James-Speaks
Monday, July 24, 2006
Regarding Dershowitz and Grades of Human Beings
out at www.juancole.com
"But I don't know why Dershowitz stops there. Let me reformulate his argument for him. Shouldn't we recognize degrees of humanness?"
From here this outstanding essay waltzes merrily through satire and critique. If only George W. Bush, the President of the United State of America, could understand it.
I said it was satire, but that may not be accurate, because although it has the appearance of satire, it does something satire does not. It states the obvious.
The purpose of satire is to advance a concept past the censor which we all carry around with us. The censor prevents us from recognizing certain ideas that conflict with our self-imposed belief systems. An example might be Steve Bell's (UK Guardian) wonderful cartoons depicting GWB as a chimp. At first we all thought it was ridicule through exaggeration; now we know, tragically, that GWB is basically what Bell has been telling us all along, an ape mimicing the movements of a human.
Back to Cole: This essay tells us that to right-wing Israelis and their defenders, Arabic speaking, olive skinned people are not human but rather animals. A few years ago we might have considered these to be exaggerations. Now we have come to recognize that their attitudes, as evidenced through the incipient genocide of this war, is closer to what Cole represents. They may not be aware of the extent of their moral decline. We can help with that.
This essay is not exaggeration and it is not satire. It is a dead-on accusation.
out at www.juancole.com
"But I don't know why Dershowitz stops there. Let me reformulate his argument for him. Shouldn't we recognize degrees of humanness?"
From here this outstanding essay waltzes merrily through satire and critique. If only George W. Bush, the President of the United State of America, could understand it.
I said it was satire, but that may not be accurate, because although it has the appearance of satire, it does something satire does not. It states the obvious.
The purpose of satire is to advance a concept past the censor which we all carry around with us. The censor prevents us from recognizing certain ideas that conflict with our self-imposed belief systems. An example might be Steve Bell's (UK Guardian) wonderful cartoons depicting GWB as a chimp. At first we all thought it was ridicule through exaggeration; now we know, tragically, that GWB is basically what Bell has been telling us all along, an ape mimicing the movements of a human.
Back to Cole: This essay tells us that to right-wing Israelis and their defenders, Arabic speaking, olive skinned people are not human but rather animals. A few years ago we might have considered these to be exaggerations. Now we have come to recognize that their attitudes, as evidenced through the incipient genocide of this war, is closer to what Cole represents. They may not be aware of the extent of their moral decline. We can help with that.
This essay is not exaggeration and it is not satire. It is a dead-on accusation.
posted by James-Speaks # 11:44 AM 
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