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First and final word.

I've made it a rule never to explain myself, especially to you soppy
bastards.

"Like a steely blade in a silken sheath
We don't see what they're made of
They shout about love, but when push comes to shove
They live for the things they're afraid of"

The majority of you fetid homunculi would rather REACT than THINK.

Yes, Gerry, I'm an insensitive bastard.   You won't see this, but thanks for
the laugh yesterday.  It's been *years* since I've seen a good old-school
*plonk*.

I also am greatly amused that people would actually turn to Hal Lindsey for
*news*.

Quag over on the Jiggy Week list has addressed this much better than I, so I
give you his words, with his blessing:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rex Iscariot" <quag7 at frostwarning_com>
To: <jiggyweek at topica_com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 4:22 AM
Subject: [Jiggy Week] America in crisis: BUCKWHEAT HAS BEEN SHOT


> Like I said before, life will continue as there are Big Macs to make.  In
> another year, this will be but a somber memory with candlelight vigils and
> monuments and life will continue.  And a lot of shitty Made for TV
> movies.  And people who are somber and expressing solidarity today will
> slowly start being assholes to one another in due course.  The winding
down
> of cataclysms is not unlike the end of the Christmas season where people
> begin to try to kick each other's ass in the returns line at Macy's.
>
> This is an aberration in this ridiculous historical bubble of safety and
> sloth we've been living in for quite some time.  Not the first time, and
> not the last time something like this will happen.  Whether this "changes
> everything" is up to how people react to it; our future is determined
> exclusively by the observers here in this country, meaning us, and not by
> screwheads overseas or here, or whoever is responsible for this.  While no
> doubt airport security and the like will be affected, as well as the lives
> of those who lost loved ones, friends, and associates in this, in a few
> months, this will not play any major part in anyone's consciousness except
> perhaps a little extra nervousness in flying.
>
> Watching the crash is like watching a movie.  It's only afterward that the
> dissonance hits where your mind attempts to separate this horror from the
> desensitized reflex of treating it as another Hollywood movie.  For me, at
> least, disgust was a delayed reaction.  I had to kick start my own
> revulsion because my mind, subconsciously, took it in like, you know, guys
> running in slow motion from fireballs in some cheesy big budget summer
> blockbuster.
>
> I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to avoid the media in the
next
> few days, because already I'm being annoyed by everyone:
>
> (1) Those talking about bombing the ragheads, or some other ugly
> racial/cultural epithet, into oblivion.
>
> (2) Those who try to portray themselves as enlightened by condemning any
> and all speculation about the Middle East, as if there's no precedent for
> this.  It's one thing to just blindly go to war with a Middle Eastern
> country, it's another to have a sinking feeling that probably people
> unhappy with US Foreign Policy in the Middle East are involved.
Anything's
> possible, of course, but the idea that we should treat the possibility
that
> this attack came from, I dunno, the Mongolians, on equal footing with the
> possibility that Osama bin Laden is responsible, is absurd.
>
> (3) Those who pretend that this somehow has them devastated and
permanently
> changed even though they are not personally involved.  Right now, without
> temporal distance from this, it's shocking, it's sickening, yet life will
> continue tomorrow and in a few weeks, it will fade from consciousness and
> be replaced by the distractions of everyday life.  It will be forgotten,
> and we will in time make the same mistakes both in terms of how we conduct
> foreign policy and how we implement security here, because Americans have
> notoriously short memories, and think that the way things have generally
> been in their life, have always been like that.  ("Like cattle racing each
> other to be first to the slaughterhouse," we don't want to upset the
> sociological and political science establishments by violating the "law of
> historical physics" that states that history must always, in every case,
> inexorably repeat itself).
>
> We live in a historical bubble of safety and idleness, no longer eternally
> vigilant about anything or aware of our uniquely (and tenuously) secure
and
> peaceful moment in the violent and inherently unstable currents of human
> history.  This entire process will repeat itself because half the people
> who are loudly calling for the obliteration of Afghanistan can't even find
> it on a map.  I wonder how many people have already forgotten the embassy
> bombings in Africa and the USS Cole attack.  Our blind, stupid faith in
> both our own government and our station in the world will once again
assert
> itself and we will once again be finding other crises to get hysterical
> about while we wolf down the aforementioned Big Macs.
>
> This is not "America losing its innocence," or some great sea-change in
the
> way Americans, culturally, perceive their security and safety in the
> world.  It is a momentary distraction, an accident on the highway to
> rubberneck at.  Sure, for one attack, especially in the United States,
this
> is unprecedented.  But just like no one gave a crap about school violence
> until it hit the white suburbs, no one seems to really care about the
> various massacres going on around the world which have in total claimed
far
> more victims than this attack (and will continue tomorrow, and won't even
> be mentioned by the media.  Not with the cool-ass plane flying into
> building film to loop over and over again.  Or the cool dramatic music
I've
> been hearing now as they fade to commercial.  Or the kick-ass titles and
> catch phrases which appear in the graphics on the bottom of the screen as
> news continue to report this, over and over).
>
> What separates this, primarily, from the horrors in places like the
Central
> African Republic, the Congo, religious massacres in Sudan, East Timor,
> Myanmar, North Korea - pick your trouble spot - is its cinematic quality,
> the number of people killed at once, and the fact that it was Westerners
> killed.  But if this had happened in the Third World (and fine, major
