Aspiegirl, you don't "fully" agree with what Manning did? By the way "did" is correct. The evidence against Manning is overwhelming. Let me put it this way to you: would you object had Manning been employed as an administrative clerk in your psychology clinic and released thousands of confidential patient records to the Internet? What would the APA say about that? Would you be defending his actions? How about if Manning weren't homosexual?
I proudly served in navy intelligence, and currently work with an official US Army intel group (unclassified) as an expert on culture and the left. Just for your information, I don't agree with much of what the army has been called upon to do, but our entire military is apolitical. It is there to carry out the instructions of our elected civilian political leaders. If you, like me, have a problem with policy, you need to take it out on the politicians instead of the military there to protect us all. Yes, our military has been misused. I'm arguing that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. And compromising the nation's secrets is doing just that.
As far as the Frankfurt School goes, they are something you really should be aware of, and I would strongly encourage you to do some research on them. They were psychologists themselves. They started a movement called Cultural Marxism, or what some call Political Correctness. In an exquisite irony, Cicero--the real one--summed it up quite well:
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."
Just as the real Cicero describes, PC has taken a "long march through the institutions" and made our moral and social norms poisonous to the continued survival of the entire West. We are destroying ourselves from within.
How? Primarily through psychological and sociological means. With the Marxist and fascist lefts, they coerced their policies through politics and blunt force; their way required legions of secret police. The modern left has co-opted our morals and social norms; normal people police themselves. Just as "pseudo-Cicero" clearly demonstrated last night, the modern left doesn't argue the merits of their viewpoints. The modern left condemns even the slightest deviationism as moral defectiveness and a sign of mental illness. "Pseudo-Cicero wasn't trying to show me the error of my ways; he was trying to shut down the debate before it ever began by chasing me from this forum and arguing about nattering irrelevancies.
I agree with you that Manning should have a fair trial, but the way Tim McVeigh had a fair trial. That is indeed the American way.
Some good news: The reason I have been honored to participate with Army intelligence isn't because I'm the most knowledgeable person around on culture and the left, but because my AS forces me to see society for what it is--devoid of the cant and hypocrisy of modern social norms. In this context, my inability to deal well with society becomes my greatest strength. Nietzsche put it best: "Be careful lest in casting out demons that you don't cast out the very best thing that's in you."
What I'm getting at is that while your post on Manning made me queasy, I'm NOT condemning you. In fact, I implore you to use your AS to see things for what they are. We aspies should be the canaries in the coal mine, and the miners are in trouble.
I wish you the best.
16 Dec 2011, 1:25 pm
