Zsofia
April 27, 2009, 11:46pm
21
Dude. I love my pets. I have three cats, a dog, and a fish. If somebody wanted to kill them for no good reason I’d smuggle them across the border paddling a damned Igloo cooler if I had to. But my pets are not an “outgroup”. It’s fine to say that yes, when people see things they care about being threatened they will defy authority, possibly in a manner that if the threat were real would be very damaging to them. (The behavior of people in World War Z is very authentic - people packed up their zombie family members in crates and fled with them. Totally realistic.) On the other hand, you can’t bring in Raoul Wallenberg and compare him to people who crossed state lines with pets and not expect to get a reasonable amount of shit for it. I have no problem with your point; I do have a problem with the way you chose to make it.
Zsofia:
Okay, I don’t want to offend anybody, but don’t you think some people might be a little insulted that you just compared Raoul Wallenberg, who almost certainly died saving Jews from the Holocaust, to people smuggling parrots out of California? Not that I want pet parrots to die for no reason, but…
I was about to make this very point. Wallenburg was one of the greatest men of the 20th century.
PARROTS for fuck’s sake.
Get some perspective.
That said, I have no problem with people defying the state, but that’s for another thread
Zsofia:
I’m just not as impressed if they didn’t, you know, walk up to a death camp train with Nazis shooting at them and hand out dozens of passports in cars that weren’t yet closed, and then walk those passport-holders and their enormous pair of brass balls out of there to safety. If they did that, then I’ll light a candle to the great parrot resistance fighters.
Sailboat:
I’m sure some of you are mock-offended if it makes your point…but only if it makes a cheap point on a message board.
In the meantime, it was only Jews, for fuck’s sake, not “our” people.
See, it’s easy to dismiss someone else’s loved ones as less than important! That’s the exact – exact! – way societies define outgroups they can persecute or ignore in good conscience.
In the meantime, my point still stands – these people risked whatever consequences the state wanted to bring down on them – while it was panicking and showing poor judgment – to save strangers’ family members.
You know, we’ve had threads about threats to pets before without Wallenberg analogies and been attacked as unimportant then too – in general, posters seem to like to dismiss the issue. Yet again and again the government seems surprised that people will treat pets as loved ones – look at Katrina, for example. I am just trying to show something universal about human behavior – go ahead and be dismissive and contemptuous if it makes you uncomfortable.
Zsofia:
Dude. I love my pets. I have three cats, a dog, and a fish. If somebody wanted to kill them for no good reason I’d smuggle them across the border paddling a damned Igloo cooler if I had to. But my pets are not an “outgroup”. It’s fine to say that yes, when people see things they care about being threatened they will defy authority, possibly in a manner that if the threat were real would be very damaging to them. (The behavior of people in World War Z is very authentic - people packed up their zombie family members in crates and fled with them. Totally realistic.) On the other hand, you can’t bring in Raoul Wallenberg and compare him to people who crossed state lines with pets and not expect to get a reasonable amount of shit for it. I have no problem with your point; I do have a problem with the way you chose to make it.
[Moderator note]
Ok, let’s drop the Wallenberg/Nazi hijack, please, and get back to the main subject of the thread.
Colibri