![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I meant to write an essay a couple of months ago about this, but kept putting it off. Given that tomorrow is election day, I'll jot a just-the-highlights version now.
Here's the thing about "If you [do X | don't do Y | vote for the other party] then the Terrorists will Win!" fearmongering, and about the "We can't let the bad guys get what they want" cries that go along with that. It's short and simple, and the only thing I'm not sure about is how obvious it is to anybody else:
I don't care as much whether 'the terrorists' win, as I care that we not lose. I was tempted to phrase that as "I don't care whether ...," but in all honesty I do care -- bad guys getting what they want by (or in spite of) being bad does rub me the wrong way, and I'd rather see them get their just desserts -- but when it comes down to it, whether you call it selfishness, a hierarchy of loyalties (loyalty to my nation above loyalty to the rest of my species), or simply not wanting to do more harm than good, I can live with knowing about bad guys getting some benefit they don't deserve far away more easily than I can deal with losing things that I consider precious.
I am not, of course, talking about my guitars and my books, nor the availability of relatively inexpensive food and a broadband Internet connection, as much as those things mean to me. I'm talking about my life, the lives of my loved ones, and my culture, my nation, my fundamental liberties, and my nation -- there are a great many things to value about my nation, starting with its foundation on principles of liberty, justice, and democracy.
If you believe that "They hate Us for our freedoms," why destroy our liberties for them instead of being stubbornly American and resisting? And if you believe we cannot give Them what they say they want Over There because then "they will have won," why are you letting Them set Our agenda? As much as we'd like to not give them any points, isn't our own well-being more important?
I'm not talking about appeasement (like "give them what they want and they'll leave us alone" ever works). I'm talking about being in control of our own agenda, deciding what is important to us first and not giving so much weight to what is important to them, and not destroying a culture and a political system that can be such a force for good just to destroy the people who we're told want to destroy it.
So there it is. I care more whether America loses -- whether Americans lose -- than whether The Terrorists do or don't get any of the things they want. Spend money, even sacrifice some convenience, for effective security measures, but don't spend our liberties and our ideals. Spend money, and even some blood as needed, to fight those who would try to do us harm, but fight as Americans, upholding our ideals, instead of comitting torture and mocking our very own idea of justice and fighting where we don't actually have to.
And when someone says, "... or The Terrorists will win," ask instead what we will lose. And if you're feeling altruistic, ask what the world will lose by the dimming of our own light.
So agree with me or disagree with me, but vote intelligently tomorrow. Vote as though your soul depends upon it. Because your nation's soul does. If you vote differently than I would, let it be because you've thought it through and disagree about what is best for you, for us; not because someone claimed that denying some boogeyman what he wants is more important than what we want for ourselves.
(no subject)
(Well, aside from the slide into fascism. But you know, that's not as easy to sum up charismatically as "fear itself" :-)
(no subject)
(no subject)
Thanks. It's amazing how long it can take to come up with the simple, sensible formulation. It's like "change the course" being an answer to "stay the course".
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
As well you might; I am as well :-)
(no subject)
Please, for the love of all that's good and right, dim it the fuck already. Get your military out of the hundred-plus countries it's in. Drop American exceptionalism like it's a hot potato, and/or like it went out of style twenty years ago. (This means you too, Glenn.) Stop thinking of yourselves as the Great Moral Exemplar, especially now that your government is being open about disappearing/torturing/assassinating people, instead of just doing it on the sly like it has been for fifty years or more. Change your government so your head of state isn't the same person as your head of government, and take some of the rockstar glitz off of the office of the President, because apparently Presidents don't quite get that they're politicians and civil servants anymore. Stop trying to "make the world safe for democracy," especially since you apparently haven't got a clue what democracy looks like anymore, and since the American formulation of late is "democracy=laissez faire capitalism," from which nothing could be further from the truth. And while you're at it, stop projecting your economy outward in such a way that the slightest fiscal malaise in the US seriously hurts the financial well-being of at least three other countries directly, and shakes the entire rest of the world.
Many of us out here, who can't vote in your elections, are damn tired of living on the fringes of the American Empire, and then hearing Americans talk about everything they've lost as if some great and benevolent force in the world has suddenly extinguished itself. From where we're sitting, the great force in the world often looks less benevolent than either incompetent, tragically self-centred, or outright malign. We're not your plantation, we're not your backward provinces, and we don't, for the most part, want or need you to tell us how to live.
The altruistic thing to do would be to try to fix your own country so that you're not having a disproportionate effect on the entire rest of the world. Sixty years is enough, really.
(no subject)
You know, when Greece decided that to pull out of NATO and disallow NATO troops, including US troops, in their country, the United States, who had committed troops and resources to a military exercise that month, turned the boats around and left the country. France and Spain also have no permanent US troops there because they don't want them. Yes we might have troops in a hundred plus countries, but you know what? We're in those countries because the governments of those countries asked us to be there. With two exceptions, and they're actions I personally was never in support of.
"American exceptionalism"? This is it the idea (or, since its an "ism", the religious belief) that Americans think they're so exceptional. Fact is, moral exemplar or not, we are the biggest stick. THAT'S why ninety eight or so nations of the world want our military. THAT'S why 100% of the nations of the world want our money. You want us to give our money away? We do. Every day we in the US spend more on stuff we get from outside the US than inside. Thats called a "Trade Deficit" and we've been nurturing one in the hundreds of billions of dollars range for about twenty years.
And make no mistake. There's not a single voting citizen of the United States that thinks that "democracy=laissez faire capitalism". And we're concerned about the effect that money is having on the democratic process. Because the economy is now a global one. And that means that one of the "Big Three" American auto manufacturers is now based in Germany. It means that nations that have a great deal of capital, such as China, can purchase influence in our democratic process. And unfortunately it means that if we do "dim our light" as you would have us do, it would dim the light of almost every other economy on earth. We don't like it any more than you like it. but we're stuck with it, because changing it at this time would do more damage than not.
The altruistic thing to do would be to try to fix your own country so that you're not having a disproportionate effect on the entire rest of the world. Sixty years is enough, really.
Show me a country on this earth that is "fixed". The nature of government is to provide some small sense of stability in an ever changing socio-economic environment. Seventy years ago, our government was "broken" because Germany defaulted on its loans and our population was acting stupidly. Sixty years ago our government was "broken" because most of it was afraid of the "communist threat" and our population was acting stupid. Forty years ago our government was "broken" because we were involved in a conflict overseas we had no business in and our population was acting stupid. Twenty years ago our government was "broken" because Mexico defaulted on it loans and our population was acting stupid. Ten years from now your argument will be a quaint reminder of "what life was like back then" and our population (and that of the rest of thw world) will be acting stupid. The democratic process that Glenn is lamenting the loss of is the only mechanism we have to "fix" our government.