News
HU contributor James Romberger and his son Crosby received an Eisner nomination for Best single issue for their Post York #1. All the Eisner nominations are here.
On HU
Featured Archive Post: I review Reinhold Kleist’s Johnny Cash biography.
I explain what Escher and Dr. Manhattan have in common.
I explain why Tim McGraw sucks.
We kicked off our comics and music roundtable. Posts this week:
Bert Stabler, Re(Dis)Membering Pushead, The Cheerful Blasphemer
Craig Fischer, “Poster Boy”
Brian Cremins, “Gil Kane, Memory Drawing, and Bob Dylan’s Self-Portrait
Betsy Phillips, “A Theory of Why the Two Iron Men Became One”
Qiana Whitted, “Sound and Silence in the Jim Crow South”
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Atlantic I wrote about:
—Shulamith Firestone and feminist utopian literature.
—Willie Nelson’s jazzy new album.
—Feminism’s conflicted hisotry with advancing day care.
At Splice Today I wrote about:
—who should own children.
—Chris Connor’s classic Gershwin album.
Other Links
Sarah Kendzior on academia’s indentured servants.
Jonathan Bernstein on how to stop torturing, maybe.
This Week’s Reading
I finished Shulamith Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex, read Joanna Russ’ The Female Man, started a book about parking reform (no seriously), read some articles and book chapters about the Oneida community. Also still reading The Two Towers to my son.
Currently reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles. It’s quite funny, believe it or not. I’m also making my way through, little by little, short-story collections by Edith Wharton, Robert E. Howard, and H. P. Lovecraft.
FLW one of my favorites Robert. And a great book to teach too. I’ve been reading about pornography (Linda Williams, Angela Carter, Andrea Dworkin, and an anthology of feminist writings on…) in preparation for hopefully writing something interesting about Lost Girls…
I’m also about 1100 pages into A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. Finish line in sight.
Is FLW better than the Magus? I kind of hate the Magus.
I just received but haven’t yet read Cecil’s Quest by Frantisek Skala. It is one of the most gorgeous comics I’ve ever seen, a mixture of woodland photography and sculpture similar to Brothers Quay films. Highly highly recommended.
Been reading disappointing horror anthologies and just started Tales Of The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, an immensely celebrated fantasy series collected in one book. Vance is very influential and always praised but never really has had much presence in the shops. Having read only one chapter, I think this might have been a big influence on Dr Strange comics. Very flowery with lots of bombastic language and spells.
“If Bush acknowledged that the United States engaged in torture on his watch, it really might change public opinion among rank-and-file Republicans”
This is namby-pamby bullshit. The chauvinists for the most part don’t have any problem with torture whatsoever. Nor is there much evidence that they’re terribly conflicted about it. The only way for them to see that point of view is to make them. Obama had his window and of course he blew it.
I agree with Steven that Republicans not only think it is acceptable to indulge in torture, but worse, they eagerly attempt to justify it and are proud of the fact that the practice was implemented overtly under their watch. Additionally, almost all Democrat politicians have no more decency and moral fibre on the issue than the Republicans. Gitmo and our black sites are not going to be closed any time soon and, however heinous his crimes, it is still sickening that there will be hardly a voice raised in protest that the kid captured yesterday in Boston is not being accorded due process and will probably end up in one of those sites being tortured for the rest of his life.
I actually think Bernstein is correct that Bush acknowledging that he tortured would be a big deal. People of all sorts always like torturing their enemies. But Bush’s decision to torture made it acceptable for torture to be used as a partisan talking point for Republican politicians. That’s really bad, and making it less acceptable would be important, even if not transformative in every way.
It’s all moot, though, because Bush is a uncaring, vicious, moral slug, and would never admit to it.
Obama’s not a whole lot better on this issue either, unfortunately.
I don’t think it’s Bush that made it acceptable. It’s part and parcel of the pompous authoritarian mindset. They don’t need Bush for that.
Like I said, lots of people love torture. But. There was a bipartisan consensus in this country that advocating torture was unacceptable. That matters a lot. Having one political party willing to just out and out say that torture is a good thing is a lot different than various people at various levels sometimes indulging.
Having torture be politically acceptable is really bad, basically. Bush did that. That’s why he should be prosecuted. And actually, Obama helped by not prosecuting him. And he should be in jail as well.
Robert, if you are just discovering Vance you are in for a feast! I place him ahead of Tolkien as a fantasy writer.
