Some of you are no better than the worst FReepers! (re: Cheney)

[Bicoastal]

If you were to ask me what the worst thing I ever read on Free Republic was, I wouldn't even have to think. It was an offhand comment made by someone upon the death of Pinochet a few months ago. If you remember, many conservatives though this dictator was a hero, because of a "he makes the trains run on time" attitude towards fascism. After all, despite the suppression of free speech and the press, as well as military control of police and local governments, he managed to prop up the Chilean economy for a few years--and as we all know, the allmighty dollar is the only thing that really matters in the end. Well, someone had to spoil the fun and point out that under Pinochet's reign of terror, thousands of "socialist sympathizers" (i.e, slightly left-leaning citizens) were "disappeared" and eventually executed. It was then that I saw the words that made my blood run cold:

"Since the commies are not humans, but beasts in human shape, they do not, and cannot, have human rights. The most any form of abuse visited upon them could amount to, would be cruelty to animals."

How cynical, how completely lost in your own ideological mindset do you have to be to label people you disagree with on political grounds as inhuman? It belies a shallow coldness that Hitler and Stalin would have readily embraced. Incidentally, I refuse to see Hitler and his Nazi cohorts or Stalin and his secret police as anything but human as well--viewing them as evil, soulless monsters is the easy way out. We can't understand how people could do what they do or think what they think, so we imagine them as something other than human to rationalize this incomprehension. Nevertheless, as JFK once noted, in spite of our vast differences, we all share this earth, and we are all mortal. So when I saw the following comment on DU today regarding our Vice President's brush with death, I just had to speak out about it:

"Cheney is NOT human. Don't waste your empathy on him."

I understand that we all have axes to grind with the current administration. I think Cheney is the most detrimental Vice President we've ever (not) elected, and it would be a wonderful day if he was forced out of office by prosecutor, congress, or mob. However, that's as far as I will go. Maybe it's becuase, as I noted on another post, I was in a very close call a few years ago--unlike the Cheney incident, this was a complete accident, but if the circumstances had been just a bit different, neither of us would ever have known what hit us, as it were. But saying someone deserves to die, wishing for their death, or being upset when it doesn't take place--well, I leave that for the fine folks in FReeperville. As a liberal, I don't believe in evil souls, just evil deeds--that goes for our own government as well as for Bin Laden and his henchmen. The other perspective is simply beneath us--MILES beneath us.

[cali]

1. I agree that characterizing someone as "not human"

is repugnant. Not to mention stupid. But, I'm not as upset as you about that comment. Seems to me people are just angry at Cheney's evil deeds and blowing off steam

[Benhurst]

5. He's definitely human.

He's also a war criminal.

[MyNameGoesHere]

2. Well al-Qaeda

is trying to assassinate them over there so we won't have to impeach them here. Those dead enders are a bitch huh? When i heard the early reports that darth vader was the supposed target i had to really say i did not give a damn. This admins actions has led to my feelings so if you want to defend calling him a non human have at it. Remember the world is safer because of this POS hahahaha. Karma is a bitch.

[Kelly Rupert]

3. In every community, you will find nutjobs.

I'd like to think that DU has fewer of them, but they still exist. Comments like that are why the ignore button exists.

[itsmesgd]

4. "regarding the VP's brush with death"???

he was a mile away. He is a truly evil fuck and some of us have less than shiny happy feelings about him.


btw, welcome to DU. Enjoy the flamewars (kidding)

[TheCowsCameHome]

6. He was a mile away. You're closer to death everytime you cross the street.

Besides, what's he doing over there anyway, other than disrupting as military base.

[Prophet 451]

7. I'm torn

On the one hand, I agree with you but on the other, I'm pro-death penalty (under VERY selective conditions) and, more to the point, when someone has repeatedly and deliberatly screwed you over time and again, it's human nature to start hating them. When one is stabbed in the back, it takes a better kind of human than most of us to send them a "thank you" note for the knife.

I hate Cheney. I'm left with little choice but to hate him. He doesn't appear to be insane and he's bright enough to know the consequences of his actions so I am forced to conclude that he is just plain evil. I wouldn't celebrate his death (because even when we are forced to execute someone, it shouldn't be something to celebrate) but I would be somehow releived that he was gone, never to threaten us again. It seems unlikely that Cheney will ever stand trial for his crimes. It seems even more unlikely that he will be locked away forever and even if he were, it would be entirely possible that some future president might pardon him (as Nixon was pardoned) or that he would direct things from jail (as mobsters occasionally do) or that he would eventually be released and work his way into a position of power again and so, one is forced to face the possibility that the only way we will ever be rid of this cancer is the man's death. Certainly, that doesn't excuse wishing pain or suffering on him but I think hoping for the man's death is, if not forgiveable; certainly understandable in the circumstances.

