{"id":641,"date":"2004-12-14T19:14:13","date_gmt":"2004-12-14T19:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:55","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:55","slug":"on_ordinary_men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=641","title":{"rendered":"On Ordinary Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t weighed in on the Boston conference or meeting the Iraq The Model<\/a> guys too heavily – I came back to consultant heck, one contract finished early, the next one delayed, the fallback uncertain and have been playing air traffic controller to try and get things sorted out – and meanwhile the mortgage is still due…sigh.<\/p>\n

Mohammed and Ali were in fact amazing. The most incredible thing about them, to me, is their ordinariness. The courage it must take to do what they do is remarkable – and yet, they are on the surface unremarkable men. What does that mean about the reserves of greatness within each of us?<\/p>\n

I wrote about soldiers on Veteran’s Day, and suggested that “they are just like me, except better.” That wasn’t meant as a slam on me or anyone else who isn’t serving in some way (and there are many ways to serve). It’s about the notion that we are a nation of ordinary men and women who do extraordinary things – in fact, we depend on our ordinary people to accomplish the extraordinary.
\nMohammed and Omar (and, I’m sure Ali, who I did not get to meet) are ordinary men from Iraq, who are setting out to do extraordinary things. And if our efforts can help them in some small way, then that’s bitchen’.<\/p>\n

Speaking of bitching, Juan Cole<\/a> picks up uber-troll Joseph “ALL CAPS” Mailander’s<\/a> paranoid rant suggesting that the brothers are somehow CIA disinformation – his evidence? They don’t agree with him.<\/p>\n

Note: there’s an interesting blog post on the subject of astroturfing and blogs. Daschle v Thune<\/a> figure in it – but so does Oliver Willis and Eschaton.<\/p>\n

But, since I’m the guy who connected Spirit of America to the brothers – by contacting and then recruiting Kerry Dupont, who I found from a link on Jeff Jarvis’ website<\/a> in which she took on the project of getting them laptops – may I suggest that I have direct experience that contradicts this fantasy?<\/p>\n

I had an interesting correspondence with Professor Cole after I criticized him for having engaged in SLAPP activity while reaching out to the blogging community to defend him against someone else’s SLAPP threat.<\/p>\n

And both the correspondence, and his bizarre logic here point out something that actually frightens me.<\/p>\n

I regularly read a number of lefty antiwar blogs – I still consider myself a leftist, and understand that there are people who disagree with me about the war. I read these blogs – including Professor Cole’s, MyDD, TPM, Eschaton and others because I want to learn. I want to check my assumptions and test my beliefs. I’ve changed my mind on things based on what I’ve read there, and believe that I’m likely to do so again in the future, which is why I’ll keep reading them.<\/p>\n

But as the comments flap with TalkLeft shows<\/a>, and as Professor Cole shows in his assertion (couched in careful rhetoric so that he’s not saying it, he’s just – you know – passing it along) that Riverbend must be the voice of the real Iraqi citizens because she agrees with him while ITM must be disinformation because it doesn’t – they’re more interested in shaping information to meet their beliefs than their beliefs to fit information.<\/p>\n

And, sadly, that’s the germ from which totalitarianism springs. Because you need the power to shape information to keep your beliefs intact, which means you need power over people as well. And meanwhile, Winston Smith just sits there, trembling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t weighed in on the Boston conference or meeting the Iraq The Model guys too heavily – I came back to consultant heck, one contract finished early, the next one delayed, the fallback uncertain and have been playing air traffic controller to try and get things sorted out – and meanwhile the mortgage is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}