Go. Now!

Memo to potential commenters: if you’re an arrogant dumb-ass, you will be treated as such and therafter ignored. Now we begin….

“Chinese Taoists say you become what you hate. In a zesty irony, the U.S. now finds itself in a similar position as demonized Saddam Hussein. Saddam [too] had to use his Sunni-dominated army to hold Iraq together by fighting Kurdish and Shia rebels. His brutal police jailed tens of thousands and routinely used torture.” –Eric Margolis

Sing it, Brother Margolis. So if there any more birdbrains out there who still wish to argue that the Americans went to Iraq to save the Iraqis from Saddam, shut the fuck up already. I have no time to waste on you.

Over at fark.com, visitors were asked to photoshop movie posters that combined famous children’s movies with famous horror movies. The delightful results are here.

Behold a lesson in how to live your life. Are we all paying attention? Especially all you armchair political critics who blithely advocate for war or make similar assertions about events you actually have little first-hand experience about. It’s one thing to rant about the government or about naive do-gooders who should have done this or that. It’s quite another to get up off your ass and actually do something. Everyone has the right to criticize his government or even other governments. But no one has the right to argue –as some do, when trying to defend the US invasion of Iraq, for example– that any number of deaths were worth whatever political outcome was intended, not unless it was clearly to save many more other lives or unless it was your life or the lives of your loved ones that are being bartered. To come close to this kind of moral authority or understanding, you must have first got up off your ass and actually engaged in the world, seen misery first hand, and tried to do something about it. Armchair warriors and pundits, in the words of Mick Foley, you are all invited to line-up and apply oral suction to my groinal area.

What the heck am I talking about? I’m talking about the bravery, initiative and true living displayed by three Duke University students who got up off their asses and delivered aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina. They have now seen real suffering, have tried to do something about it, and can now speak convincingly of the true effects of policy on such matters. We can all do this, dammit, whether it’s starting an NGO locally or in a developing country, joining an advocacy group or volunteering in a clinic or a shelter or a school. God knows, I try. And sometimes I’ve succeeded and sometimes I’ve failed. But God knows, I try. It’s bloody heart-breaking sometimes, but it’s the only way to live a real life and to accrue true moral currency.

So, I implore you, if you do care about this world –and I know you do, because you’re reading this blog– then get up and do something. Don’t just have faux intelligent debates about the world, go live in it.