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Response to alda and realisticman (25 Dec. 2008)

alda: I believe you when you say you believe the power hungry are not monsters but rather the sick who deserve our sympathy (which is how I believe you characterized them). But, from reading above, you tend to characterize them, government leaders, and the sheeple, in ways that make them primarily seem blameworthy. People who "abuse their power," who "buy this pablum, of course, hook, line, and sinker," don't seem so much those who deserve sympathy and therapy but rather those who deserve what's coming to them.

I would never have anyone stand straight in line for Christian, masochistic sacrifice. I'm all for the fight. But we'll win sooner, I think, if we find a way to like those we're fighting. Some of them will come onto our side.

And btw: My focus is primarily on those who vote in the politicians who essentially work to abuse them. The reason I attend to them more than I do power-brokers or members of parliament, is because I think they are the ones in charge, and right now they're getting what they want -- namely, abuse. I believe that if you really want to know the true answer behind why the people "are so gullible?," not find yourself so exasperated and angered when you listen to tales told by grieving parents, wives and husbands of dead soldiers, you should please spend more time thinking about the pathology in the people, about what happens to a populace who for the most part received insufficient love for them to believe they deserve to be happy, to believe that progressive societal gains need not be followed by some kind of punishment/sacrifice, to believe and so readily accept that they don't deserve the hard-lot in life.

Realisticman: Hello. Glad you like my sic mammilian (poetic license) hamsters and poetic manners. I like them too!

Link: The Tyee

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