The right wing ignorance on this site, with plenty of spicy righteousness mixed in of course, probably shouldn't amaze me, but hey, I'm gullible. I figure people who say they want to understand history and meaning have actually taken a look at historical sequence and relationships, as well as contemplating all sorts of thinkers---not just Ayn Rand's gems and Irving Kristol's rants and Henry Kissinger's Machievellian strategies, but critics and opponents of, and thinkers contrary to the reactionaries that make right-wingers feel safe and comfortable---who have been speaking about issues of meaning and understanding for the past several centuries of 'enlightenment,' science, and progress.
Thus, when Paul inquires about the roots of terror, one might imagine that folks could consider---instead of jerking their knees and shaking their fingers in opprobrium---all sorts of recent and more deeply rooted events and actions which may have yielded strong antipathy toward the rulers of the United States. Recent events would consist of, among tens of thousands of other incidents and dozens of important tendencies, such things as the financing and logistical support of Al Qaeda in a cynical, self-serving, and stupid attempt to make the downfall of the Soviets faster, the overthrow of President Mossadech in Iran and the installation of the Butcher Shah Pahlevi in his place, the installation and elevation of Saddam Hussein before he became the most recent Frankenstein not to kill his maker, the OSS's and CIA's open-armed policy to Nazi butchers whom they relocated hither and yon to continue their 'good works' among 'lesser peoples'. Deeper rooted developments concern the growth of the most powerful corporate-military alliance in history, that has benefited from wars and rumors of wars for a century and a half, always at the expense of average people who fill the morgues and body bags on all sides of the situations at hand; as well, the White Supremacist thinking, that continues to imagine slavery as some fantasy of kind massa's and grateful negroes, not to mention the butchery of indigenous Americans as one of history's great leaps forward, is a tendency that is at the root of the hatred of both American rulers AND the more universal proclivity to embrace ignorance like it was mama's titty.
There's a lot to all of this, no doubt. We're all ignorant, of course. I'm an idiot---depending on the person with whom you speak---between half the time and some proportion approaching one. But I do like to get a little deeper than stancescalling names and rallying around the tattered flag, as if such ritualistic childishness might have any effect on our futures and our fortunes. The real issue, to me, is that the leaders of our land, whom we continue to allow to act in our name, have polluted the promise of our nation, to which the people of the world look as a last hope for humanity in many instances. Nothing pisses people off like righteous, cynically motivated hypocrisy, which define precisely the thinking and motivation of this country's current cabal of crooks in charge.
As to the original post, the prospects for a SECOND USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN A HOSTILE FASHION---or should I say a third? since we bombed both Hiroshima and Nagasaki---are much higher in the next year or so than at a later date. That we survive to 2008 will mean that the righteous and childish ignoramuses and thugs have lost their cachet. That's the thinking of those much wiser than me in any case.