[Beaverhausen]

8. It's likely the comments you are talking about were made by freepers/trolls

they are here, you know.

[laststeamtrain]

9. This question from The Dead Zone has always haunted me since I saw the film.

I didn't read the book. Christopher Walken played Johnny & Herbert Lom played the doctor.


Johnny Smith: If you could go back in time to Germany, before Hitler came to power, knowing what you know now, would you kill him?

Dr. Sam Weizak: Is that why you sent for me, to ask me this, uh... this question?

Johnny Smith: What about my question?

Dr. Sam Weizak: Huh? Huh? Oh, you mean the one about Hitler?

Johnny Smith: What would you do?

Dr. Sam Weizak: I don't like this, John. What are you getting at?

Johnny Smith: What would you do? Would you kill him?

Dr. Sam Weizak: All right. All right. I'll give you an answer. I'm a man of medicine. I'm expected to save lives and ease suffering. I love people. Therefore, I would have no choice but to kill the son of a bitch.

Johnny Smith: You'd never get away alive.

Dr. Sam Weizak: It doesn't matter. I would kill him.

*

There are people that seem 'anti-human' to me, not sub-human. Only in a fiction can things seem clear-cut.
I just don't know...
Cheney seems so nuts, so dissociated from common humanity.

[WI_DEM]

10. I think on the whole we are a more humane community but some nuts get in anyway.

[zbdent]

11. I remember hearing all the time that the Viet vets were calling

fill-in-the-blank Vietnamese "gooks" ... no matter what side they were on ...

even anyone remotely Asian-looking ...

Right-wingers love to dehumanize everybody ... that way, when you put a bullet in the back of their head (while tied up and unarmed and no longer dangerous), you can't feel like you're killing a human being ... maybe that's why the right always claim to love the military ... allows them to commit murder without remorse (well, those who have the nuts to enlist, these days, instead of getting their jollies roughing up illegal immigrants ...)

[dysfunctional press]

12. cheney is an evil fuck who is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents.

Fuck. Him.

he's an evil human being, and the world and our country would both be much better off without him.


imhho.

[lonestarnot]

13. blah blah blah. You cry for him when he croaks. You won't see me blubber'n over that heinous

freak. And don't EVER compare me to a freeper for not giving one good shit if that freak suffers for the shit he's caused.

[UTUSN]

14. Guess what, every single human is a MIXTURE of good-bad.

It is a total fantasy expectation to think that anybody is all-good or all-bad. The freepers often use this same way of thinking: "I thought Libs were so PURE!!1 How can they wish CHEENEE would clog his arteries!!1" I'm sorry, but it's out of touch with human nature.

[greenbriar]

15. hummm low post count

accusing us of what???


me thinks thou doth protest too much

[Bicoastal]

17. hummmmm high post count

What do you want me to do? Hop on the "I hope he croaks tomorrow DIE DIE DIE EVIL BASTARD!!" bandwagon?

Just because the internet allows us virtual anonymity is no reason to give in to our worst instincts.

I'm sorry, this is really how I feel about death. I was nearly killed when I was hit by a speeding car in a crosswalk three years ago. Among other injuries, my sixth vertebra was warped and had to be removed; my skull had to be stapled shut. Most people are lucky to come out of something like that in a wheelchair; I came out with everything intact and/or mending, and can move about freely today. And I'm only 25.

I might be crazy, but if the same happened to a murderous crook like Cheney I would wish him a speedy recovery. Ditto a suicide bomber attack. I'm sorry I don't share anyone's enthusiasm for wishing injury and death on people I don't like.

[JohnyCanuck]

16. The murderous, psycho bastard (and his neocon pals)

are itching to start WWIII.

Putin and the Geopolitics of the New Cold War: Or, what happens when Cowboys don’t shoot straight like they used to…

by F. William Engdahl


SNIP

Washington’s obsession with Nuclear Primacy

What Washington did not say, but Putin has now alluded to in Munich, is that the US missile defense is not at all defensive. It is offensive, and how.

