Damn, damn, damn...where's the remote?

Tolerance is an end in itself. The elimination of violence, and the reduction of suppression to the extent required for protecting man and animals from cruelty and aggression are preconditions for the creation of a humane society. Such a society does not yet exist; progress toward it is perhaps more than before arrested by violence and suppression on a global scale. As deterrents against nuclear war, as police action against subversion, as technical aid in the fight against imperialism and communism, as methods of pacification in neo-colonial massacres, violence and suppression are promulgated, practiced, and defended by democratic and authoritarian governments alike, and the people subjected to these governments are educated to sustain such practices as necessary for the preservation of the status quo. Tolerance is extended to policies, conditions, and modes of behavior which should not be tolerated because they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery. This sort of tolerance strengthens the tyranny of the majority against which authentic liberals protested. The political locus of tolerance has changed: while it is more or less quietly and constitutionally withdrawn from the opposition, it is made compulsory behavior with respect to established policies. Tolerance is turned from an active into a passive state, from practice to non-practice: laissez-faire the constituted authorities. It is the people who tolerate the government, which in turn tolerates opposition within the framework determined by the constituted authorities.    Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now appears as good because it serves the cohesion of the whole on the road to affluence or more affluence.
                                                        Herbert Marcuse, Repressive Tolerance

A few weeks ago, I walked into my office and started working. Guy walks in and tells me I need to resign or they'll fire me. I then got to spend the next several hours telling people who worked with me that I'd resigned, I'd be fine and it wasn't their fault, and they'd be ok. I miss the folks, of course; but I don't miss GINORMOUS. At some point, sometime, I'll be working again doing something somewhere else. And, to quote Bokonon, so it goes

So, I have been busy. But, the Fort Hood thing and a few other things require comment. The voices in my head are getting louder, and I probably need to let them out.

First of all, the idea that the loonie in the hospital at Fort Hood was a terrorist is intriguing, and helps the demonization that will prevent reasonable discussion of the issues surrounding post traumatic stress and the issues of ethics, diversity and safety. Next, so much for the vaunted government email intrusion; appears they knew everything this guy was doing and corresponding with and so on. FBI and the Army concluded he was harmless; they got it wrong. Or, they were more interested in trying to trap Charlie Rangel in a bad deal with real estate developers in Harlem, and punted. Joe Livermann of Connecticut and the Homeland Security Committee don't need to look at this in a public forum; the FBI/DOJ IG and the Army IG need to look at it, and figure out what the fuck they're using for criteria for taking action when they have a commissioned officer sending mash notes to radical assholes of any stripe, let alone militant Islamists in Yemen.

Actually, I think this is another form of repressive tolerance, Herbert Marcuse's concept of liberalism's ultimate moral bankruptcy, as well as why the Tea-baggers don't get their own idea of untrammeled liberty. Maybe a better simile is the Arsenic and Old Lace moment; this guy's praying five times a day and passing out Korans is as harmless as taking in borders and giving them a hot cup of tea, laced with arsenic and then burying them in the basement. It's odd behavior, but until your recognize the bodies for what they are, the coin doesn't drop.

Eccentricity is as American as fried squash and rhubarb pie, and is something we should tolerate. But, we generally do not tolerate eccentricity in the workplace. The Army is not only a workplace, but also a home, an extended family. If weird cousin Hasan want's to sit in living room and jack off by rubbing  a Randall Fighting knife up and down his wee-wee while watching DVDs of Love Boat, it has crossed the line from eccentricity into "gee, maybe we ought to do something." There are indications that they didn't really want this guy treating soldiers...so, send him to Afghanistan? Exactly what purpose would that serve? Another loser to pass out basketballs? Be in charge of paperclips?

So, a tragedy of errors.  ready to be exploited by the world of the loonies on both sides. And, a crazy guy is going to go to court martial and be locked in a padded cell for a long time. And families will temporarily have a lot of money from the GI life insurance policies; and everyone will forget. Except those who were there, and the families, and the friends, and the obsessives and the historians. And me, and hopefully a few others.

And the whole thing is futile. The men and women who were killed were there as part of an effort to ensure that people have the right to think, and write, and feel the way they do. And most of the time, that's fine, everything works great. And sometimes, it doesn't work for shit. This is one of those cases. And so it goes...and so it goes...no damn cat and no damn cradle.

 

Comments

[Mr.Fun]

"Eccentricity is as American as fried squash and rhubarb pie, and is something we should tolerate. But, we generally do not tolerate eccentricity in the workplace. The Army is not only a workplace, but also a home, an extended family. If weird cousin Hasan want's to sit in living room and jack off by rubbing a Randall Fighting knife up and down his wee-wee while watching DVDs of Love Boat, it has crossed the line from eccentricity into "gee, maybe we ought to do something."

oh dear, I nearly peed. too funny.

[zencomix]

We'll never really know what coulda been if somebody had taken the knife away and shut off Weird Cousin's Love Boat, but you can bet an "investigation" will be done, somebody will serve as the sacrificial goat, get busted down a notch with a wink and a nudge, and end up with a plum job as part of General Willie Boykin's security detail after the appropriate mourning period has passed.