Complicating Evil

Sometimes I think that our world has been so digitalized that we don't know what's real and what's imaginary. Graphics in the movies blur the lines between real and unreal and I think that much of the public, even when it sees something so unimaginably horrible, thinks that it's not a real threat. Some of us know that the horror we see in Iran and North Korea is a threat but I think many just blow it off.

My favorite quote is this and so applicable today:
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic felling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Great quote, and to think it is by Mills, one of the founders of Modern Liberalism! Somewhere he is turning over in his grave listening to Pelosi, Lamont, Durbin, et al.

Fascinating insight - not only is it a "creeping identification" but a creepy identification. All of the fretting about how we caused our enemies to hate us is simply creepy.