"Hey Vonnegut, f*ck you!"

/obscure?
//Think Vonnegut is wwrong. Suicide meant to harm others while expecting reward in the afterlife greater than your current existence provides is not just cowardice, it's lazy.

A flying saucer creature named Zog arrived on Earth to explain how wars could be prevented, and how cancer could be cured. Zog brought the information from Margo, a planet where the natives conversed by means of farts and tap-dancing. Zog landed at night in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a house on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap-dancing, warning people about the terrible danger they were in. The head of the house brained him with a golf club.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Keep ignoring the burning house people. It's much more fun trying to brain the farting and tapdancing author.

NutznGum

Taupe.

(-1)^(1/2)

1.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001

Null.

Hey, Ninja, good to see you up and about, buddy.

NutznGum: 2005-11-21 08:40:31 PM Pocket Ninja

Yes!

Damn.

Pocket Ninja

Did you notice how cydcharisse seemed to make a hasty exit?

Also, I'm assuming you've seen the movie Pocket Ninjas, right?

"But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs."

Sounds like he just got misquoted, or he misquoted Horace. If I'm not mistaken he said "It is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one's contry"

Pocket Ninja

No doubt that it might, in certain individuals. Not in you, though.

finsterbaby

You didn't have a point. You stated your pathetic worship of a man whose writings in science fiction overlap and well qualify him in his political writings.

I don't really expect you to understand the concept of "once you're dead, you ain't receiving shiat from your actions", nor do I expect you to be able to differentiate it from an opinion. It is a simple idea, but stupidity, nationalism and judeo-christian notions of immortality are pervasive in American society.

With that, I'm going. I encourage you farking idiots to kill yourselves in the name of a cause. It frees up space for the less insane amongst us.

Mr Vonnegut is always right.

I love you, Kurt.

They sacrifice their own life for what they believe is a good cause. I'd call them brave

Sadly misguided, definitely.

Brave, yes.

Oh, sorry, It's easier for you guys to just label everything as sick, wacko, evil, etc. Without putting any real thought into what they might be experience, what has lead them to blow themselves up, what must have been told to these people and what must have happened to them for them to actually commit these atrocious acts?

Don't try understanding or empathy or anything. That might actually lead to a SOLUTION to this little problem of islamic fundamentalist terrorism.

Remember, it wasn't long ago that most North Americans would be fine with killing thousands of commies with bombs just becuase their beliefs in economic systems were different!!

Funny that one uses the word brave on guys who are handcuffed to the steering wheel as they plough into a bunch of civilians in Iraq. Must be that arab mind set thingie I heard about.


/try again

I tend toward the Aristotelean definition of virtue. A virtue is not the opposite of a vice, but the mid-point between two vices. Aristotle uses bravery as an example: Bravery is not the opposite of cowardice, but the mid-point between cowardice and foolhardiness.

That being said, we like to throw labels around. It's so much easier to polarize situations, to black-and-white them to make ourselves feel better. The gray areas make people intensely uncomfortable.

Was is cowardly or heroic/brave to kill hundreds of thousands of people with atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The party line is usually that the Japanese would have fought to the last man and the the A-bombs spared thousands of Allied lives, but some historians have argued that Hiroshima-Nagasaki was utterly unnecessary, that Japan had already been decimated by conventional bombs and was on the verge of collapse and surrender. Whichever is true, it is certain that had the Allies lost the war, the American leaders would have been tried for crimes against humanity.

So who's right? Nobody. No, the suicide bombers are not, strictly speaking, brave. Courage involves "facing danger, while knowing the extent of the danger." Is a painless, instantaneous death dangerous? I don't think so.

But neither are they cowards. Rash and foolhardy, certainly, but not cowardly.

Vonnegut's comments are brave. It is brave to speak out, knowing (and I'm sure he did) that the establishment will lash out at you. He's one of the great minds of our time who is not known to mis-speak, and you can be sure that he has thought this out.

I don't agree with him. I don't think it is noble to die for a belief. I think it is noble to live in spite of repression, to keep your belief alive, and these suicide bombers could achieve a lot more if they centered their aggressive energy on more productive pursuits.

So could Bush and the American War Machine, for that matter.

/no more soapbox for me

Now that's journalism.

Ask some questions... Don't get the answers you expected? Write about how the interviewee seems disoriented and confused and is obviously not all there.

