I meant to post something last week when Anil first cited my comment on MetaFilter regarding the web site Little Green Footballs. A week later, the discussion has spread to other places. I replied briefly to the wetlog posting, but didn’t trust that comments section with everything I had to say:

Choosing only the most hate-filled postings written by visitors to a site is of course also a definite form of bias. I could easily make a case about illiteracy on MetaFilter, genius on Fark or social graces on Slashdot–if you let me choose the postings.

The American political ideological landscape is a wreck, and the labels ‘right-wing’ and ‘left-wing’ are relics. Many of us arrived at similar conclusions to Charles (LGF) by doing exactly what our ‘liberal’ beliefs have always done, we sought out media and voices from the Arab world to try and understand why we in the west are apparently so hated. What we found was beyond disturbing. Lies, conspiracies, the Blood Libel, hatred of the US, Jews, and the West, all reported by state-run media. Entirely too often, Arab papers publish articles paralleling neo-nazi mainstays. The news in Arab papers often seems to be reporting on a completely different reality than what was being seen and reported by western media.

Of everything he wrote, I’m most troubled by wetlog’s comparison of LGF to ClearGuidance, and I wonder if he had read anything on that site beyond what was pulled out and cited. Though both actions may be repugnant, there is a significant moral distinction between encouraging inevitable (and ongoing) military action and discussing techniques for beheading your neighbors.

I would love to go back to living like nothing ever happened, but my 3000 dead neighbors and the huge fucking crater in the sky downtown keep reminding me that someone is at war with us. At some point I woke up and admitted that, as a result of studying many cultures and visiting a whole lot of places around the world, America, with it’s faults, is a pretty damn close to the best people have done so far. Arab dictatorships and theocracies are close to the bottom. This does not make me a racist. It’s more than possible to be a moderate and come to a strong conclusion about an issue, in fact it’s preferable.

For years I’ve been looking forward to the day the Arab world wakes up to tourism. Arab and islamic culture have contributed a huge amount to the history and knowledge of mankind, and I really wish we could visit and appreciate those places, people and things without worrying about getting killed because of some conspiracy-theory fed hatred against anything seen as American.

Besides living a little over a mile from the World Trade Center, it’s hard for me to get away from these issues. On a recent afternoon, I waved hello to the Brooklyn-accented, Palestinian owner of the restaurant across the street where I had dinner the night before, turned the corner and bought a black and white cookie from the Jewish bagel place with two pictures on the wall behind the register, one of Ariel Sharon with the shop’s owner on First Avenue and the other a clipping of a young Isreali family recently murdered by terrorists. I live in the middle of this and it serves as a constant reminder of why I love New York City, the complexity of political conflict and human emotions, and ultimately why this country and our diversity are worth fighting for and protecting.

I’d like to go back to living in the future.

Abstractly, this is becoming a fascinating meta-discussion between a great number of sites. It’s like rebuilding a conversation from echos.

“Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
– Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801