He's Crazy!
The other day, Rodger came up with the line "crazy...like...Tom Cruise crazy..." And it got me thinking, so here you go.
People use that term, or its various synonyms, to describe a lot of things, most often in my line of entertainment, to describe something that is simply huge ("omg i hit that keen for insane damage lolroflcopter") Often it is also meant to describe something as "wacky," and that's generally the way I use it. Not to reference insanity, but to reference antics, antics of a less than sedate fashion.
But too often we label people as insane and blow them off. I was in an argument loosely veiled as a discussion with someone online after the 9/11 attacks, who said that Osama bin Laden was simply an insane mass murderer.
As I wrote in another blog, to call him insane is to assume he has no intelligence, that he is incapable of rational thought. It's blowing him off. The fact is that he is not insane, but perfectly sane. Sure, he takes his religion pretty seriously, but within the confines of that mindset, he's sane, if a little hardcore. No religion can claim not to have their completely involved members (the only difference is that bhuddists tend not to blow stuff up.)
Insanity is used by humanity as a defense against the horrifying realization that normal people in extraordinary circumstances will perform acts which are terrible, inhumane, or downright cruel. The stunning realization is that any of us are capable of such atrocities, given the right situation, and that in that situation, that course of action may be the right one to take.
This, I think, is a fundamental point of 24. Quite often, Jack does things which are simply horrifying, but he does them out of necessity, and rationalizes it later. The scene where he's forced to shoot chase in the head (with an unloaded gun, mind), and, of course, later in the season right before one of the few moments where the clock dings go silent (don't really want to spoil it for anyone who might read who hasn't seen it) are good examples.
We can't sit and rationalize what these people have done, people like Zarqawi. But in amidst all of the general fanfare surrounding his heroic and efficient assassination, it's been lost that the military was following a priest to find him, and that in the house that was bombed to kill him, there were women and children, and that in the process, the situation was simply called a "target of opportunity" and that they had to take the shot at him, because they might not get another.
Perhaps this is a victory in the war on terror, to us. But at this very moment, there are mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers, brothers, sisters, friends, loved ones, who are all mourning their losses in that attack, and thinking to themselves "the Americans are insane to have done this."
Not too many Americans, especially not in our goverment, stop to think that we might be.
People use that term, or its various synonyms, to describe a lot of things, most often in my line of entertainment, to describe something that is simply huge ("omg i hit that keen for insane damage lolroflcopter") Often it is also meant to describe something as "wacky," and that's generally the way I use it. Not to reference insanity, but to reference antics, antics of a less than sedate fashion.
But too often we label people as insane and blow them off. I was in an argument loosely veiled as a discussion with someone online after the 9/11 attacks, who said that Osama bin Laden was simply an insane mass murderer.
As I wrote in another blog, to call him insane is to assume he has no intelligence, that he is incapable of rational thought. It's blowing him off. The fact is that he is not insane, but perfectly sane. Sure, he takes his religion pretty seriously, but within the confines of that mindset, he's sane, if a little hardcore. No religion can claim not to have their completely involved members (the only difference is that bhuddists tend not to blow stuff up.)
Insanity is used by humanity as a defense against the horrifying realization that normal people in extraordinary circumstances will perform acts which are terrible, inhumane, or downright cruel. The stunning realization is that any of us are capable of such atrocities, given the right situation, and that in that situation, that course of action may be the right one to take.
This, I think, is a fundamental point of 24. Quite often, Jack does things which are simply horrifying, but he does them out of necessity, and rationalizes it later. The scene where he's forced to shoot chase in the head (with an unloaded gun, mind), and, of course, later in the season right before one of the few moments where the clock dings go silent (don't really want to spoil it for anyone who might read who hasn't seen it) are good examples.
We can't sit and rationalize what these people have done, people like Zarqawi. But in amidst all of the general fanfare surrounding his heroic and efficient assassination, it's been lost that the military was following a priest to find him, and that in the house that was bombed to kill him, there were women and children, and that in the process, the situation was simply called a "target of opportunity" and that they had to take the shot at him, because they might not get another.
Perhaps this is a victory in the war on terror, to us. But at this very moment, there are mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers, brothers, sisters, friends, loved ones, who are all mourning their losses in that attack, and thinking to themselves "the Americans are insane to have done this."
Not too many Americans, especially not in our goverment, stop to think that we might be.
posted by Kindralas at 7:21 AM
2 Comments:
Insane is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. It's got like 12 eyes, so there's room for lots of things like that.
It's like the terms "insurgents" and "freedom fighters," sometimes it's just a point of view thing.
I too am disturbed at the American joy over this clumsy assassination.
Yeah, yeah...but Tom Cruise is completely crazy.
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