Has this "journalist" ever met Vonnegut before? This is almost as bad as Moore's attack on Heston.

mugen.:

With that, I'm going. I encourage you farking idiots to kill yourselves in the name of a cause. It frees up space for the less insane amongst us.

That actually sounds like something Vonnegut would say.

dear pocket ninja

my name is finsterbaby. this one time i got burned real bad by a guy named mugen. i think you did too. he really showed us! let's be friends and commiserate over the shame he brought to us before he ran away.

love, finsterbaby

2005-11-21 08:45:09 PM Pocket Ninja


NutznGum: Yes!

You win a scholarship to the George Walker Bush School for International Diplomacy.

YES!!!

I'm looking forward to the class where I learn how to make a quick exit from the press corp through a locked door.

That is a fascinating class and I also think you'll enjoy Pretzels 101.

Bravery of suicide bombers > bravery of George W. Bush

Lorelle

Shhhhh, people are busy embarrassing themselves. Just crack a beer and snicker.

The beauty of it is that Vonnegut's book sales will go down precisely 0% due to this... because the people up in arms about his statements lack the intelligence to read his books in the first place

Pray For Mojo: Is a painless, instantaneous death dangerous?

Yes, absolutely. They aren't guaranteed a painless, instantaneous death.

If I planned on having my TF for much longer, mugen. would be the first and only person present on the ignorelist. Consistantly the highest ratio of childish insults to actual content of any farker with which I am familiar.

2005-11-21 08:46:05 PM pontechango


NutznGum

Taupe.

(-1)^(1/2)

1.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001

Null.

You win second prize: Keeper of the Dr. Suess books at the Bush liabrary.

Stop picking on mugen, you're gonna get him tasered when he lashes out at the pump and munch cashier. What an unmitigated spaz.

Because morality restricts your actions. Morality sets a set of self-imposed guidelines on what you can and can not do. What constitutes 'morality' is up to the philosophy majors to discuss I realize, but it certainly makes some goals less accessible.

I think it comes from the strength of knowing your cause is just and that you choose to live by example as well as by words.

An example. It is braver to earn your money than it is to steal it. It is braver to face the consequences of your actions than it is to deny involvement in them.

King Jr. could have started fire bombing ever white family he saw. He and every black man of his time certainly had reason to be angry at our country and society. Instead, he chose to fight his battles with peacefully. He fought with morality. He did not stoop to the levels of his enemies. The knowledge that he was right provided him strength and courage when he needed it. He also didn't alienate would-be sympathizers that way. That is one bit of tact Muslims don't really seem to understand, though that is irrelevant to the morality argument.

He suffered great pains and humiliations during his trials. To give up would have been easy. Suicide bombers have too much of a defeatist attitude to constitute true courage. A man who feels he has nothing to lose isn't brave when he risks his life. He's playing the odds.

You can call suicide attackers evil, misguided, twisted, or psychotic, or just plain rotten bastards, and you get no arguement from me, but if you deliberately pilot an airliner into a skyscraper for something you believe in, I'm sorry, that's brave.

(one hell of a lot braver than I hope I ever have to find out if I am)

vonnegut rules. rarely... and i mean rarely, is he wrong in his assessment of human behavior.

I work for Kurt Vonnegut....

I work for suicide bombers....

pontechango

Actually, Indians invented our modern (zero to nine) numbering system. Arabs merely adopted it, just like we also ended up doing.

NutznGum: You win second prize: Keeper of the Dr. Suess books at the Bush liabrary.

This thread is growing faster than the rash on my... but I digress.

Pocket Ninja

oldebayer: Did I leave anything out?

Sure you did. American snipers who hid in trees and shot legally uniformed British red coats during the Revolutionary War were heroes and patriots. Muslim snipers who hide in mosques and do the same are thugs and terrorists.

I think I covered that with "our side is brave, their side is cowardly."


Felgraf

but I'd be willing to bet that the revolutionaries in the US during the war didn't just leave the royalist supporters alone....

You would win that bet, big time. Loyalists were mobbed, driven from their homes, exiled and generally not left alone. I even got references.


LandoGriffin

Vonnegut is America's Greatest Living Author.

You only say that because my stuff hasn't been published.


/Flame on. Got more stuff to pack.