Robert, have you read the famous Dark Forces anthology? I’d call that a non-disappointing horror collection.
Or maybe put it this way…Stanley Hauerwas, in talking about the abolition of slavery, said that of course slavery isn’t actually abolished; there are lots of people right now who are laboring in slavery right now. What the abolition of slavery did was that it made slavery as an ideological position untenable. You can enslave someone, but it has to be done as a criminal act.
This is also the struggle to abolish rape, I think. Rape will always be with us, but there’s still an ideological struggle around whether there are excuses for rape — is it okay if she was asking for it? If she drank herself into a stupor? If he was raped but he came does that mean he wasn’t really raped?
Similarly, with torture — abolishing torture isn’t about preventing people from ever torturing, because that’s not going to happen probably ever. Rather, the point is to make torture by definition pathological or criminal. It’s to get all of society on board for saying, this is an evil, and anyone who does it is anathema. That won’t eliminate it, but it will reduce it, and it has an important moral function in defining what is and is not acceptable in society.
So…there actually was a fairly strong international consensus that torture was wrong, and that no morally good nation could condone it. Bush and Cheney changed that. Which is despicable.
I’ve been excited for Jack Vance for a while, I also have the Lyonesse omnibus. I listened to 2 interviews with him and he is quite an odd guy (not in an obvious weirdo way or anything like that), he said he only written more fantasy/sf than mystery stories because it made him more money!
I do own Dark Forces but haven’t read it yet (but I have read two of the stories in other anthos; the R Campbell story is amazing but I thought the Etchison was just okay), I own a horror anthology collection 3 times taller than myself. But the thing that worries me is that I was seriously underwhelmed by Dark Descent, which many regard as the best, but I only really particularly liked a quarter of the stories. And most hyped collections have been similarly disappointing. I feel like I cant really be a part of the horror community because I’m 9 times out of 10 baffled why people speak so highly of most things. But the genre is an essential part of who I am.
Eric–
I’m glad the book works well in the classroom. It seems like it would be a fun introduction to postmodern fiction.
I gather it was very popular when it came out in 1969. The only book that sold more copies that year was the novelization of Love Story.
Noah–
I haven’t read The Magus, but I’m enjoying The French Lieutenant’s Woman more than I did The Collector.
I’m not sure what you’d think. Fowles presents a Victorian-period romance à la Thomas Hardy with all the immersive appeal you’d expect . The main conceit, though, is that he is the narrator, and there are all sorts of commentary, analysis, and asides about the story, characters, and milieu from his much more contemporary perspective. He also makes a point of calling attention to its being a work of fiction. I’ve got about a hundred pages to go, and I’m in the middle of the second possible ending. I’m not sure if you’d get a kick out of the book, or if it would drive you up the wall.
Thank you so, so, so much, Noah, for that link to Kendzior’s article (and thereby to the other articles she links to). I feel like a gay teenager who just discovered that there are lots of other people who’ve gone through experiences just like his. Holy shit!
This, for instance:
“By the time you finish – if you even do – your academic self will be the culmination of your entire self, and thus you will believe, incomprehensibly, that not having a tenure-track job makes you worthless. You will believe this so strongly that when you do not land a job, it will destroy you.”
Or this:
“To work outside of academia, even temporarily, signals you are not “serious” or “dedicated” to scholarship. It does not matter if you are simply too poor to stay: in academia, perseverance is redefined as the ability to suffer silently or to survive on family wealth”
Wow. Wow!
I think Kendzior’s a woman (Sarah?) — but yeah. The new academic job market and it’s raft of adjunct serfs is pretty horrible.
Freelance writing is no great shakes either. I’m currently being jerked around by a client who owes me thousands of dollars, and wondering if I’m ever going to get paid. Still…I don’t think I’m sorry I dropped out of academia….
I do think FLW is better than The Magus, though I did really like The Magus too. FLW benefits from the 19th century millieu and a more effective distancing from the male protagonist. The female lead is also more interesting/believable in FLW. After that it’s kind of downhill for Fowles. I liked Daniel Martin ok, and A Maggot was an interesting book with a truly bizarre ending…but neither of them (or any of his other stuff) hold up to FLW.
