The Firing Line Forums - View Single Post - Stupid to die or go to prison over pieces of metal and plastic and wood

. · June 8, 1999, 07:34 PM

CR,
Perhaps Michelle just wants all the bad unhappy stuff to go away. A common denial amongst those that haven't or won't come to grips with the ragged edge of excess reality. In other parts of the world, the bad unhappy stuff, like bullets, shrapnel, rampant endemic diseases, starvation and dehydration kill much more quickly. Whereas here it just numbs the political mind of the middle class (is this even a valid categorization anymore?) muddler whose most significant daily accomplishment is getting a parking place closer to the door of the mall.

We talk of lessons learned from the purges, crusades, witch-hunts, holocausts, genocides, and ethnic cleansings throughout history. But it appears the only ones that really learned it were the survivors, and unfortunately all too often those were simply the winners that wrote the history of the muted victims. Until the really hard lessons are inculcated into our cultural, social and governmental institutions, such that we the individuals are truly attuned to the blatant but benign beginnings of oppression, then we're doomed to suffer the fruits of our ignorance.

June 8, 1999, 07:34 PM	#2
. Senior Member Join Date: October 6, 1998 Location: My wife's house... Posts: 2,659	CR, Perhaps Michelle just wants all the bad unhappy stuff to go away. A common denial amongst those that haven't or won't come to grips with the ragged edge of excess reality. In other parts of the world, the bad unhappy stuff, like bullets, shrapnel, rampant endemic diseases, starvation and dehydration kill much more quickly. Whereas here it just numbs the political mind of the middle class (is this even a valid categorization anymore?) muddler whose most significant daily accomplishment is getting a parking place closer to the door of the mall. We talk of lessons learned from the purges, crusades, witch-hunts, holocausts, genocides, and ethnic cleansings throughout history. But it appears the only ones that really learned it were the survivors, and unfortunately all too often those were simply the winners that wrote the history of the muted victims. Until the really hard lessons are inculcated into our cultural, social and governmental institutions, such that we the individuals are truly attuned to the blatant but benign beginnings of oppression, then we're doomed to suffer the fruits of our ignorance.