> concerted terrorist attacks like this are uncommon, but frequent natural
> disasters which do at least this much damage happen all the time), it'd be
> a footnote on the nightly news, forgotten a week later (how many massive
> floods and earthquakes in third world places that kill thousands do you
> clearly remember?).  Its only that its the "white middle class people in
> Columbine" are now being affected that it is at the center of our
> attention.  Well, that, and the spectacular CGI effects of course.
>
> In no way do I want to minimize this.  As an unapologetically patriotic
> American, I am utterly outraged and disgusted and angry, and however
> enlightened and moderate I want to be about any response to this, I will
> enjoy the revenge which will eventually be taken, hopefully against those
> responsible rather than a strawman or Jesus-figure (everyone enjoys a
> crucifixion.  Best to be someone we really hate but any will do), as will
> all of the people who fake a frown of affected sadness, pretending they're
> too enlightened to enjoy basic, naked revenge.
>
> We all enjoy revenge, retaliation, extracting our own pound of flesh.  I
> don't need studies of human psychology to confirm this, I need only look
at
> how important it is even for otherwise rational people to have their last
> word on Usenet flame wars.  It will be quite enjoyable for all except
those
> who sympathize with whatever party is responsible for this.
>
> One group of people will take pleasure in this in the same way that people
> who gather outside of prisons and have tailgate parties when someone is
> executed take pleasure.  Another will take pleasure in their
self-righteous
> restraint and phony intellectual way of responding, as they pretend to be
> appalled by the "jingoism" of the American response (and any so-called
> "collateral damage" which will inevitably be the result of a military
> response), and it will make them feel warm and superior as they mix their
> dry martinis and pat themselves on the back for being more civilized about
> this than anyone else.
>
> What will not change is anything in the fundamental calculus of simple
> human psychology or the ignorance and apathy of the average American.
It's
> not that this is some horrible immutable phenomenon.  It is not.  But it
> will take far more than something like this to change anything.  I don't
> think most people want to face the the basic reality of this situation:
> that we do not live in an invincible, impenetrable fortress, that there
are
> forces in the world that we cannot now, nor will ever be able to control
> (though we continue Quixotic things like the Drug War and remain in
> comfortable denial.  This is of course just one example among many), and
> that ultimately the catalyst (if not the culprit) in this is largely
> American foreign policy.  And you can read that as we're too violent and
> meddle in too many affairs of the world (making too many enemies), or
that,
> alternatively we're too restrained in trying to appear "fair minded" in
the
> face of fanatical movements and cults.
>
> Certainly if our foreign policy was not as muddled as it is; if we could
> decide whether we are cold pragmatists, working in the interest of
> economics, or actually care about human rights and justice as our primary
> motivation, sorting this situation out, and sorting out all of the ugly
> situations in the world that we are involved in, would be far simpler.
>
> Tomorrow, murder, mayhem, genocide, religious massacres will continue all
> over the world, but you won't hear about it.  No one will know, and no one
> will care, the same way that, no doubt, people all over the world who have
> been abandoned by the West and live with violence and death every day, are
> probably not crying too hard over this.  Hordes of limbless refugees,
> victims of land mines and torture and abuse, who have seen their own
> children literally worked to death at gunpoint, will, exchaustedly,
> continue to pour over the border from Burma to Thailand, trying to find
> asylum and safety, and just a place to rest.  Some Christians in the south
> of Sudan will die tomorrow, as will Sudanese Muslims, as southern
> terrorists kill them in retaliation.  Possibly someone else will die in
> Israel or one of Israel's occupied territories.  Someone will be executed
> or "disappeared" in North Korea, probably someone's mom or dad.  Someone
in
> Cambodia or Vietnam will die or lose a limb by stepping on a landmine left
> by a country that couldn't be bothered to clean up its mess.  Perhaps
there
> will be more tribal massacres in Africa.
>
> If I were the Warrior King, omnipotent in the world, I would be insistent
> upon stopping all forms of oppression, injustice, and violence
> everywhere.  That a massacre of people in Eritrea would be treated with
the
> same revulsion and condemnation and demand for justice that an attack on
> our own country would be.
>
> People who truly understand human rights as just that - rights of humans
> which no government has any right to abridge or take away, and that the
> most fundamental of these rights is life, have been calling for this type
> of consciousness for a long time.  It comes to mind for me when I hear of
> the massive injustices committed along our border and the xenophobic
> anti-immigrant billboards you sometimes see here in Arizona, and thinly
> veiled callousness and racism inherent in most anti-immigration
sentiments.
>
> Enjoy the snuff film.  There will be a short intermission between this and
> act two, wherein the United States forces, led by Steven Seagal, bombs the
> living shit out of whatever country looks best on fire, when shot on
> film.  As much as it may be tempting to read a kind of sardonic sarcasm in
> this, I mean it quite literally with no emotional coloring: Whatever the
> response to this is, I can promise, even though I'm not involved, that it
> will *look great*.
>
> Then we can go out for some beers afterword, fall asleep, and all over the
> world more death and destruction will continue as we blissfully, ignorant,
> drift off to sleep, making a mental note to hook up with the new Mudvayne
> album tomorrow at the mall.
>
>
> ============================================================
> Rex Iscariot <quag7 at frostwarning_com> - Tucson, Arizona, USA
>
> http://www.frostwarning.com
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/80sBBS
>
> "I went out drinking with Thomas Paine..." - Billy Bragg
> ============================================================

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