One man, two shoes, and a very very small measure of justice

My first reaction to the shoe thrower was: "I get his anger, but that's really not too cool". I also worried about the secret service not getting the jump on a violently angry man not 4 yards from the president of the United States.

In the last two days, I have done a 180 on all these thoughts.

1- The Secret Service can only stop shoe throwers if they keep all human beings away from the president. If the guy had anything more dangerous on him, he doubtlessly would have never got past security. His attack was not life threatening or even injury threatening. The NRA tells us that a well armed society is a polite society. I guess now I'd make the same argument about a well-heeled society.

2- It really was a cool thing to do. Again, Mr Bush was in no real danger of anything more than a scratch on his noggin. Compared to the violence visited upon the innocent people of Iraq, compared to the dead and the displaced and the kids with their arms and legs blown off and the women scared to leave their homes and the families torn apart and the communities irreparably divided along sectarian lines by death squads and kidnap squads and the weight of destruction and humiliation brought down on that nation, trying to bean the architect of that chaos with a pair of docksiders is a fitting (and culturally significant) symbol of the scorn of the world.

but my most important reversal of all is...

3- Actually, no, I do not "get" his anger. I live a good life. I drive to work without fear. I pay my bills without fear. I go shopping without worrying about a bomb blowing up the marketplace. If I lose my job, I can be sure I'll soon enough find another job. I spent two weeks without electricity because of a hurricane, but I never doubted I'd get it back; I never worried that terrorists would blow up the generator after that. I send my kid to college halfway across the continent and can worry only that she'll miss her flight back next week. I have not been kidnapped, as Muntadhar al-Zeidi was. I have not been beaten. My sister hasn't been raped; my father has not been murdered; my cousins have not been seduced into joining a ethnic cleansing militia; my mother's door hasn't been kicked down in the middle of the night by foreign troops. I have not seen hell unleashed on my community because some ideological thinktank in another hemisphere thinks it has an intriguing theory for global domination.

So I cannot in any sense get Muntadhar al-Zeidi and what made this man in the truth business flip out on President Bush. More importantly, I cannot judge him. I do not have that right. He has every right to judge us, however. When you look at what has happened in our name, I can only stand amazed that, having judged us, he sentenced us to so light a punishment.

I wish every American would read this:

3- Actually, no, I do not "get" his anger. I live a good life. I drive to work without fear. I pay my bills without fear. I go shopping without worrying about a bomb blowing up the marketplace. If I lose my job, I can be sure I'll soon enough find another job. I spent two weeks without electricity because of a hurricane, but I never doubted I'd get it back; I never worried that terrorists would blow up the generator after that. I send my kid to college halfway across the continent and can worry only that she'll miss her flight back next week. I have not been kidnapped, as Muntadhar al-Zeidi was. I have not been beaten. My sister hasn't been raped; my father has not been murdered; my cousins have not been seduced into joining a ethnic cleansing militia; my mother's door hasn't been kicked down in the middle of the night by foreign troops. I have not seen hell unleashed on my community because some ideological thinktank in another hemisphere thinks it has an intriguing theory for global domination.

In fact, open minds (i.e. ones that can change) are deeply impressive to me, generally speaking. Most minds are not open to change.

Great post.

:dem:

-Laelth

Great post.
:kick: & R

He let Bush look into his sole.

Ha! (that's a pun)

all he has done and the thrower, he won't be so lucky.

How wrong is that?

and his various bike accidents. The only injury to Bush in this incident was to his pride.

Bush's trip to Iraq at this time was a provocation.

In fact, this is a very dangerous time. Bush and Cheney are doing everything imaginable to provoke angry reactions. The bail-out, the refusal to loan money to the auto industry and offering to place them (and all the senior citizens relying on the auto industry for their survival) into bankruptcy instead and then all the blatantly and unnaturally callous statements about Iraq . . . . on the heels of a presidency that was just one disaster from beginning to end. I can't believe the sheer gall of those guys.

Fortunately, Bush and Cheney are not in Greece. We Americans believe in and trust our system. And we are patient with the way it functions.

The real victim of Bush and Cheney's acts of provocation is likely to be Obama. You know how you have a bad day at work, maybe a couple of bad days at work and you try to be patient and you don't say anything, and then you come home and you find that your beloved spaniel made a mess on the carpet and, on top of that, the kids are screaming because you forgot to buy chocolate milk at the store on your way home from work? And then, finally, you lose your patience and you let go?

Obama is not going to get much leeway here. There is so much pent-up disgust and anger, and Bush and Cheney are really revving it up. Bush and Cheney should both shut up and go home and write their stupid memoirs. I assure you. No one is going to buy their words -- except to flush them down the toilet.

He's got a plate full. It's always easier to burn down a barn than to build one back up.

But I'll still put my money on things working out better in the long run than they would under any Republican.

their memoirs from a dingy prison cell, not from 'home'. After the House impeaches them America will turn them over to the war crimes tribunal at The Hague
and God have mercy on their souls...

I wish they had knocked every tooth out of that "What me worry grin"; The same as I would for Pol Pot, Hitler or any other "leader" who was responsible for over a million horrible deaths and many more millions of horribly ruined lives. I consider this shoe thrower a Heroe extraordinaire and the world needs to aggressively stand up for him.

But yes, he's a hero throughout the Arab world--just another measure of the weight of the work Obama has facing him.