evil vs. crazy

wish i could vote for goofy

i think rummy would be goofy. dick would be elmer fudd

not specifically referrin to this but

can't help but assume those willing to assign evil = crazy

sorry want to assume faith but

we HAVE to be above the monsters or

dick cheney is a misunderstood angel

rumsfeld is crazy
cheney is crazy + evil, right?

i'd say so, except . . . rummy seems a little evil, too? 100,000+ dead iraqis is nothing to sneeze at

rumsfeld is dumb, cheney is not dumb

this is really brains over brawn

what i wanna know is why did two guys who worked high up for dick "watergate" nixon get to become vice president and secretary of defense, respectively, let alone ever approach the levers of power again in the first place? that's seriously fucked up . . . without 9/11 and the destruction of the twin towers (and a wing or two of the pentagon), the iraq WMD war of lies/oil, and the worst financial crash in 80 years. high taxes on job creators and hyper-burdensome regulations on banks must suck and everything, but come on

thread not what i'd hoped from outside

this is the end of the innocence

Evil Taking Sides: Erik Prince or Viktor Bout?

there can be only two most evil

however, i can't wait to see the errol morris rumsfeld movie

anticipation of Fog of War II inspired the poll. what could that dickhead have to say for himself?

rumsfeld codes psycho to me; cheney's textbook lawful evil. voting rumsfeld.

So much for hoping this thread was gonna be about Interpol vs Patsy Cline. (better bassline vs better yodelling, hmmmm.)

Me, I find it a real cop-out when people start throwing the "crazy" word around. Usually what it means is "I do not understand this person's motivations" with a side order of "I refuse to understand or engage with this person's worldview" dressed up as a pathologisiation of their mental health. Most people who get described as "crazy" are not crazy at all; they are responding to all too human motivations: greed is a big one, fear is another one. It's easier to pretend that motivations like greed or fear don't exist, because having to account for them in others means acknowledging their presence in your own life? I dunno. "Crazy" is one of those weasel-words which makes me very cautious of anyone who throws it around, whether they are on the right or the left.

Evil is a more complex topic. I similarly think that describing people as "evil" is also a cop-out, another way of Othering and externalising failings which are all too human. There have been so many different philosophical conceptions of what causes "evil" or what the very concept of Evil is, and each one tends to tell us more about the age that produced it and its way of looking at the world (whether blaming "The Devil" or blaming neurochemistry) than it does about what "Evil" is. I tend to go with Mary Midgley on this one. (Strongly recommend her book "On Wickedness".) That humans have (evolved or developed) certain capacities in order to facilitate living as a social species. Every capacity which helps social interactions (compassion, altruism, impulse control, deference, respect for others' boundaries, respect for others' physical safety and bodies (which starts to include possessions)) has in its absence a capacity for harm (maliciousness, selfishness, greed, the desire for status in a hierarchy) which is commonly held to be wicked, evil, bad or otherwise a moral failing.

None of this has anything to do with the two American politicians under discussion, but the thread title did get me thinking.

People aren't evil or crazy, behavior might be but people aren't

I think people can have patterns of behaviour, especially situation-specific behaviour. I still wouldn't use "evil" or "crazy" to describe those patterns.

I also think that understanding what causes or drives a pattern of behaviour is a lot more helpful than labelling either the behaviour or the person as "evil" or "crazy".

I don't use either term - it was more the idea that people are x when is more likely that people are doing x this minute

Yeah, there is definitely a case for "describe the behaviour, not the person" (this is really helpful when dealing with prejudiced behaviour - "You are sexist" is easily countered by "How can I be sexist; I have a wife and two daughters!" while "this specific thing you did is sexist" is much more helpful for changing behaviour).

But my point is, it's much more helpful, when discussing behaviour to say "this is greedy, selfish, short-sighted behaviour" than it is to say "this is evil behaviour" or "this is crazy behaviour."

(Also, when you are saying someone is, e.g. "selfish", are you describing the person, or are you describing their long-term pattern of behaviour? Some behaviours are intensely context-dependent: e.g. if a person feels under attack, they will respond with hostility. First question is, "is this person hostile" or "is this person defensive" and the second question is "what are the situations that provoke the behaviour (and how can we/they avoid them)?". Other behaviours are indicative of propensities, like, how many countries does a politician have to sanction the invasion of, before you can describe them or their politics as "aggressive" rather than just saying "invading countries X, and Y, and Z were aggressive acts"? How many banks does a person have to rob before you can call them "A Bank Robber"?)

(I know that the problem with calling someone "A Bank Robber" is that it erases and diminishes all of the other things they might be. It also doesn't look at what drove them to rob banks - was it economic deprivation, or thrill-seeking, or something else? But at the same time, it's "describing a person" vs "describing a pattern of behaviour" and that's not even getting into whether it makes a difference to describe someone as "a bank robber" or "a person who robs banks" though in other areas, this does make a huge difference.)

You shag *one* sheep

I say we should let them fight a no-holds-barred match to the death to decide the winner. Then we should kill the winner.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8520/8492038786_a8f8886598_o.jpg

'nuff said

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