————————
eric b says:
…I’ve been reading about pornography (Linda Williams, Angela Carter, Andrea Dworkin, and an anthology of feminist writings on…) in preparation for hopefully writing something interesting about Lost Girls…
————————–
Good luck on “writing something interesting about Lost Girls“! I usually tremendously admire and appreciate Moore’s wok, but if anything proved that serious artistic worth and porn are utterly incompatible, “Lost Girls” did. (It sure was a pretty-looking batch of books, though.)
But, since the vast majority of porn is created by men for men, aimed to feed their particular way of perceiving sex…
http://www.familylife.com/articles/topics/marriage/challenges/understanding-differences/how-do-men-and-women-differ-in-how-they-view-sex
http://www.webmd.com/sex/features/sex-drive-how-do-men-women-compare
…isn’t preparing to write about porn by reading what women — feminist women — think about the subject awfully wrong-headed? Like prepping to write about religion by reading what Bertrand Russell, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Christopher Hitchens have to say on the subject?
Robin Morgan: “Pornography is the theory, and rape the practice.”
Gloria Steinem: “..erotica is as different from pornography ‘as love is from rape, as dignity is from humiliation, as partnership is from slavery, as pleasure is from pain.’ ”
…At least it should be useful in coming to the “correct” conclusions.
————————–
Noah Berlatsky says:
Is FLW better than the Magus? I kind of hate the Magus.
—————————
“The Magus” was OK; hardly great, hardly “hateable”…
—————————
Robert Adam Gilmour says:
…Been reading disappointing horror anthologies…
—————————
Dunno what makes your skin creep, but I highly recommend searching out those with tales by Aickman, Ligotti; Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood” collections were brilliant.
With comics horror anthologies, the Steven Bissette-edited “Taboo” is a highwater mark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taboo_%28comics%29 .
“Tapping the Vein” [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapping_the_Vein_%28comics%29 ]superlatively adapted into comics, in multiple volumes, Barker’s horror stories; “The Nightmare Factory” [ http://www.amazon.com/The-Nightmare-Factory-Joe-Harris/dp/0061243531 ] did splendidly for Ligotti; two books out so far.
—————————
steven samuels says:
“If Bush acknowledged that the United States engaged in torture on his watch, it really might change public opinion among rank-and-file Republicans”
This is namby-pamby bullshit. The chauvinists for the most part don’t have any problem with torture whatsoever…
—————————
Yeah; whoever said it shows a typical liberal “disconnect” with unpleasant realities. Like the one who argued that if we could make serial killers understand that what they’re doing is hurting people, they’d stop. (Seriously!)
Not that right-wingers are immune ( http://smokinherbband.bravepages.com/welcome/political/matrix/w600h551matrix.jpg , http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/9454/lightbox/TMW2012-11-07colorKOS.png?1351858909 ); they just have no problem accepting that people can be vicious pricks.
—————————
James says:
…however heinous his crimes, it is still sickening that there will be hardly a voice raised in protest that the kid captured yesterday in Boston is not being accorded due process and will probably end up in one of those sites being tortured for the rest of his life.
—————————-
Re the last part, one can only hope! Even if it’s not the drawing-and-quartering I would have preferred:
—————————–
It is considered by many to be the epitome of cruel punishment, and was reserved for the crime of treason as this was deemed more heinous than murder and other capital offenses. The grisly punishment included the drawing of the convicted to the gallows, often by horse, the hanging of the body until near death, disembowelment and castration, followed by the beheading of the body, and finally the quartering of the corpse, or the division of the bodily remnants into four pieces. The punishment was carried out in public, with the ridicule of the crowd adding to the criminal’s suffering.
—————————–
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Drawing_and_quartering
And I like how a 19-year-old adult is being referred to as a “kid”; poor, immature child! Cliché movie line: “Why, he’s…just a kid!”
Still, though, I’m all for “due process”… (And then, as the Missus put it, “Let’s kill him a lot!”)
BTW, izzit me, or aren’t the overwhelming majority of editorial cartoons re that attack even more mind-bogglingly idiotic than usual?
Angela Carter and many other feminists had the own ideal visions of what porn could be. Obviously Steinem and anyone else who says erotica and porn are distinctly different are full of shit.
“To quote Oglaf author Trudy Cooper, “erotica” just means “porn that works for me””
I’ve never read Lost Girls but I really liked Alan Moore’s 25000 Years Of Erotic Freedom. I recall him saying he thought “erotica” was a word used by cowards (or something like that).
