You’re welcome!

No, a peaceful resolution with Iran is not possible, or at least not likely. In the end, their leadership really does believe that the return of the 12^th Imam is near at hand and that consciously choosing to create something resembling Armageddon is integral to hastening his arrival/return. See my post earlier today … they are rounding up people all over Iran, they are putting “dissidents” to death and the like. IF they ever get a nuclear weapon … and I don’t know that they will … this leadership WILL use it, whenever they believe the timing is right.

One of the great mistakes of the past century has been the repeated failure to listen to what madmen say BEFORE they attain sufficient power to DO whatever they have said they would do. They WILL … always. Such is the nature of madmen. They are always brilliant. They always have a very clear and focused sense of purpose. They typically exude a great sense of charisma, at least within the context of their own culture. They all seek absolute power. They all believe that their way and their people are superior to every other on the planet. They are all QUITE willing to kill any number of people, it quite literally matters not to them. And they are all, well, completely mad.

Hitler did exactly what he said he would do. So did Stalin. So did Mao and Che and Castro and Amin and various others. They spoke truthfully about their intentions, but their intentions seemed so, well, impossible that no one listened.

Read Elie Wiesel’s first book, Night. It’s very short and very powerful, really the first significant writing by any Holocaust survivor ever published. As you read the first 20 pages or so, you’ll think it’s just a story. But I saw Wiesel interviewed in 2000 CE, and he made it quite clear that everything he wrote there … and every character he brought into the story … was a real person. Not an amalgam, not an archetype, but a specific individual man or woman. Read it with THAT in mind. It changes everything, not only about the book, but about what is possible. It brings into focus your own bias, your normalcy bias.

One cannot ever negotiate meaningfully with a madman. One can appease … but one can never negotiate, not really. If you don’t believe this, go dig up a video of Neville Chamberlain, PM of Great Britain, returning in 1938 CE from his “negotiation” with A. Hitler. “Our two countries have agreed never to go to war with one another again,” he proclaimed. But the war began on September 1, 1939 CE. And it was preceded by heinous acts of war, in response to which Great Britain, France, and the rest of the world burped rhetoric but otherwise stood idly by.

Beware normalcy bias, the belief that “It can’t be all THAT bad … can it?” Beware the biases you have been taught in the American public school system, about how we have to be “fair”, about “rules of war”, about the difference between “combatants” and “noncombatants”, and the like. When they fire off rockets into Israel, blow up buses, shoot up airports around the world, destroy the entire Israeli Olympic wrestling team (1972 CE), hijack civilian airliners, threaten to attack a sovereign ambassador on American soil, and the like, is that “fair”? Are they following any meaningful “rules of war”? Are they distinguishing between “combatants” and “noncombatants”?

Don’t be fooled.

Don’t be a fool.

Remember these words, which I have shared here before:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Make sense?
E

From: Taylor Snipes
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2012 6:51 PM
To: PathOfHealth@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [PathOfHealth] POLITICAL: State of the Union 2012 CE - Cato hits the nail on the head!!!