I really wasn't addressing any other point.





After re-reading my post it was weighted oddly. My bad.
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#24 Sep 14 2016 at 6:20 PM Rating: Decent
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Friar Bijou wrote:
Did you forget what you wrote?
gbaji wrote:
I think it's a mistake to ascribe one motivation (revenge) for the actions taken by the US in the wake of 9/11.
I was responding the fact that you wrote that others are ascribing a single motivation for the countries actions. An idea i think is silly.


That was the argument being made by Mr. Wright though. So I responded to that. So it appears we're in agreement. Smiley: yippee


Quote:
After re-reading my post it was weighted oddly. My bad.


Whew! Hey. It's not the first time I've totally misread someone's post (and will totally not be the last). It did seem like you were arguing that revenge really was the primary motivator, so I responded to that. If you meant something else, that's cool. I just wanted to try to focus on the fact that there are other, perfectly valid, reasons for taking actions beyond just going after the direct people involved in something (in your example, the people responsible for my sisters hypothetical death, and in the OP, the people responsible for 9/11).

As I said originally, that's way over simplifying things. There are a lot of different reasons for doing things. I think it's patently unfair to make assumptions about the motivations (perhaps, as I speculated because that's why *you* would do those things). Maybe to Mr. Wright, the only reason to do the things we did after 9/11 is out of hate and anger and a desire for revenge. But I don't agree with that assessment. Not even a little bit. If that were the case, then yes, something like invading Iraq makes zero sense (which again, points to the mindset and assumption of motivations by one group projected onto another). But if you're thinking in terms of addressing the underlying problems coming out of the Middle East, which largely stems from a social movement that is extremely enclosed and fosters great violence against anyone not in one's own identity group, then choosing to enact regime change in Iraq, with the hope of creating a more democratic and open society, is a massive step in the right direction.

One of the striking examples of this, which I made a point of back when it was new information, is this quote by Cheney:

Quote:
Tim, we can do what we have to do to ail in this conflict. Failure's not an option. And go back again and think about what's involved here. This is not just about Iraq or just about the difficulties we might encounter in any one part of the country in terms of restoring security and stability. This is about a continuing operation on the war on terror. And it's very, very important we get it right. If we're successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or the United States, so it's not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it's not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11. They understand what's at stake here. That's one of the reasons they're putting up as much of a struggle as they have, is because they know if we succeed here, that that's going to strike a major blow at their capabilities.


It was very interesting how differently liberals and conservatives interpreted this statement. Liberals interpreted this as Cheney insisting that Iraq was directly responsible for 9/11 (still following the assumption of "getting back at those who attacked us" as the motivation). They even took the phrase "heart of the base" to mean that Iraq was somehow the heart of terrorist groups in the region. But conservatives looked at the whole thing and saw a completely different statement. He was speaking about addressing the whole region. Iraq is in the center of that geographical region. He makes it very clear that he's speaking of standing up a "good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or the United States". In other words, it's not just about Iraq. It's not just about Al-queda. It's not just about UBL. It's about trying to reverse the very social and cultural issues that are causing the terrorism movement.

This is what I'm talking about. Understand the reason why some people interpreted his statement one way, and other interpreted it in a completely different way, and you'll have a better insight into the differences in conservative and liberal viewpoints. It really is noticeable, once you know what to look for. And it really is that idea of whether we react to a specific problem with a treatment of just that problem (or instance of a problem), or whether we react by attempting to make changes that will prevent that same problem from occurring again in the future.

I'm biased of course, but I think the latter approach is better. But that's not really the issue here. It's just with understanding that there is a difference in mindset and that affects dramatically how we view a whole host of social, economic, and political issues.
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#25 Sep 14 2016 at 6:20 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
"We're not a people with a single hive mind", said Gbaji, before going on to explain in five hundred posts exactly how liberals think...
There are pretty clear patterns of behavior though. And it's not wrong to point them out when you see them..

Apparently this guy saw a behavior pattern of revenge. Funny how that works.
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Wow. Regular ol' Joph fan club in here.
#26 Sep 14 2016 at 6:22 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
"We're not a people with a single hive mind", said Gbaji, before going on to explain in five hundred posts exactly how liberals think...
There are pretty clear patterns of behavior though. And it's not wrong to point them out when you see them..

Apparently this guy saw a behavior pattern of revenge. Funny how that works.


Yes, he did. Which speaks more to his own mindset than that of those he's criticizing. That's kinda my point.
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