Copacabana

I grant thee worthy of vendetta -- but not thee

So, I was riding the bus the other day with a friend from work who will read this and hate me but will eventually come to the understanding that you can love someone and not agree with them all the time. Or he'll never speak to me again.

We were talking about Georgw W. He was saying that he's a libertarian but that he hates George W. Why? I asked. "Because he lied about getting us into a war that turned out to be a vendetta because Saddam Hussein tried to kill his father (George H.W.)."

Okay, this argument is so tired but I feel the need to address it -- first, why is it that we glorify this vendetta mentality in movies -- I mean, Con Air, Walking Tall, most recently V for freakin' VENDETTA, among many, MANY others, are all about this mentality. And we celebrate this mentality as a culture. We cheer for the man who takes revenge after his family was targeted. Jack Ryan anyone?

Second, um, the World Trade Center bombings were all about revenge, right. We pulled out and left the Afghanis to fight the Russians. They hated us and sought revenge. And so many of our countrymen, while lambasting a Bush family vendetta, believe that a Bin Laden vendetta is a-okay. Why? No really, why? And don't say it's tied up with privledge and money cause Osama wasn't hurtin' man.

I made a couple of statements about my friend needing to dazzle me with an argument that wasn't so trite and he said that, in reality, Bush just "turns his stomache" when he looks at him. I'm almost more willing to get behind this as argument because at least it's a visceral reaction as opposed to one truly hollow and, at the same time, full of misinformation.

The only problem is, sometimes a visceral reaction to someone has little to do with the person you're veiwing and more to do with the attitude of the person doing the viewing. Ever hated someone on sight because of your own bias? I have. Hard pill to swallow that one. I guess it's easier to just project the blame outward.

I hate the whole vendetta mentality as a rule. I also understand the poetry of it. I do not, however, understand the poetry of hypocrisy.

posted by Lola @ 10:27 AM