{"id":4048,"date":"2003-02-23T15:06:21","date_gmt":"2003-02-23T20:06:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=4048"},"modified":"2003-02-23T15:06:21","modified_gmt":"2003-02-23T20:06:21","slug":"division_error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/02\/23\/division_error.html","title":{"rendered":"Division error"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s an interesting, even, dare I say it, insightful article by Robert Fisk about the polarization of thought<\/a> in the US over the impending war with Iraq.<\/p>\n

It was a telling moment, a symbol of the vast gulf of reason between the pro- and anti-war movement in America. They don’t talk to each other. And if they do, neither comprehends the other. Like the endless chat programmes on Pacifica Radio and all the smaller liberal talk shows from Boston to LA that serve up inedible dollops of anti-Bush, anti-Republican rant, there is simply no contact between the intellectual “elite” of the left and the less privileged Americans who work with their hands and join the military to gain a free education and end up fighting America’s foreign wars.<\/p>\n

Fisk does a lot of good writing here about how the anti-war intelligencia simply don’t understand the common rabble out there that are behind George Bush — and, in fact, patronizingly prefer to leave them out of the whole debate.<\/p>\n

The people with whom these liberal academics should be building bridges are the truck-drivers and bell-hops and Amtrak crews, the poor blacks and the cops whose families provide the cannon fodder for America’s overseas military adventures. But that, of course, would force intellectuals to emerge from the sheltered, tenured world of seminars and sit-ins and deal directly with those whose opinions they wish to change.
\nWhen I made this very point at Harvard and several other universities, I was told, rather patronisingly, that these people \u2013 the phrase was almost identical \u2013 had “so little information” or are “not very informed”. This is, in fact, untrue. I have heard as much sense about the Middle East from a train crew en route from Washington to Georgia and from a waiter in a St Louis diner as I have from the good folks of North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, he proceeds to lend unintentional irony to the whole article by painting actual pro-war folks as coarse, pugnacious, full of “hatred and venom” in their support of “George Bush’s war.” If only, he clearly thinks, those poor folks were reached out to, they would see the error of their hayseed ways and, even though just hard working stiffs, come to see how they are being duped by The Man into exchanging their blood and lives in return for GI Bill educations.<\/p>\n

Yeah, there’s plenty of patronizing going on, all right … <\/p>\n

(also via Andrea<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an interesting, even, dare I say it, insightful article by Robert Fisk about the polarization of thought in the US over the impending war with Iraq. It was a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3626,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/10\/15\/forget_me_not.html","url_meta":{"origin":4048,"position":0},"title":"Forget-me-not","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 15-Oct-02 8:12pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Ordinarily I'd ignore the generally anti-American rantings of Robert Fisk, but given that one of the sites I regularly read actually uses an article of his (from the Arab News,...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4091,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/02\/06\/shrug_2.html","url_meta":{"origin":4048,"position":1},"title":"Shrug","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 6-Feb-03 10:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I was really tempted to fisk Jill Nelson's MSNBC screed against war on Iraq. I mean, the thing begs for it, from painting Colin Powell as a governmental yes-man to...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3774,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/30\/harms_way.html","url_meta":{"origin":4048,"position":2},"title":"HARM’s way","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 30-Mar-03 9:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"According to some of the analysis done here on some information by (of all people) Robert Fisk, it may very well have been US munition that hit an Iraqi marketplace...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4201,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/01\/20\/also_from_the_b.html","url_meta":{"origin":4048,"position":3},"title":"Also from the “Birds of a Feather” page …","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 20-Jan-03 10:35am","format":false,"excerpt":"Saddam thanks anti-war demonstrators. I'll bet he does. To be fair, a lot of folks against war in Iraq are certainly not fans of the Baghdad regime. That they think...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26149,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/06\/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens.html","url_meta":{"origin":4048,"position":4},"title":"One town's war on gay teens","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 6-Feb-12 6:24pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The article is disgusting, disturbing, and simply awful. It's impossible for me to reconcile the hateful anti-gay religious activism -- and the resulting cravenly actions of the school board that have made made it complicit in the bullying and resultant suicides in their district -- with anything resembling what I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131669,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/28\/trump-and-iraq-two-and-a-half-lies.html","url_meta":{"origin":4048,"position":5},"title":"Trump and Iraq: Two and a Half Lies","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 28-Sep-16 10:56pm","format":false,"excerpt":"1. Trump denies he was pro-war before it started. The only real evidence refuting this is a Howard Stern article where Trump gives a half-hearted \"I guess so\" sort of answer as to whether we should invade Iraq. It's about as wishy-washy as anything I've ever heard from Trump's lips,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/57d1b75b170000ac34c788cd5B15D.pngimgmax%3D660.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/57d1b75b170000ac34c788cd5B15D.pngimgmax%3D660.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/57d1b75b170000ac34c788cd5B15D.pngimgmax%3D660.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}