SusanIvanova

* Yes, suicide bombers are probably quite brave, in the main.
* That in itself doesn't make their tactics acceptable, although the fact that they have limited options might.
* Even if their tactics are defensible, that doesn't mean their goals are. And, in the case of the Iraqi bombers, they are not.
* Which, in turn, does not mean that the war was justified on America's part. It wasn't.
* Which, in turn, does not mean that war is never justified or that America is evil.


What kind of a Terrorist-supporting COMMUNIST traitor are you anyway? The issues must be clumped into either GOOD or BAD, YES or NO, RED or BLUE, for the American people to grasp! They don't need to deal with the confusion of a multi-faceted issue! Only an AMERICAN HATING hippie would try to analyze an issue past "The enemy is bad and we are good" So shape up, get your head out of your ass, and stop thinking so much. Remember, you're either with us or against us!!!!

"It is sweet and noble - sweet and honourable I guess it is - to die for what you believe in."

Bingo. He misquoted Horace. Sweet and seemly, Kurt. Which is a better word.

1. Conforming to standards of conduct and good taste; suitable: seemly behavior.
2. Of pleasing appearance; handsome.

He merely meant dying for your contry (or what you believe in) is very attractive and pleasant. Well, not the dying part.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/arts/articulate/200511/s1511209.htm

I can't believe i'm the only one who caught that.

knuckleball: The beauty of it is that Vonnegut's book sales will go down precisely 0% due to this... because the people up in arms about his statements lack the intelligence to read his books in the first place


I was thinking along the same lines. The people outraged by this are too busy having sex with barnyard animals and Jeff Gannon to read.

Pontechango

Where did you get that picture?!?!?!

Oh for fark's sake people. Quit wringing your middle class hands over these people who accessorize with explosives. They still tell stories here in Georgia about the time Sherman came through. The firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo stand as rather recent reminders that when the chips are down; the civilian population of the enemy becomes fair game - even for the Beacon of Democracy. War is ugly at any level, a child killed by a B-52 or a U-Boat is mourned just as much as one blown up in a bus bombing.

No act of aggression can be held as morally superior to any other, self defense aside. If we want them to stop the suicide and car bombings, let's sell them a Carrier Battle Group on the cheap.

Talking about conflict in real, open and honest terms is the first step towards ending it. That it is not going to happen as long as we insist on transacting our political dialogue through bumper stickers.

If the Taliban hates us for our Freedom, why did they have such a hard-on for the Soviet?

The argument against terrorism and guerilla warfare comes down to this:
(1) Either you agree to follow the rules of war in a conflict (spelled out in the Geneva Conventions) including not explicitly targeting civilians and wearing uniforms to clearly identify yourself as a combatant or you don't.
(2) Arab countries and communities that are supporting these terrorists (principally the Saudis) clearly do not choose to follow those rules.
(3) Therefore, the other side is not obligated to follow those rules either.

It isn't clear to me how that could be justified but the most common responses are (a) that is the only way they can fight if they hope to win and/or (b) what would you do if someone attacked your (or presumably just anyone you have a vague affinity for given that many of these terrorists are from various countries)

Fine...
Let's see how these countries feel when the U.S. military decides to blatantly disregard all rules of war and simply seeks to kill as many civilians as they possibly can to send a message and/or eliminate the enemy as a side-effect.

Read what Vonnegut said and not a f*cking thing more.

By some logic on here, I can conclude that none of the American soldiers are brave.

Bravery is a selfless act.
From TFT: "Bravery usually implies a selfless act of sacrifice. Being promissed a bunch of virgins and eternal paradise with a free ride for your family as a kicker is hardly selfless. Not to mention that a fair portion of these don't end up with a choice in the matter in the end."


I understand that the American soldiers are being PAID?? well, I never, where do they get off calling themselves brave. Especially the christian ones who believe that After being shot, they'll go to a much better place... heaven!! Where's the bravery there? By going into battle, they're just basically going to heaven.



Brave my foot.

having said that, from TFA: "Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in,"

I don't know any soldier that would disagree

..." and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs."

interesting there are no quotes to back this part up.

also FTFA: "They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing.... You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation - it must be an amazing high."


Sounds to me like it was just a guy trying to put himself in the shoes of a terrorist, trying to gain an understanding. BEING A WWII VETERAN I'M SURE HE HAS A MUCH MORE PROFOUND UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONCEPT OF BRAVERY IN THE FACE OF DEATH THAN MOST OF YOU BLOWHOLES. His words were Taken out of context to label him a pro-terrorist.