But “progressive social activists” are involved in a personal drama between them as heroes and GWBush as the villain, and all these 3rd world oppressed peoples they claim to care so much about are in supporting roles.

Their job is to help Our Hero make Bush/the West/capitalism look bad. They are not supposed to go off script and have their own agenda. Because they aren’t real people to the progressive activist, they are backdrops.

The irony is that these same activists get so indignant at the idea of “objectifying” people.

3rd world people who don’t have the right politics are just so inconvenient. . . . .

My dad was an M.P. when he was in the army, and he said that what really surprised him at first–and that took him a while to get used to–was that without exception, all the prisoners he dealt with, no matter what their offenses or how solid the evidence was against them, *all* insisted until they were blue in the face that they were innocent. Even if the evidence against them was absolutely airtight, they would always come up with some incredibly long, involved and semi-plausible explanation as to why they weren’t guilty, and were being treated completely unfairly. He said that in all his time there, there was *one* guy he thought might be telling the truth.

I’ve often suspected that a lack of understanding of this phenomenon by some on the left might be behind some of the attitudes that neoneo talks about here.

If whoever Jagger supports gets executed, it might tend to stop “victims” wanting to be supported by such peeps.

In the end, if you increase the pot and the stakes, eventually people will either show their real cards or they will fold. Ganji shows his real cards because he knows that getting blacklisted by the aristocrats is a small price to pay to be supported by the Real Power of the US.

(a) I approve of torture; (b) I approve of the Abu Ghraib goings-on that fell short of torture; or (c) that I don’t think Saddam should have a defense lawyer.

I approve of death, hanging, and a firing squad. None of this neat and sanitanized “lethal injections” that are more about putting animals compassionately to sleep than to kill breathing human beings.

Gitmo prisoners have been squeezed of all useful information, why have they not court martialed them under field conditions and executed them yet? It ain’t like there aren’t plenty of catch and release prisoners in Iraq to refill the cells.

So it might be useful to remind people that there are far worse creatures in the human race than Neo of the New England Apple.

And they forget human rights at their own peril. Every human has a right to self-determination, to determine by their actions and choices what their fates will be. Ganji would not imprison people because they spoke out against him, but he is nonetheless imprisoned by others who are bent on destroying his human rights.

And the Left, who are so busy removing human dignity and rights from the equation, can’t bother with dealing with competitors.

They can’t seem to understand the philosophical distinction between the consequences of the prisoner because of his decisions and consequences derived from the liberal Left’s decisions. They always assume that they have power over others, so it is natural to them to think that the GitMo prisoners were controlled and made to do such horrible things.

These power freaks, these Hollywood ignoramuses who have never had a real job in their lives, must be removed from the equation, lest they destroy human rights to the last person.

You’ve obviously had experience.

Anyhow, the left’s problem is not so much in seeing both Iranian political prisoners and Guantonomo inmates as victims, but rather a much more pervasive and basic flaw. They beatify all victims, to the point where being victimized by someone – ANYONE – is their highest aspiration. You can see it in the way they try to one-up one another’s victimhoods, how they commit supposedly “victimless” crimes like vandalism and harassment in the hope someone will smack them and allow them to claim sainted victimhood, how they bestow upon certain races and religions the hallowed status of “eternal victims” and react with the bitter rage of the spurned when any members of those races or religions decide to stop trumpeting their victimhood and start standing up for themselves.

Heck, you can even see it in their support of gun control. Why, imagine an entire SOCIETY where people can be victimized daily and never fight back effectively enough to be tainted by oppressing their assailants!

The cult of victimhood, mocked throughout the 80s and 90s, is now bearing its grotesque fruit.