- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Why bother making oneself look good?

Posted by: Samuel Day Fassbinder ( Citizens for Mustard Greens, USA ) on December 11, 1999 at 21:29:14:

In Reply to: Why bother? posted by MDG on December 06, 1999 at 11:02:03:

: So what you're saying is, there's never any good reason to lift a hand to help others. Might as well stay in bed.

SDF: Look, before Kosovo reached the media's attention, the CIA was handing out weapons to all sides and the IMF was doling out loans to the region's dictators. You call that "help"?

As I explained above, "defending the weak from the strong" is just a propaganda slogan. I am no longer a "liberal" because, somewhere along the line, I noticed that "liberals" buy into such slogans without inspecting their real-life purposes with any degree of seriousness. After all, professing benevolence is an activity of those who try to look good. DOING GOOD, on the other hand...

: : Same thing with the war against Serbia. The US embarked on a COMPLETELY GRATUITOUS war -- bombing Kosovo DIDN'T defend anyone, the eventual settlement was something completely different from Rambouillet, which was a surrender demand. Clinton and buddies could have really defended Kosovo WITHOUT the bombing, had they agreed to NEGOTIATE instead of placing Rambouillet as an ultimatu

: Yes, yes, yes - how many times must I repeat that diplomacy was miserable, if not sabotaged? However, once the Serbs began their campaign of terror against the Kosovars, all your academic handwringing became the luxury of an intellectual leftist safe in his house,

SDF: The bombing DIDN'T SAVE ANYONE. And my "academic handwringing" may save someone from the next attempt to "defend the weak from the strong," next time "liberals" are recruited to defend an unjust bombing attack.

: pounding out anti-capitalist diatribes while men and women fled for their lives halfway around the world.

SDF: Mostly BECAUSE OF US political action.

: Your critiques of global capitalism and the New World Order may have much merit, but they don't stop rape and murder on the ground.

SDF: And neither did YOUR self-righteous politics. Or, to use an MDG tactic: did YOU go to Kosovo YOURSELF to stop the killing?



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