On Fri, 6 Oct 2006 04:03:27 -0500, "Morris Dovey"
wrote:

Snip

I don't go to bars - in part because I really don't enjoy being around
****faced people who can't control themselves. In the relatively few
real life fights I've been in, I've tried first to avoid a fight
altogether, taken the first and only blow from an oponent, and then
fought berserk. I've never fought to inflict pain - I fight to end the
fight as quickly and decisively as possible.

Insightful and well-reasoned posts as always, Morris.

This rings true for me as well, though I must confess to having fought
quite often as teenager before I knew any better. What really
unnerves me about our current actions in Iraq is a similar analogy-
though I'll call it a playground rather than a bar.

Imagine a fifth-grade kid on a playground full of first-grade
students- he's bigger, smarter and stronger, and probably feels like
the boss. Let's call him America. While he may be fundimentally a
good kid, and desires to be a fair mediator amongst his younger
companions, the very attributes which make him a natural source of
leadership also make him much more potentially dangerous than the
others.

Now, if this kid is standing around looking after the others, and one
sneaky little fellow with fast hands yanks down his pants and knocks
him over to his great embarassment and minor personal injury, I would
imagine that he wants some vengence. If he knows who the kid was, no
problem- revenge can be taken in a targeted and precise manner. But
this isn't what happens- the sneaky fellow hides in a crowd of his
peers, and now the big guy has no specific target.

He has two choices- he can let it go, and try to earn the respect of
the other children so that he might be warned of future outrages
against his dignity in advance and head them off with a proper level
of discretion, or he can start beating the others willy-nilly and
exacting revenge aginst all of them- while they may not have been
parties to the original offence, he doesn't want them getting the idea
that he is weak and vulnerable. Now, not all of those kids are going
to be nice- some might not play well with the others, smell funny, or
have strange habits like eating the paste. So the big guy smacks them
around first, justifying his actions by claiming that while they may
not have been the one who yanked his shorts down, they had it coming
anyway.

Most of the others will cower. Others, as a result of direct assult
or observation that the strong man gets his way on the playground,
will develop a flawed mindset that encourages them to escilate the
violence that has already occured so they may be the king of the hill.
Maybe the next week, three of the first-graders whack the big guy on
the back of the knees with a bat and then hide in the bushes. So the
same thing happens again- crushing retaliation against those who have
witnessed his shame, without certain knowledge of who has commited the
acts which set him off. This continues for months, maybe years-
eventually, one of those first-grade kids will get his dad's gun, and
come in shooting. Or maybe all those kids get the big guy in a
secluded corner and beat him to death. No more big guy- and what
started as a bloody knee becomes a homicide.

I'm not afraid of "terrorists". They're first-grade kids who don't
know any better. Right now, there's a handful of them, and they gave
us a good punch in the nose. We can survive punches in the nose- more
than a few, really. It might hurt, and it sure stings the pride, but
it is not fatal to our body as a whole. I know it hurts the families
of those who die in terrorist attacks- and my heart goes out to them,
but I will not support the idea that a family's pain justifies the
destruction of a nation. But if we continue beating on them all, we
will turn otherwise decent people who have done little or nothing to
us into enraged psychopaths who are willing to die to knock us down.
No one at all is safe from a man who is willing to die to kill them.

You want the terrorists to "win"? Keep manufacturing new recruits and
allies for them. They'll do nothing but thank you for it.

In all the fights I've ever been in, only one earned me any respect-
after a misunderstanding with a guy I considered my friend, he punched
me in the face as hard as he could. This was a big guy, and most
others were afraid of him. He was my friend, so I stood steady,
looked him in the eyes, and asked him if he was finished through my
dislocated jaw- never raising my voice or my fists. I don't know who
would have won that fight if it had continued- I've never been hit so
hard in my life. But I do know this- every time I beat another person,
whether it was justified or not, it led to another fight with a person
who was stronger than the last one. After I took that blow and
shrugged it off, I never had to fight again- instead of thinking I was
afraid or weak, it seems others thought I was invulnerable. Sure, a
punch in the face hurts- but it's easier to stand firm against one or
two than it is to trade a thousand destructive blows that leave both
sides battered and broken. They have discharged their poison, and
others see that it had no effect.

I know some of my statements have lead some or even perhaps all of you
to consider me a raving leftist, and I do agree with some of their
principles- just as I agree with some of the right's. But setting
labels aside, I was born into and groomed in a culture of extrordinary
violence and I know how it works. I have seen feuds started and
finished, and I have watched gallons of blood shed without even
leaving my neighborhood. My life is a million miles from that now,
but there is nothing new under the sun. Once again, I can only state
clearly and unequivocally that poorly targeted violent reactions to
violent actions can only breed more violence- if you're really afraid
of terrorists, we need to take a different course. They are not an
invading government- they are sneaky little worms who have only the
power our own rage grants them and encourages.

I know some of you will claim that a schoolyard is not a global
struggle against the forces of evil and "Islamo-facism(tm)". But
people are people, no matter what language they speak or in which
geographical area they reside. And despite what we'd all like to
hope, most never do progress much beyond those earliest days on the
playground- some will share willingly, some force their power on
others, some hide in the corner keep to themselves. We're not what we
tell each other we are- we are what we actually are. And what we
actually are is human, with all the bumps and warts that that entails.
And a human child is just a miniature adult who has not yet developed
a sophisticated shell of accumulated bull****. Scrape the **** off,
and you'll find most folks are overgrown children with complex
defenses. So let's be the tough but fair teacher that the kids
respect- not the raving bully the other kids fear.

Snip

A pox on both the left _and_ the right! Let's get back to the center.

I second that- and note that halfway between the current pseudo-left
and the current ultra-right isn't our traditional center.