'Wish I'd said that' just doesn't cover it.

Brilliance over at Joel's place, where he relates a message from a friend.  It's not enough just to say "I wish I'd said that".  I've been trying to figure out how to articulate the thought behind this for a good while now, but have never managed it.

Here's how you say it:

For every American killed in the 9/11 attacks, over 1,000 Muslims have been maimed, driven from their homes, and/or driven from their land, their jobs, and their families. The infrastructure of a modern secular society was systematically destroyed, creating a vacuum that was all too easily filled by people skilled in exploiting and harnessing the powers of hatred and righteous anger.

The notion that a crude put-up job like the video could cause violence while decades of murder, rape, and mayhem would not is beyond stupid, beyond pathetic. It is evil. It reflects acceptance of “them” as sub-human, incapable of responding as any and every one of us would respond in similar circumstances. It is the mindset of a slave owner.

When democracies succeed in de-humanizing their enemies, ghastly atrocities always follow. Every time. I will not countenance this evil mindset any longer, and I am rapidly approaching the stage where I will refuse to associate with anyone who indulges in this animalistic barbarism.

This is important.  I lived way too many years of my life without really understanding this, getting caught up in all the right carefully-solicited rage-fests.

I should have seen it sooner.  Had I not for years recognized the demonization of gunnies around the world, in every possible venue and using every possible tool of misdirection?  Or noted the frequency of false-flag operations of "hate groups" which would have vanished naturally long ago except for official infiltration to prop them up?  Had I not long wondered why I never seemed to run into the hateful, dangerous archetypes that were so carefully paraded in front of me on the news as though they were lurking around every corner in the country?  Had I not noted the total absurdity of criminalizing something on one end and subsidizing it on the other, like tobacco for just one example?  Had I not long noticed that the very business of prosecuting the War on (Some) Drugs seemed to serve as a better raison d'etre for that war than any of the marketed goals that it so spectacularly fails to achieve?

Michael Crichton famously called this the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, and I was victim to it for far too long.

The principle is the same no matter what.