>But politics is so much about hating and cheering, because those are
>expressions of passion. Every good political demo has a rousing dose of
>hatred and of cheering. People get political when they feel strongly about
>things and solidarize with others who share those passions. Nothing wrong
>with that -- in fact, aren't all movements largely founded on common
>cheerings and hatreds? When we hate and cheer some of the same things as the
>majority, it make sense to say so -- we reach more people and gain more
>support for our positions.
>
>Doug would have the exact cite, but Kevin Phillips said something like
>"Politics is all about knowing who hates who."
Who hates who for what reasons and purposes, though? Both the US government and radical Islamists hated socialists passionately and cheered their downfall together. Today, some (though far from all) of them are America's enemies, but who knows what happens tomorrow? Who will be America's official enemies after AQ and Saddam Hussein? How will Americans react when political winds change? Where will their hating and cheering go?
Besides, a good number of us have reasons to fear that we, too, may be objects of hatred or collateral damages of it, because of where we come from, what we look like, what we believe, what we say, etc. If some of us don't feel like jumping onto a hating and cheering bandwagon, that may be because we don't feel safe.
Also, the sorts of punishments meted out to those who were said to belong to the Taliban or Al Qaeda (torture and execution by the Northern Alliance soldiers, indefinite detention with no legal rights in the penal colony in Guantanamo, etc.), I don't even wish on my personal enemies.
>There was a great reluctance among some anti-war activists to "condemn the
>911 attacks." Some local groups were very divided about the issue, strange
>as that may sound. Some just didn't do it, rejecting it as pandering or
>boilerplate, or objecting on ideological grounds. But the many other groups
>who shared the majority's hatred of the terrorists - and anger at the attack
>- (and said so) sounded a lot less marginal at that moment.
Not my experience. You might name the local groups in question. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>