Quote of the Day

It's gotta be a comment left by our favorite freeper over at his blog.

I asked him if he thought the war on "terra" is part of a larger holy war. Getting him to really say what he believes has been difficult, but I think we had a breakthrough.

I'll agree that there is a Holy war going one, but we're not waging it, they are. And we're not fighting like there is one.

If we were, I don't think we'd have muslims serving in the military. Which IMO is a bad idea. Just take the cases of Hasan Akbar and that Chaplain Yee.

Yeah, there's a can of worms for ya. The muslim chaplain program. Did you know those "chaplains" are approved by the Saudi Wahabi lobby?

And don't even get me started on the conversion rate in the prisons.

Isn't that fascinating?

He continually references individual circumstances and relates them to global, or at least national, issues.

Here's another example. The topic was executing prisoners who were minors when they committed their crime(s). My question to him is at what age do you draw the line. Is it 17, 12, maybe execute somebody who was 10 when they killed? Of course you would wait until they were an adult before putting them to death, but here is his response.

That depends on the circumstances surrounding the crime.

Earlier he wrote:

Did you read the case that this was decided on? The 17yr old premeditated a murder, kidnapped a lady, beat her, wrapped her in ducktape, and tossed her (alive) off a bridge into a river. There's more details than that but that's just a quick synopsis.

So, in his mind the punishment should not be based on the outcome of a crime, but the method of a crime. That is pure emotion.

Then there was the Schiavo case.. Again - the circumstances surrounding an "individual".

I totally see the way he's thinking now, and it's so different than myself. I know we live in a world with 6 billion people in it, and I'm mostly unaffected by the person thrown off the bridge, or the brain damaged woman being unplugged. Emotionally, there is no connection between reading or hearing about specific examples of "bad things that happen to people". Really - come on, it's a big bad world out there and much more goes on, and worse.

I frame my arguments around matters of social policy that are what I believe to be good for people. Notice I didn't say "Americans" I said "people". Sometimes that's Americans, like if you talk about something like Social Security or judicial nominations. Sometimes it can be anyone, if you're talking about reducing world violence and moving humanity forward.

Oxen (remember - he's not an individual because we have no idea who he is, but is instead representative of a certain class of people), establishes broad policy based on very specific events and people. That's why he posted a link to a video of a man being killed after his helicopter was shot down. Yes, the man was injured, unarmed, and totally defenseless and they just killed him. Yes, that is really horrible.

But - the Oxen will flip out because somehow he internalizes that event to an incredible degree. I think of it as just another tragedy in a circus of tragedies that occur in Iraq. For him, the video has impact. For me, it's just another death, no more, no less.

This is kind of off topic, but I was reminded of an episode of Band of Brothers where an American G.I. executes a group of captured German soldiers. Bad things happen in wars.

The key is seeing the formulation of an intense rage of the Oxen, and it's interesting to try and draw it out into the open.

One of the things that I had asked, rhetorically, during the Schiavo matter, was where the protesters were when a homeless guy freezes to death on a park bench. In trying to understand the mentality of the protestors and why they even cared about Terri Schiavo, I see how that fits in with Oxen - and their over-all focus and fascination on specific events and individual circumstances.

There was a person that I used to work with (read - USED to) that had a very similar point of view as the Oxen. He was given to extreme conservatism, but what made it terribly evident was his rampant paranoia. I think that's a very common trait among conservatives. Their personalities are totally ego centric, and while they sympathize with those individual cases that I mentioned, I think they only do that because of an emotional trigger that creates and awareness of "what if that was me". Hence the fascination with firearms. They have intense personal fear, so find comfort in bullets and steel.

I also find that personality type carries a low self-esteem. People with a high self-esteem generally don't externalize their "beliefs". However, people with a low self-esteem (with the accompanying paranoia) generally externalize their beliefs, hence the rise of the Christian fundamentalists.

Ask yourself a question - if you were really happy with yourself, and had a very positive outlook on the world, would you really give a shit what other people do?

It is low-self esteem and a basic "follower" mentality that leads people to organized religion in the first place. Then it feeds on itself with the aforementioned individual events, and an outward hostility to anyone that might be enjoying life.

There are degrees of liberalism and conservatism, which correlate to the degrees of psychosis the person suffers from. I'm not saying that the more liberal you are, the less psychotic you are. Fringe elements in any direction (left, right, up, down, forward, back - whatever) generally are pretty crazy people.

The Oxen is teetering on the verge of a confrontation with BATF at his "compound". Not literally of course, but that is the characteristic of the personality type I'm talking about. What I find remarkable is the intensity level of the emotional responses.

It's unfortunate, but the Oxen seems to exist in all cultures and societies. The good news is that when you get opposing Oxen's together, things can quickly spiral out of control as each is absolutely convinced of their own righteousness.

That's why I wrote at the Oxen's blog, please - by all means, have your holy war. The Oxen's are like matter and anti-matter. When they come together, they annihilate each other.

Didn't Jesus say that's the way it will all play out? After all, the meek shall inherit the earth, right?

** update **

The Oxen would be a great character in a novel. Conspiracy theories could be tinged with more than a little reality, leading to a blurring of the lines between paranoia and the rational. Throw in a sprinkle of religion, with it’s attendant hypocrisy, and liberal amounts of sex from the most inappropriate places. Tie it all around politics and the hijacking of a nations soul.

Hmmm.. interesting.. In the novel there is a underground movement fighting the religious government hijack. The Oxen is a fallen low level operative becoming disillusioned with the right wing movement. He was promised power and influence, but is nothing but a lackey. He has a drug addiction – I think heroin would be good. The resistance group brings the Oxen into the movement using one of their operatives – a nun! A really hot nun, and the oxen looks like Colin Farrel. She’s addicted to heroin as well, which is how they come to know each other. She’s also screwing the high powered religious conspirators.. to gain access and information.. That pisses off the Oxen because he's a very jealous and posessive type. A priest turns up dead.

The Oxen keeps having flashbacks.. of violence.. of political murders that he might have committed… He keeps seeing Vince Foster’s face.. LOL

Ohhhh.. this could be good.. But how does it wind up? Does the resistance stop the wingers? Does the Oxen get the chick and recover his memory? Somehow I just can’t see a happy ending.. On camera, a President says "nukular".