Reply #19: It is a juvenile response [View All]

[TallahasseeGrannie]

the whole "he did it first" meme. And I know this intimately, as a middle school teacher.

And yet it is a very human response. No, it doesn't let us off the hook for our behavior. We ARE a democracy and therefore we do bear the burden of responsibility.

But it is not juvenile to frame our wrongs against the backdrop of human behavior. We aren't the first society to scale the slippery slope of fundamentalism and slide down. From Cromwell and the Puritans to the European fascists and islamacists... we appear to yearn, as a species, for easy answers and clear cut norms.

My problem with the writer is perhaps more one of sensibilities than content. I can call my son lazy, but no one else had better do it! It is just bad manners to write an essay about how you loathe another country. She has some valid points, for sure. But if I wrote the same thing about how I loathe Iran (I don't) I believe I would get slammed here on DU and I would deserve it.

I think it is alot like individual challenges like losing weight, giving up drugs, etc. Shrinks tell us we have to love ourselves and accept ourselves before we can really effect positive change in our lives. I see such self-hate in our country and I think that is an enormous threat when it comes fo effecting change culturally and politically.