Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 491932)

I'm not so much pushing back on your view that we can and should be better than that, as I am arguing that right now, that view is losing and too many of the people we count on to support it are willing to throw it away in the name of security.

And what, pray tell, makes us better than any totalitarian state the minute we start setting our values aside? If we adopt the tactics of the evildoers, we cease to be different in the one way that matters to the person on the other end of the wire. The jolt doesn't hurt any less. It doesn't leave you any less scared every day that it might happen again. It does still leave you doing little else but figuring out to keep it from happening again. Because you really don't want it to happen again.

As long as we have one single sanctioned act of that kind of conduct, how are we better? Isn't America's true exceptionalism the fact that we alone view our rights to due process and fair play as organic to us as individuals? And if that is the touchstone of what makes us "different," what happens when we cease to be different?

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 491935)

Well, we are better than them, but in two senses. We are better morally, but we are also better in the sense of being more capable and having better tools and technology, so when we do have a moral screw up, we can screw up on a scale they, today, can only imagine.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 491934)

Also, freedom comes from those who serve in our military, and the rest of us don't appreciate that.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 491936)

I had the opportunity to learn how to do self-enemas with various substances.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 491937)

This is a pretty powerful piece.

https://paw.princeton.edu/issues/201...dex.xml?page=2

TM

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 491940)

I really wish someone would explain this mindset, because it applies to cops as well as soldiers. The willingness to completely overlook lots of awful, terrible shit because people who take these jobs do so knowing they are dangerous jobs just makes absolutely no sense to me.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 491938)

In a sense, it isn't a fair comparison. Al Qaeda isn't a country and those who are part of it self-select for that, so there is a far less broad range of views, and a far more coherent ideology.

And that ideology is evil incarnate. I truly, seriously, mean that. Routine, intentional slaughter of civilians, for the purpose of slaughtering civilians. A medieval treatment of women. Torture and beheading of people simply for being westerners.

I will maintain that we as a nation are better than they, in part simply because we aspire to more. I say this without having any illusion as to the evil that has been done by and at the direction of Americans for many, many years.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 491943)

Many soldiers and veterans feel that that they have made huge sacrifices for which they were not adequately recognized or appreciated by the country. They also feel that they represented the country and lived a patriotism which other people have forgotten. Some of them take pride in the discipline and training they had, and contrast that to a civilian population which has gone soft and is incapable of rigor and commitment.

Originally Posted by taxwonk (Post 491930)

To be brutally graphic, which for present purposes I choose to be. The means by which one can be anally fed and/or hydrated is fairly simple. Imagine a colonoscopy that goes even further. Since we are using "enhanced" medical techniques, the "doctor" who administers the procedure probably doesn't employ any anesthetic.

See. It's all really rather simple. Much more so than say, restraining someone for several hours a day while you feed them intravenously, in a freshly inserted line because, when you are trying to starve yourself, the fact that removing the line yourself might cause excess bleeding may not even bother you.

Originally Posted by Icky Thump (Post 491944)

We are better. So if we have to shock a dude's nuts to keep us all safe, no biggie.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 491945)

This.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 491928)

You guys can push back on my "we are better than they are" view all you want, but if you really challenge that view if the "they" we are talking about is al Qaeda (which is the genesis of the discussion, given the photo Icky posted), I'd be surprised.

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch (Post 491938)

In a sense, it isn't a fair comparison. Al Qaeda isn't a country and those who are part of it self-select for that, so there is a far less broad range of views, and a far more coherent ideology.

And that ideology is evil incarnate. I truly, seriously, mean that. Routine, intentional slaughter of civilians, for the purpose of slaughtering civilians. A medieval treatment of women. Torture and beheading of people simply for being westerners.

I will maintain that we as a nation are better than they, in part simply because we aspire to more. I say this without having any illusion as to the evil that has been done by and at the direction of Americans for many, many years.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 491940)

I really wish someone would explain this mindset, because it applies to cops as well as soldiers. The willingness to completely overlook lots of awful, terrible shit because people who take these jobs do so knowing they are dangerous jobs just makes absolutely no sense to me.

TM