Jane Fonda Syndrome
Billmon reviews his thinking on the conflicts surrounding the conflicts between Israel and both the Palestinians and the Lebanese in his article, God Wept.
Billmon gets it. The world isn’t a manicheaen construct. There is almost never an obviously right answer and there are too many “did you stop eating kittens” questions awaiting you.
There is an approach to the world I call the Jane Fonda Syndrome. That is when someone discovers that one of two entities involved in a conflict has lied. People with JFS automatically assume that the other entity is telling the truth. It doesn’t occur to a JFS sufferer that both may be lying, as is usually the case when the entities are nations.
Abraham Lincoln got it in his statement that both sides claim that G-d is on their side: “One must be, and both may be, wrong.”
Another case is when you discover that an entity has been generally truthful, but you know of at least one incident of lying. You can’t just put them in the box labeled “Truth Teller”, but do they deserve to be in the box labeled “Liar”?
There were some cold hard facts in the old days. Once upon a time no one was slightly dead. Today we have had to resort to “clinically dead”, because there isn’t even a definite line between life and death anymore.
There is still one hard fact in this world: Dick Cheney is evil. Anyone who can shoot a lawyer in the face and not only, not get sued, but receive an apology from the lawyer, has to be evil.
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I am reminded of George Mitchell’s famous statement (quoted from memory; please forgive minor errors): “Although He is regularly asked to do so, God does not take sides in American politics.” Could somebody please inform Dubya and the zealots among his supporters?
You’ll get no disagreement from me about Dick Cheney. To quote a line from Eric Idle’s FCC song, directed at Cheney, “Your pacemaker must be a fake; you haven’t got a heart.”
The slimy cretin keeps talking about how great things are going, and no one bothers to point out what a disaster the world is in. I would think that the evil just pours off when you are next to him.
I thought he was Satan?
In Christian theology Satan is a fallen angel. I don’t believe that Dick ever rose that high, but rather started at the bottom and has been going down ever since.