I Love December, America Too

As we are nearing the end of the year, that means it's Time for Xmastime to Pat Himself on the Back Time.  Which means that in reading this post linked by Sully,

[Obama] showed that he understands just what Truman meant. Because he understands, in a way Cheney and Palin never will, that true moral universalism requires recognizing that Americans are just as capable of evil as anyone else. And that means recognizing that we are in just as much need of restraint. For Obama and Truman, the paradox of American exceptionalism is that only by recognizing that we are not inherently better than anyone else, and thus must bind our power within a framework of law, can we distinguish ourselves from the predatory powers of the past.

 to which I can't help but shrug my shoulders and simply say well, all this means is Obama is listening to Xmastime

A coupla months I wrote HERE:

I found UG's post HERE interesting because of BayonneMike's comment; a comment I have either read or heard both on tv, in print and from many friends. My own thinking is we won't really understand how the rest of the world works until we shed this notion that we are automatically the GOOD GUYS and anyone else that doesn't think so is automatically the BAD GUYS. That's a simple enough point that I would assume was not debuted just now. But a further point I myself have never seen or heard anywhere else is how important it is for us to recognize that the "bad guys" don't see themselves as the bad guys, like some old Spy vs. Spy "oh, you got me, good guy!" comic strip. They think they ARE the good guys, which we as a country seem to always miss. They're not thinking "the USA is so great, we should play the parts of evil just to be evil and antagonize them as much as possible."

Now, either side thinking they're the good guy doesn't make it so. But until we really start asking ourselves what different peoples from different parts of the world really want and why, we'll always be stuck in our childish "We're Luke Skywalker and they're Darth Vader" nonsense which doesn't seem to really be accomplishing much of anything.

One phrase I saw Krauthammer use twice in this article is ""You do what you have to do." Which to me is a BRILLIANT thing for the USA to advertise; you know who else has the same "You do what you have to do" credo? People that fly planes into buildings. People that blow up pizza places. Now, from Krauthammer's dramatics we are led to believe that when we "do what we have to do" it's the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs. What does that tell you about the people who would fly planes into buildings? Slice heads off on YouTube? These are kids who are on their first day as "bad guys"?

Maybe instead of operating from a gung-ho jingoistic nonsensical point of view we can really ask ourselves what DO these people want? Maybe instead of being obstinate dumbfucks because there's someone from a country that isn't waving the American flag, we can start out in the first inning, with no outs and nobody on instead of waiting until it's Game 7 of the World Series, and then we get pissed off cause some Muslims we've blown off blow up a Cub Scout troop. Yeah they're crazy, but guess what - they think YOU'RE crazy! Who's right? Nobody. Now do we wanna have an adult conversation with people, or wait until they've decided to send some planes into more buildings? Or, as they might say, "You do what you have to do."

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