(It's the stepchild of the cousin of the incredible disappearing post from last night, back from the dead. Thanks go to the usual suspects.)

I wasn't going to say anything about the dustup at Daily Kos because I felt it had been covered better and more thoroughly elsewhere.

But something flashed into my head just now that won't go away. Now you know I can stretch analogies to the breaking point and this isn't any different, so bear with me a minute while I try to lay it out.

As revenge for this incident, I made my boyfriend rent Nighthawks the other night. This is an almost-forgotten 1981 film about a terrorist. It stars two guys. One of them is Sylvester Stallone. If you guessed that he's the one I have a huge crush on, you don't know me at all.

No, the whole point of Nighthawks is Rutger Hauer. This is the guy Anne Rice had in mind for the role of Lestat in Interview with the Vampire. Instead, she got Tom Cruise and a whole boatload of money to do an about-face of her earlier criticism of that casting choice, and claim that Tom Cruise "is my Lestat." And of course he isn't, but--look, let's not get me started on that asshole Tom Cruise when I've got Rutger to think about. Talk about a thrill kill.

Anyway, there's a scene where Hauer has a bunch of people, including wives and family members of some UN diplomats, trapped on the Roosevelt Island sky car. And he gives them a little lecture, and forgive me for being too lazy to look it up (if it's even available) so I can quote it perfectly for you, but the gist of it is this:

"I work for the oppressed. I care about the downtrodden and helpless. I don't care about you people, the privileged."

And then he blows a woman's brains out.

What I don't like about the entry that appeared on Daily Kos is that he expressed precisely that sentiment.

In other words, Kos sounds just like a bad 1981 film terrorist.

And he won't apologize for it because he thinks he has the moral high ground here. He stands for the oppressed! The downtrodden! The helpless!

No, you don't, Mr. Zuniga. Because the most oppressed, most downtrodden, most helpless, most victimized thing you can be in this life is an individual human being. And there were four of those murdered in Fallujah.

There are more individual human beings out there with more individual stories in them than a small mind like yours could ever imagine.

Remember that the next time you claim that we can overlook the lives of a few in favor of others more oppressed. Because that begs one question:

Who decides who's oppressed enough to merit living?

As for this:

Oh, they're [the right wing] doing their best to turn me into the devil,

No, darlin'. Your own words did that.

Just fancy anyone lifting a finger to help do what you've done so effectively all by yourself.

But this is how it must be for you because this is the logic you live by. You must demonstrate that you are oppressed, that you are victimized, that you are downtrodden, in order for your life to have value. For you, it is not that you were endowed with certain unalienable rights--for then you would have to extend acknowledgement of those rights to others. Then you would have to acknowledge their humanity. Then you would have to feel guilt and shame for your callous remarks of the other day. Then you would have to acknowledge your own culpability, and then you might feel moved to make amends for it.

You would be a better person for doing so, I believe. But you would lose that intoxicating sense of how ultimately just and right you are. You would be faced with your own humanity and its inherent fallibility.

No, it can only be that you would have rights, you would have justice, you would have morality, if only all those miserable oppressive pigs didn't keep trying to rob you of them.

It has to be this way for you. Otherwise, you might have to count yourself among the privileged. And then you might be tempted to blow your own brains out, because everyone knows the privileged have no humanity:

They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

Get used to seeing those words everywhere, Kos. Get used to seeing them again and again and again. And when you tire of seeing them, remember this:

George W. Bush did not write them.

Donald Rumsfeld did not write them.

Dick Cheney did not write them.

Condoleeza Rice did not write them.

Halliburton did not write them.

The right wing did not write them.

You wrote them.

And maybe, if you ever want to take a break from lying underneath the jackboots of oppression, you could acknowledge that properly, without excuses, without justifications, and with an apology to the families of those you dismissed.

But I won't hold my breath waiting for it.

ONE REALLY STUPID UPDATE: I just realized that last night's version of this included a link to the creator of worlds, and that I'm still listed in the trackbacks for it. So here's the link. Peace be upon him, indeed.

AN UPDATE I CAN'T RESIST even though we've probably all had enough of this already: It's a fisking to end all fiskings. "You've neutered yourself and are too numb to feel it." Terrific--my male cats now have a reason to be jealous of Kos.

Posted by Ilyka at April 3, 2004 05:19 PM in hell is other people