...moving my chair just a few more inches to the north...

[felis_ultharus]

It's always disconcerting when you're in some generally-easygoing region of cyberspace with otherwise intelligent, thoughtful, well-educated adults, and then one of them expresses an idea you'd sooner expect from the angry homeless schizophrenic you sometimes pass downtown.

This has been happening a lot the last few years with me, always with Americans and always with Bush's foreign policy. Hearing people I otherwise respect spouting the most flimsy excuses of that administration as though they were obvious is a lot like falling into the middle of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

On one of my message boards, the American half of the posters have been having a Two Minute Hate over those evil French whose aid they won't come to when they get invaded next time -- because, apparently, the French won't protect them from Osama bin Laden and his terrorists in Iraq. And the rest of us -- the non-Americans -- just fell silent. I'm still not sure why, though I have lost online friends over this.

And montrealais's houseguest last month from New York (isn't that a blue state?) seriously suggested wiping out every man, woman, and child in the Middle East as a solution to terrorism.

I know it's not all Americans, and I've talked to a good number who are aware and sane. I guess I just deluded myself into thinking that Bush's supporters were the completely uneducated and sociopathic. It's sad when an idiot can fool the intelligent.

Comments

[melting-penguin.livejournal.com]

It's that "culture of fear" that has permeated so much of their consciousness. I suppose it isn't easy to accept that a homeland that you've been brainwashed into believing is invulnerable can be attacked as easily as any "insignificant" country in the world. Jingoism has a truly frightening on people.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I agree.

Of course, it did used to be unlikely, since attacking the US, surrounded on two sides by water and two sides by allies, has never been easy. But easy air travel means they're in the same boat as everyone else, now.