Ted Rall: Got Empathy?

[Catchawave]

Excerpt:


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Cheering for the underdog is as American as fatty food. In the movies we love heroes who simply want to be left alone--but are willing, like Charles Bronson in "Death Wish," to dish out double-sized portions of blazing revenge when the baddies cross the line. Why, then, don't we pull for the Iraqi insurgents? They are, like Clint Eastwood in his '70s and '80s action flicks, fighting back against overwhelming odds. And most, like Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen in "Red Dawn," are high school kids who, at first resigned to the U.S. invasion, take up arms in disgust at an increasingly abusive and hostile army of occupation. Americans play opposite roles in the two scenarios, yet we identify with Americans in both. Where the heck is our sense of empathy? Why can't we see ourselves in the faces of those kids firing RPGs at convoys of Halliburton trucks stealing Iraqi oil?

Here's the rub: Iraq's resistance fighters are breaking a lot of eggs to cook their omelet of liberation. They kill other Iraqis. They kidnap and execute foreign aid workers, truck drivers, businessmen, even diplomats and children. Americans, we tell ourselves, would never resort to that kind of terrorism--not even to free ourselves from occupation.

Wouldn't we?

Imagine America under the jackboot of, say, Icelandic occupation...........cont'd at:
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20050802/cm_ucru/gotempathy;_ylt=Ain2DE_UveeVdbDq.ZYrJnk_vTYC;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl