Posted on 05/22/2003 8:03:39 PM PDT by Timesink
Hedges: My father, who had fought in World War II, essentially became a pacifist after the war. He was a very early opponent of the Vietnam War and took us as children to antiwar demonstrations. He told me when I was about 12 that, if the war was still going when I was 18 and I was drafted, he would go to prison with me. If we visited museums, he would never allow us to see the displays of weapons and guns. He couldn't stand the VFW hall, partly because they drank so much there. And, of course, I grew up in a manse, where there was no alcohol. I remember one July Fourth parade when I was about ten, and these guys were going by in their caps. And he said, "Never forget. Most of those guys were in the back, fixing the trucks." So I grew up in a home where war was seen for the abomination that it was.On the other hand, I also grew up in a home with parents who were social activists, so my entire childhood was colored by the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement. When my father died in 1995, he was very involved in the gay rights movement. And I learned, because we lived in a small town in upstate New York, the cost of taking a moral stand -- that it was unpopular. I mean, Martin Luther King, in the early days of the civil rights movement, was one of the hated men in America. I felt the sting of what it meant to stand up for what you believe in or to support a cause that was just and, certainly at its inception, how difficult that was.
That developed, I think, a lot of anger in me -- anger at seeing my father, whom I admired, belittled by people in our town. I also read a lot as a teenager about the Holocaust and the Spanish Civil War, and I very much wanted that epic battle to define my own life. I used to regret as a teenager that I had not been of age in the thirties, that I couldn't go fight fascism like my hero George Orwell. By the time I was a divinity student, the military dictatorships in Latin America were carrying out horrendous crimes -- the "dirty war" in Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, the civil war in El Salvador. When I got to El Salvador, the death squads were killing 800 to 1,000 people a month, and I felt that, as a young man, this was as close as my generation was going to come to fighting fascism. And that is what propelled me toward war -- not because I was any kind of a gun nut, not because I came as a voyeur -- which some people do -- but out of a sense of justice, out of a sense of idealism.
Belittle my father will you? Take my sneers then --- from my exalted commencement speaker's podium.
Also I saw Hedges on The PBS Newshour last December, and on Charlie Rose at about the same time. Rarely have I seen so bitter and tortured a man, or a man with more of a distorted idea about the worthiness of his own parochial and banal observations about the human condition. In a letter I wrote at the time I said, "Yesterday [Terrence Smith] groveled before a sniveling coward, Chris Hedges, allowing the audience to go away with the impression that Hedges's pathological case of self-hatred and anti-Americanism was somehow useful in illustrating the real moral questions that arise when grave issues of war and peace are discussed."
Hedges is a psychological case; a guy with severe psychologcal problems who, it so happens, can also write fairly well. That The New York Times has him on its payroll along with, until just a few days ago, psychological basketcase Jayson Blair, tells us something about the "paper of record" which I'm sure Howell Raines never intended.
Whattaya wanna bet he has a rainbow sticker on his car? -- if he isn't too far left to have a car.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Just what we didn't need, another queer priest. Or journalist, come to think of it.
...the military dictatorships in Latin America were carrying out horrendous crime
By military dictatorships, d'you think he means Fidel? Bwahahahahaaa!
This guy makes Jayson Blair look like he reeks of authenticity.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Excellent assessment.
Of Chris Hedges. And the New York Times.
Nope. I think John McCain is taking a trip to his paymaster at DNC headquarters that day.
"How about a game of SOLITAIRE John"
Sorry, but I disagree.
That's the role the left has assigned to us, and it's a prime example of what Ayn Rand meant she wrote of people with no moral code cynically using another person's moral code against him as a weapon.
I was raised to believe it was impolite to discuss religion or politics at, say, a party, because it was tacky and disrespectful of other people's feelings, because it would put the host in an uncomfortable position, and because, well, it could ruin the party.
After twenty years of sitting on my hands and maintaining silence while ignorant idiots trashed my beliefs to my face, I realized that modern liberals think we are fair game for rudeness, and that they are never going to behave themselves properly in a social setting unless they are shamed, ridiculed, or intimidated into it.
I finally realized I was going to be victimized forever, at family occasions with my (now ex-) fiance, because they so firmly believed that I should "respect their opinions" even when those opinions were ridiculous, while becoming affronted if I dared to offer one of my own to the contrary. They didn't consider trashing my beliefs to be rude. But they did consider dissent rude, because it made THEM feel bad. The heck with what their speech made me feel.
In 1998, I finally decided to reject the role of "bobblehead doll" forever. I walked out on Christmas Eve dinner, and later let everyone know that if they insisted on talking politics they were going to get their wish, and get it in spades. We'd talk politics until *I* was good and ready to stop, and nobody would like one bit of what I had to say.
It's gone too far to correct anymore by merely setting the example of politeness. The majority now have a different standard of etiquette and it's definitely a "double" one. I'm not going to initiate the rudeness anymore than I am going to initiate force, but like force, it needs to be met with something more than acquiescence.
Rudeness needs to be stomped on. Chris Hedges was rude. To say the audience was rude is like blaming the mugging victim for turning the tables on a purse-snatcher and sending him to jail via the hospital. The purse-snatcher had it coming.
Lebanon has many religious groups, including large numbers of Christians and Druges (?SP). Israel invaded lebanon to protect Israeli citizens in Gallilee from being killed from terrorists based in south lebanon. And the "Shiites" who "hated" Israel are Iranian funded islamofascists, and the Syrians essentially run the country (which is why so may Christian lebanese are now European or American citizens.
this is "blame the Jews" anti semitism...
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