Remember when you were a kid? It was enough to know that The Joker™ was trying to bury Gotham City under six feet of strawberry jam because he was Evil. Lex Luthor™ trying to blow up a mountain to get to the Kryptonite deposit deep inside? Evil. Prince of an alien planet wanting to kill everybody on the Earth so he could sell the planet? Oh yeah, Evil.
But here’s the problem. We grew up, and found that the Joker was also criminally insane. We found out that Lex Luthor was a greedy capitalist. We found out the Prince decided to marry a debutante-inventor and start a family on Earth.
Nevertheless, here is the kind of rhetoric we are hearing about Iraq:
Because we stand for freedom. And the terrorists hate freedom. And they’re attacking us because we’re bringing freedom to Iraq. And terrorists hate freedom. Therefore they hate us. And since they hate us so much of course they fight us.
This is one of those Snake-Eating-Its-Tail deals of “They did these things because they are evil. We know they are evil because they did these things.” There is no way to argue this point because if you ask why they did it, see statement one. If you ask, “yes, you’ve said they are evil but how do you know that?” you are referred to statement two. We can’t ask why anybody hates us enough to attack us, or how we know they “hate freedom,” because the answer is they must be evil. And you must hate Everything We Stand For not to see that.
The discussion is over.
But wait, it gets worse. When your world-view is that somebody or some group is simply evil, there is no room for negotiations. There is no room to revise your opinion. There is no room for facts inconvenient to your view. Contradictory thoughts must be wrong, misinformation from your enemy, who is evil. More dangerous still, there is the tendency to lump all your evil enemies as necessarily related. Compare this transcript with this shorter version: a question about Iraq is directly answered with a comment about September 11. Never mind how little the two have to do with one another.
I conclude by urging you to read the words of a man I expect you to not like or agree with. Among the salient points are several things we can all agree are true: “The greatest rule of safety is justice, and stopping injustice and aggression.” “[V]igilant people do not allow their politicians to tamper with their security.” “We must take into consideration that this war brings billions of dollars in profit to the major companies, whether it be those that produce weapons or those that contribute to reconstruction, such as the Halliburton Company….” “Heeding right is better than persisting in falsehood.”
These are the words of Osama Bin Laden.
It’s a lot easier believing we are good, everything we do is good; they are evil, everything they do is evil. The truth is your enemy does not see himself as evil.
Finally, two things. First, a succinct essay by security expert Bruce Schneier on why a National ID card is worse than a waste of money, it in fact would make us less secure. Oh, and remember 2 weeks ago we learned 308,000 jobs had been created in March? Well last week 360,000 people filed for unemployment benefits for the first time. If that’s not enough for you, people aren’t quitting to take better jobs for the most part, and a new poll says people would rather have job creation than a tax cut.
A happy thought for tax day: you only had to pay income taxes if you had income.