Aickman is very interesting but the three tales I read so far dont quite push my buttons hard enough( I’m talking about horror here, but Aickman has his own strange brand of sex). I only read the first omnibus of Books Of Blood and I was only truly enthusiastic about “In The Hills, The Cities” and “Human Remains”, the rest of it ranged from decent to okay. I have a few Ligotti books but have only read the story “Nightmare Network”, which was very good and unusual.
I have half of the Taboo books and quite like most of it.
I’m not really looking for suggestions because I plan to read almost everything. My favourite horror leans towards highly aesthetic and what I regard as spiritual, but I like a little bit of everything.
Mike: I certainly don’t want to be seen as an apologist for any bombers of civilians, but as anyone with children would be conscious of, a nineteen year old still has the word “teen” imbedded in their age. This “kid,” which is how I see anyone who looks as he did in the pictures that are widely disseminated everywhere, was pretty obviously led terribly astray by an older brother, besides other bizarre influencing factors that will emerge (including the obvious question of, however did these young men manage to acquire the various weapons they used?), and having the immediate family members brand them as “losers” I am sure didn’t help. Regardless, torture is not justified in ANY case by civilized peoples. The protections of due process are just as significant when someone has done something hugely horrible as they are when they have done something relatively minor. The law is the law, for important reasons. If we abandon these protections whenever we feel like it as we have, some of us may well end up being tortured in Gitmo forever ourselves someday—perhaps, for instance, for over-appropriation of Google. :P
———————–
James says:
Mike: I certainly don’t want to be seen as an apologist for any bombers of civilians…
———————–
…More like a defense lawyer arguing for milder punishment than the heinous crime would warrant. From the closing argument in The State of Illinois v. Nathan Leopold & Richard Loeb, delivered by Clarence Darrow:
————————
…Here was to be an effort to save the lives of two boys by the use of [defense] money in fabulous amounts…
…had this been the case of two boys of these defendants’ age…
We are here with the lives of two boys imperiled…
I have seen a court urged almost to the point of threats to hang two boys…
…if this court should do what every other court in Illinois has done since its foundation, and refuse to sentence these boys to death…
It was not correct that we would have defended these boys in this court…
We have said to the public and to this court that neither the parents, nor the friends, nor the attorneys would want these boys released…
But, Your Honor, if these boys hang, you must do it…
it would be an unheard of thing for any court, no matter who, to sentence these boys to death…
Now, that is what I have listened to for three days against two minors, two children…
Let me tell you something that I think is cowardly, whether their acts were or not.
[There’s a question about the kidnapping and murder of a 14-year-old being “cowardly”?]
————————
There’s much (and countless more “boys”) more at http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/darrowclosing.html . (Emphases added)
———————–
James says:
…but as anyone with children would be conscious of, a nineteen year old still has the word “teen” imbedded in their age. This “kid,” which is how I see anyone who looks as he did in the pictures that are widely disseminated everywhere, was pretty obviously led terribly astray by an older brother, besides other bizarre influencing factors that will emerge…
—————————
As Darrow notes, Leopold and Loeb were “…Eighteen and nineteen years old at the time of the homicide…”; certainly one was influenced by the other.
So are we to treat with kid gloves anyone who — though legally an adult — is not sufficiently mature emotionally?
Speaking of Google, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood and http://www.squidoo.com/historyofchildhood delineate how “childhood” is a varying concept. With the new onrush of “man-boys”…
http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2011/02/21/whats-up-with-all-the-man-boys-wsj/
——————————
This shift in the dominant image of manhood is most evident in the evolution of the so-called “Family Man.” The benevolent patriarch of the ’50s has been replaced by an adult teenager who spends his time sneaking off to hang out with the boys, eyeing the hot chick over his wife’s shoulder, or buying cool new toys. Like a fourteen-year-old, this guy can’t be trusted with the simplest of domestic tasks, be it cooking dinner for the kids or shopping for groceries.
…popular culture continues to fetishize the traditional, ’50s model of masculinity, but in a distilled form – kick-ass machismo stripped of the accompanying values of honor, duty and loyalty. We seem to have carried with us the unreconstructed sexism of the past – the objectification of women, inability to connect or communicate – but discarded its redeeming virtues. Where traditional masculinity embraced marriage, children and work as rites of passage into manhood, the 21st century version shuns them as emasculating, with the wife cast in the role of the castrating mother. The result resembles a childlike fantasy of manhood that is endowed with the perks of adulthood – money, sex, freedom – but none of its responsibilities.