The possibility of providing a powerful state, one with the world’s most awesome military machinery, a shield to protect it from limited attack, is aimed directly at Russia, the only other nuclear power with anywhere the capacity to launch a credible nuclear counterpunch.

Were the United States able to effectively shield itself from a potential Russian response to a US nuclear First Strike, the US would be able simply to dictate to the entire world on its terms, not only to Russia. That would be what military people term Nuclear Primacy. That is the real meaning of Putin’s unusual speech. He isn’t paranoid. He’s being starkly realistic.

Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, it’s now clear that the US Government has never for a moment stopped its pursuit of Nuclear Primacy. For Washington and the US elites, the Cold War never ended. They just forgot to tell us all.

The quest for global control of oil and energy pipelines, the quest to establish its military bases across Eurasia, its attempt to modernize and upgrade its nuclear submarine fleet, its Strategic B-52 bomber command, all make sense only when seen through the perspective of the relentless pursuit of US Nuclear Primacy.

The Bush Administration unilaterally abrogated the US-Russian ABM Treaty in December 2001. It’s in a race to complete a global network of missile defense as the key to US nuclear primacy. With even a primitive missile defense shield, the US could attack Russian missile silos and submarine fleets with no fear of effective retaliation, as the few remaining Russian nuclear missiles would be unable to launch a convincing response enough to deter a US First Strike.

The ability of both sides—the Warsaw Pact and NATO—during the Cold War, to mutually annihilate one another, led to a nuclear stalemate dubbed by military strategists, MAD—mutual assured destruction. It was scary but in a bizarre sense, more stable that what we have today with a unilateral US pursuit of nuclear primacy. The prospect of mutual nuclear annihilation with no decisive advantage for either side, led to a world in which nuclear war had been ‘unthinkable.’

Now, the US pursues the possibility of nuclear war as ‘thinkable.’ That’s really mad.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ENG20070220&articleId=4873

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. Awwwwwwww....

:nopity:

[Bluebear]

19. Please continue the discussion in the original thread. nt

[Rex]

21. Original thread you say?

I'd like to hear more about this original t h r e a d you speak of. :)

[Bluebear]

22. Surely everything has been discussed at one point or the other here!

Maybe we are all meant to be talking on one looooong original thread? :shrug:

[Rex]

27. Sounds very true.

Life is just one looooong thread. I just thought you might know what this crazy guy is talking about.

[blonndee]

29. LMAO Bluebear!!!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[walldude]

23. I must have missed an awful lot of "original threads" today

Cause I keep clicking on these threads that I have almost no clue as to what is going on.. I feel like a Republican at a Greenpeace meeting.

[Bluebear]

24. LOL

You didn't buy a program for 5 bucks at the door, ya cheapskate?

[WinkyDink]

20. I don't "disagree with" Cheney on mere ideological grounds. I HATE HIS EVIL MURDERING GUTS.

Maybe you should believe in the existence of psychopathy instead of the metaphysical realm of souls.
How is it up on that high horse, anyway?

[depakid]

25. The man's a sociopath- just like Bush

And I for one wish him and his family all the suffering that they've caused so many others.

If that makes me like a Freeper, so be it.

[Colobo]

26. I agree with the OP

Good post.

[cgrindley]

28. But he really is an utter waste of air

He's one of the worst people to have ever walked the earth. I wouldn't care if he melted into a puddle and disappeared down a drain.

[rebel with a cause]

30. If bad mouthing cheney is the worst thing that you have seen

on this blog, then I would suspect your reasons. I have found much harsher things said to other bloggers and I find that much more disturbing than anything that is said about that evil nogooder that should be judged by the words he speaks and lives he has cost. I don't care what anyone says about this man, he says and does things every day that damages this country and indangers every one of us. Him and the other bushettes need to retire and just go away. Then we will not say anything bad about what they are doing, as long as they are doing nothing.:mad:

[bullwinkle428]

31. I stated very clearly that I wanted him to spend the rest of his natural life

in prison, and most everyone in that particular thread expressed the very same sentiment! If that makes me a Freeper, then feel free to label me!

[Marr]

32. What you so quaintly describe as 'disagreeing on political grounds' is actually

a very profound separation. Dick Cheney is an advocate of the stratified society, a world where there are haves and have-nots and the have-nots do as they're told and think as they're told. Dick Cheney has helped sell mass murder simply to advance his 'political perspective' abroad.

He's human of course- but he embodies and celebrates just about every one humanity's most contemptible attributes.