re: #470 wlewisiii

There are lots of cultures that celebrate murder.

One was Chile under Pinochet.

Another was Argentina. “Dirty War” I think was their excuse.

Neither of them, or dozens of others, were any better than the ones in your link.

Or was it OK for them because they were killing people you don’t like?

None of those cultures were killing people I don’t like—but I think it holds true that a nation can have a political culture that celebrate death and violence.

I’m torn on this issue. There is a real cult of martyrdom in much of the Palestinian community, and a concerted effort in much of the Arab world to raise children to see Jews as evil. Is it unique to the Arab world? Hell no. We’ve seen similar things in many places.

Mordechai Kedar wrote an article where he talks about how Arabs are desensitized to violence because they see animals killed for food. Well, bullshit. My grandpa grew up on a farm in Kansas, and saw cows and chickens and pigs slaughtered from an early age. Helped, once he was big enough. He was not a violent man, and he didn’t glorify violence. Rural people everywhere, Jews too, see and saw animals killed for food. When you focus on some crap like that, you’re just reaching for something, anything, to make the ‘other’ scarier.

But a culture of violence, a culture of evil, can exist, and it has, in a lot of times, and a lot of places.