I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the thread started by SlyFrog in GD: Spanish elections: Further evidence that Europeans are pussies?. I dismissed it as trolling. The recent join date, an articulate, if factually stupid, style and this :
led me to think troll or possibly sock. I decided to dismiss him.
But when I came to the Pit and found that the guy who says: “Girls, stop getting all of these tattoos, ya look skanky.”, the incomparably stupid Muad’Dib, and his thread God-Damned mother-effing coward Spaniards, I felt sad for mankind and angry, so very, very angry when I realized that there are actually people out there that thinks this. That Brutus, who thinks that anyone left of Joe McCarthy is a cryptocommie does one of his regular drive-bys* is not surprising:
My first thought was that Maud’Dib’s thread was a joke, in reference to the stupidity put forward by SlyFrog . No one could seriously spout so much ignorant vitriol on this board. No one could be so utterly void of compassion as to use the tragedy in Madrid to further an agenda of fear and war mongering. I was wrong, and Muad’Dib got his ass handed to him by a number of posters, more eloquent and well read than I.
You see, even though I’m Swedish, I lived three years in Spain and consider it my second homeland. Given half a chance, I wouldn’t hesitate a second - I’d move there again tomorrow. So I think I know the Spanish, to some degree. The reason I was there was my Spanish GF and through her I got to know a lot about the country, its culture and tradition.
I doubt if there is a more proud people in Europe. And if there’s anything that can’t be said about them, it’s ‘cowards’. This is a country that was ravaged by a civil war during the 30’s, suffered through 36 years of dictatorship as a result of that war, had a dictator that let Hitler use the little Basque town of Guernica for bombing practice by Hitler’s burgeoning war machine, leading to 1.600 dead or injured. Because Spain nominally was neutral during WWII, Franco wasn’t ousted in '45 and Spain never got part of the Marshall Aid, instead being more and more isolated because of Franco’s paranoia. As late as 1970, women couldn’t have a driver’s license or passport in their own names. If they wanted to travel abroad, they would have to do so with a male guardian. Few could entertain the prospect, Spain being one of the poorest countries in Europe. Desperate for hard currency, the regime let foreign developers do pretty much what they wanted, leading to ugly resorts like Benidorm and ravaged nature. The so called spaghetti westerns of the 60’s were not shot in Italy, but Spain, since labor was cheaper there than anywhere else around the Med. My ex GF had to start drinking watered wine at 4, because milk was too expensive.
Democracy came late to Spain, 1975, and apart from an aborted coup in '81, the country has taken great strides forward. Not yet an economic giant, it’s on its way. In '92 it managed to host both the summer Olympics and the World Expo at the same time, and I think there are few countries in Europe who’d like to undertake that.
Since so many have living memories of having suffered dictatorship, they take very dim views when elected leaders try to push them around. Aznar tried to score point by siding with the US in Iraq. Had there been WMDs and had it been a quick and decisive campaign, it might’ve worked. Maybe he actually thought that the effort there, as well as that in Afghanistan. was part of achieving something good. Maybe he thought that it would pave the way for his party in this year’s election. I can’t say what reasons he had and I doubt anyone will ever know.
But the fact is, from a seat on the U.N. Security Council, to peace keeping forces under UN command, and forces fighting alongside the other NATO members in former Yugoslavia, Desert Storm and its Foreign Legion, with the motto ‘Los novios de la muerte’ (The fiancés of death) is reputed to be harsher than its French cousin. The ‘credo’ of the Legion has this to say about death. “El morir en combate es el mayor honor. No se muere más que una vez. La muerte llega sin dolor, y el morir no es tan horrible como parece. Lo más horrible es vivir siendo un cobarde.” (To die in combat is the greatest honor. One only dies once. Death arrives without pain and to die is not so horrible as it may seem. The greatest horror is to have lived as a coward). To bolster this, the ‘credo’ about combat says: “The spirit of the legionnaire is unique and unmatched, it’s the blind and ferocious attack, to always come within bayonet range of the enemy.”
While I think the Legion engages in a lot of macho bullshit, I think it can only be formed in a country where cowardice is frowned upon, or even despised. 30 years of fighting ETA, struggling with catching up with the other European democracies, dealing with a fragmented country with lots of federalist forces and generally kicking ass is not cowardice in my book.
Yet, some Dopers presume that part or all of the Spaniards are cowards, that future terror attacks can be blamed on Spain for giving al-Qa’ida a moral boost and showing them that ‘terrorism works’.
You little frightened maggots. You don’t have a tenth of the bravery of a Spanish sheep on Valium. Because bravery comes from compassion and empathy, from the need to do something utterly unselfish because you can feel the pain of another person and know that you have to do the right thing, even though it might hurt yourself.
But you haven’t shown that compassion. Instead, you bring out the usual garbage about appeasing, about the US helping France in WWII and getting nothing back. You have shown fear of that ‘socialist spectre’ that you think is still running all over Europe, trying to manipulate and pollute pure and good American minds into giving in.
You act like someone out of ‘Sopranos’, cajoling, blackmailing, threatening and waving the biggest gun around, pistol-whipping those closest to you into submission in order to build a power base, while at the same time declaring that family and friends come first and that you’ll never give in to that Famiglia from over yonder.
So I pit you as a group. Some deserve it more than others, and in reading the two threads, I notice that some of you are retracting some things you said. But I cannot forgive you for using this tragedy to further your own power hungry, extended Monroe doctrine agenda. The culprits are, apart from SlyFrog, Brutus and Maud’Dib: Dogface, Milum, Mehitabel, Tabby_Cat, Starving Artist, Voodoochile, Capt. Caustic, grienspace, neuroman, GoHeels, Age Quod Agis, RexDart, KidCharlemagne, Eleusis.
Shame on you. Shame on you all.
*I know the quote by Brutus is from the Pit thread, not from GD, thereby screwing up my timeline, but it serves to illustrate his posting style.
