There’s a very good chance that the enemy of your enemy may still not be your friend
Every now and again it’s a good idea to turn on your own just to see what it’s like on the other side. It helps to have something to actually disagree with them over. This post goes over my recent days spent arguing with the “liberal” commenterati (obsessive commenters on websites. A google search tells me I didn’t coin this word. Damn) about the protests in Iran. It wasn’t a pretty time, but it was an interesting one. If it’s not a tech. or nerd site I tend to avoid these areas anymore.
In this case, it’s regarding the ever changing situation in Iran. The battle ground in question is the comment area at Common Dreams, a usually progressive left news site. It was a wholly satisfying experiment. I learned a lot about a lot about the nature of comment areas, their addicting qualities and how quickly the conversation sort of descends into self-parody. I learned something about myself: According to these people I must work for the Mossad or CIA.
Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man’s self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.
