>Kelley writes:
> >I'm referring to the fact that the US will turn the spigots full bore on
> >1. the air war and 2. propaganda that whips up fury against the people of
> >Iraq.
> >
> >To me, that leaves us very fucked. As people have said repeatedly, this
> >isn't Viet Nam.
> >
> >>They do have a problem, which is that is that it's contradictory to say
> >>stupid racist shit while you're simultanously claiming to be fighting
> >>in the interests of the 'Iraqi people.'
> >
>
>Well, I'm not going to argue that we're NOT fucked. At least in the short
>run, I can't make a very good case for that. But, I'll work on it. : )
>
>Alls I'm saying is they backed off of all the other bogus reasons to invade
>(because they were shot so full of holes by the UN, the peaceniks, the
>Russians, the bloggers). So now they're really making 'democracy' the
>centerpiece of their justification, we should cram it back down their throats
>early and often.
>
> >this is pretty much how racism works and has been working for a longass
> >time. Attempts at exposing the contradiction haven't worked yet.
>
>Is this mostly how racism works--that they're discriminating against/locking
>up/excluding/killing people for their own good?
i'm talking about the more subtle (hmmm. arguable!) racism found in debates over chinese footbinding and cliterodectomy. orientalism. post colonial studies. stuff like that.
>It manages to survive such
>arguments, which is stunning. The primary thing that works is the objects of
>racism saying 'Uh-uh, no more,' which is proof that the establishment line
>about "helping" was a lie. One thing we have made some progress on in this
>country is racism. Yeah, racism has worked for a longass time, but it's
>nothing like it was, so we'll just keep kicking at it, right?
your last sentence reads as if it's making some nasty assumptions about my thoughts here or maybe it's a typo. if it's the first case, what can i say. i don't see where you need to make such an assumption.
kelley