——————————
http://inthesetimes.com/article/2526/
http://thefeministwire.com/2013/03/taking-the-white-man-boy-seriously/
…shall we soon be defending a 27-year-old multiple murderer as “just a kid,” who couldn’t tell his first-person-shooter video games apart from reality? Or one who bombed a synagogue as helpless under the influenced of neo-Nazi websites?
Arguing for a defense lawyer isn’t the same as arguing for a lighter sentence.
Basic constitutional rights are basic. Without them, we might as well just shoot anyone we suspect in the head and be done with it. We’re a nation of laws or we aren’t.
Since I believe in the constitution and do not support the death penalty, and because I do not abandon those values because of fear or because I necessarily believe everything I am told over the media by the authorities—it makes MY flesh crawl that any of my fellow Americans would mock the idea of defense lawyers in a time when our country imprisons people without legality to be tortured indefinitely; and could not only seriously advocate draw-and-quartering in this day and age, but also recommend that it be done to a person who has not yet been tried and found guilty of any offense.
———————-
James says:
…it makes MY flesh crawl that any of my fellow Americans would mock the idea of defense lawyers…
———————–
Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
Kindly point out where I “mock[ed] the idea of defense lawyers”?
Rather — and pretty transparently — I pointed out how a certain sympathy-button-pushing tactic is employed; namely, calling some murderous creeps “boys,” “kids,” “children.”
No different, really, than right-to-lifers referring to aborted “babies,” “unborn children,” rather than the clinically-accurate but not as warm n’ fuzzy “embryos” or “fetuses.”
————————
…a person who has not yet been tried and found guilty of any offense.
————————
I’m reminded of a Rodrigues cartoon depicting a “Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald”-type scenario; a demented-looking guy caught on TV, aiming a gun at somebody else and blazing away. The lettering, “ALLEGED ASSASSIN,” is superimposed.
Or, how ’bout this 1960 photo; a member of the right-wing, criminal Yakuza assassinating Socialist Party leader Asanuma Inejiro: http://spatzo.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/029-e1317823993201.jpg .
If at at that time one were to suggest an appropriate punishment, shall we have a tizzy outragedly proclaiming he’d “not yet been tried and found guilty of any offense”?
Those two Boston terrorists could not have been as plainly guilty…
Funny how folks of a certain political stripe always get infinitely more exercised over the rights of murderers and criminal brutes, while the suffering of the innocent victims somehow doesn’t remotely raise the same compassion. What about their “human rights”?
If we have a system of laws, they aren’t guilty until a jury declares them guilty.
If we don’t, then, of course, the court system doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t mean that one sympathizes with the perpetrator of these hideous acts more than the victims to want justice applied by constitutional standards. By “kid” I only referred to the apparent youth of the accused, which I and surely others were struck by as these tragic events have unfolded. Similarly I see the young American soldiers you would probably advocate be sent to his native country to bomb and kill civilians to further your ideas of revenge as “kids”, as well. I guess I am getting old. It certainly makes me feel so to realize how quickly our civilized veneer can be stripped away….otherwise rational-appearing people become part of a mob, howling for death, certain of their rightness. Perhaps, Mike, you can arrange to personally put the offender’s eyes out with your thumbs before he is drawn and quartered…would that help to satisfy your anger? Mike the Hunter, the bane of terrorists. Too bad you weren’t on site to dismember Osama Bin Laden while he was still alive, you must have lost sleep about that. Don’t despair, you might still be able to add my name to one of your “lists”, one of people of a “certain political stripe” for you to submit to Homeland Security as possible subversives.
Mike, gutting our justice system is a perfect victory for terrorists.
By the way, Leopold and Loeb were both minors at the time of their trial.
—————————-
Noah Berlatsky says:
If we have a system of laws, they aren’t guilty until a jury declares them guilty.
—————————-
That’s an amazingly popular bit of non-thinking, which it doesn’t take much to expose as the nonsense it is. So if a racist Southern jury finds a KKK member who actually did murder some blacks “innocent,” does that mean the fabric of reality is altered so that he didn’t actually kill them?
If a jury declares an innocent person “guilty,” does that mean then they actually did do the crime, then?
Now, my attitude is, that guilt and innocence exist; utterly apart from whatever a jury may decide, rightly and wrongly.
