>Brad portrayed the anti-war protesters, no matter how
>orderly or polite, as personally afflicting the bereaved,
rubbish
the other reason i compared protestors is that, whether you and i like it or not, the same repulsion is often greeted our activities: others feel the protestors are in their face. and it doesn't matter how orderly. when i walked past the right to life display of huge pictures of aborted babies i felt it was in my face, etc. there were no people there. just pictures.
>but since it's a little play or parable its dishonesty
>can't be exposed: we already know it's fiction.
there are people who really feel that the protestors might as well be at _their_ door and they're not people who necessarily lost someone directly.
and you, for example, were deeply offended by max's comments which weren't directed at you. if anything, they were directed at a couple of people most vocal on the issue in the past couple of months. and yet, you felt he was attacking your person. if you can experience a feeling of being personally attacked just by max criticizing something, then people are going to feel offended by things like protestors holding bloodied dolls in town squares. afterall, whether right or left, bloodied dolls are used for a reason: to make people feel something.
brad's point was abstract and it shouldn't have been taken so personally. he could have said, so what should we do tell the majority of USers who want vengeance or who want the USG to do something about this, that we're not going to? i don't know, gordon, i've tried telling that to a lot of people. they get thoroughly disgusted with me for even suggesting that i'm sickened by the bombing and deaths of civilians. i can go on and on about Irag, palestinians, etc. etc. doesn't matter. and why should any of us be surprised that we're met with resistance: none of us were born from the head of Zeus and we resisted this kind of knowledge, too.