RE: Perception, Reality and Truth

You see it here on OmniNerd when a liberal is immediately dismissed as unpatriotic and stupid.

Yeah, when it's really the conservatives who are unpatriotic and stupid.

Just kidding. Well, only half so. I do find many conservative ideas to be irredeemably un-American. Especially when it's religious conservativism, not political conservativism.

What I do remember is that he seemed very sleazy ... the type of person that should not have been a cadet nor a future officer (assuming USMA didn't change him into a better person).

I think that's an interesting example. But I do think that, in that particular venue, it's not unreasonable to use standards that are somewhat different than the civilian legal standards. If his fellow cadets judge that he "should not have been a cadet nor a future officer", and they further judge that he's not the sort that will be changed into a better person by the Academy, then maybe he really doesn't belong there. That seems a reasonable place to evaluate and dismiss some undesirables. Military courts are just different than civilian ones.

But I do think there are a lot of civilian courts - and this Reiser case may have been one - where that kind of decision-making occurs, and it's clearly inappropriate there.

When it happens at such base, simple levels, ridiculous judgment is inevitable when the stakes are higher.

And that's the core of the problem. I really don't care if you end up with a crappy car because you feel you have to "buy American". But I docare if we all end up with a crappy president because you chose the guy it seemed like you could have a beer with (a common response to why Bush over Gore eight years ago - um... he's a oil millionare, idiot, you've got nothing in common).

I feel just a teeny bit sorry for an adult who's too stupid to go to a doctor to get an easily curable disease treated, but I'm beyond appalled when a family lets their eleven year old daughter die because they're convinced Jeebus will fix her.

The kind of mentality we're talking about here is distressingly common, and if I might indulge in a little equine necroflagellation, it's depressingly well correlated with religious belief. If you can't see through that shit, you're going to be in trouble when it comes to the real world.

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