—————————
AB says:
Mike, gutting our justice system is a perfect victory for terrorists.
By the way, Leopold and Loeb were both minors at the time of their trial.
—————————–
As I earlier wrote, “Still, though, I’m all for ‘due process’…”; not exactly a call for “gutting our justice system”! And, believe it or not, were I to be called to be a juror in the case of the surviving suspect, I actually would be able to dismiss from my mind all previous assumptions, and judge solely on what was presented in the courtroom.
(However, in the case of this guy, here: http://spatzo.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/029-e1317823993201.jpg …I don’t think so.)
Re the “minor” status of L & L (I’d seen reading Darrow’s argument how he mentioned they weren’t allowed to sign contracts, or something along that vein)…so? It’s absurd that someone, say, 17 years and 11 months old should be legally treated as if they were, say, ten. Yet both are “minors,” in the ever-fluctuating sense.
—————————-
James says:
…Similarly I see the young American soldiers you would probably advocate be sent to his native country to bomb and kill civilians to further your ideas of revenge as “kids”, as well…you might still be able to add my name to one of your “lists”, one of people of a “certain political stripe” for you to submit to Homeland Security as possible subversives.
——————————-
(Unfortunately-necessary SARCASM ALERT) Yes, because anyone not kindly disposed towards those murderous brothers must be a flag-waving, Bible-thumping right-winger, right? Ask Russ about how “right wing” I am…
Before my financial situation was gravely diminished, for many years I was a member and donor to charities such as…
The International Campaign for Tibet,
The American Civil Liberties Union,
Amnesty International.
While I don’t necessarily agree with every case they might defend, overwhelmingly I support those most honorable organizations. Aimed at defending the innocent, or non-violent protesters against injustice, tyranny. Even the “freedom of speech” rights of noxious groups, as long as they don’t cross the line into physical assaults.
No doubt folks therein would be horrified at my “pro drawing-and-quartering” position. Now, I oppose torture for interrogation purposes because it’s been found to be ineffective, even counterproductive. I also oppose it when there’s a reasonable chance of the suspect being innocent.
However, I believe the punishment should fit the crime. To a smugly unrepentant serial killer, who lengthily tortured his helpless, innocent victims first, what’s the worst the namby-pamby offer? Temporary confinement – until he’s considered “rehabilitated” and freed — in a cell with free medical care, psychiatric care, food and lodging, books, TV, access to a gym and the Web; even able to correspond with that type of woman who finds murderers sexy. (“But…he’s still suffering terribly by being deprived of his freedom! *Sob!*”)
I regularly razz simplistic “Mr. A thinking,” but here I heartily agree with Ditko:
http://benjaminherman.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ditko-mr-a.jpg
To consider the younger of the Boston terrorists a poor, impressionable “kid,” naively led astray, and thus to be treated with kid gloves, splashes contempt upon the torn bodies, lives either destroyed outright or horribly diminished; the lifelong grief for loved ones lost, suffering of able bodies now mutilated.
And the huge harm done to a joyful public event now tainted with pain and paranoia; a civil society driven ever more towards police-state “security” (who can ever again be taken seriously for complaining about Big Brother-type “security” cameras, when they made possible the swift identification of the terrorists?) by ultra-right-wing fundamentalism; moderate, peaceful Muslims demonized in the public eye again by the fanatic minority. That the brothers seemed ordinary, Westernized, just adds to the fear: “You never can tell about those Muslims!”
—————————-
James says:
…I do not abandon those values because of fear or because I necessarily believe everything I am told over the media by the authorities…
—————————–
Well, I don’t necessarily do, either. But neither do I reflectively assume that everything is an elaborate, sinister government plot, as do the folks talked about here: http://www.idesigntimes.com/articles/4806/20130422/boston-terrorist-attack-conspiracy-theories-fbi-setup.htm …
“So if a racist Southern jury finds a KKK member who actually did murder some blacks “innocent,” does that mean the fabric of reality is altered so that he didn’t actually kill them?”
The justice system can be perverted, of course. One of the ways it’s perverted is by declaring people guilty without trial. The KKK did this often by lynching people.
I must say I do prefer the society that say, locks up Andreas Behring Brevik in a tasteful and well equipped cell forever after a fair trial to one that say, invades a bunch of countries and locks hundreds of people up without a trial after torturing them.
I’m more worried about what a society practicing drawing and quartering would stand for than pointlessly avenging horrible tragedies.