Ok, pardon me, but ...
Well, my goodness ... I just don't know what to say. I got about two pages into it, then just couldn't stomach it any further. His tribe wouldn't do this, and his tribe wouldn't do that. What an amazing piece of sanctimonious, self-righteous, my-shit-doesn't-stink garbage.
The author -- aside from being, and let's note this again, sanctimonious and self-righteous -- has apparently never heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment, which among other things, clearly showed that this stuff about "my tribe doesn't/wouldn't do that sort of thing" is ... and how can I put this delicately? ... hmmm ... How about unmitigated, hubris-driven horseshit! Yeah, that about does it.
For anyone not familiar, in 1971 the Stanford psyche department conducted an experiment to see what would happen to "good" people put into a "bad" situation. The author of the tripe essay linked below suggests that "his" people would do wonderful things in these awful circumstances. Yeah, right. Stanford took a group of nice, white, well-off college kids, randomly divided them into "guards" and "prisoners," put them in a mock jail and had them play their assigned rolls. The "guards" were given few instructions other than "to keep order." The experiment was famously terminated prematurely after a few days because by then the "guards" had become sadistic and the "prisoners" were, oh, about ready to slit their wrists. And guess what? They were all from the same "tribe."
(sigh) I have so little patience for anyone who sits in the comfort of his home office and pontificates that he (and his kind) would do better if placed in some horrific circumstance that he has never -- and very likely will never -- experience.
Since certain individuals on this list are using the Katrina disaster as yet another opportunity to indulge their own obssessive political hatreds, I thought I'd link to this rant, which sums up my perceptions of the Root Causes and Big Picture surrounding this event, and others that have led up to it:
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000129.html
(By the author's definitions, I'd probably be classified as a Pink/Grey hybrid, and a lazy, extremely amateurish Sheepdog...)
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Received on 2005-09-06 21:08:05