Of course, they don’t follow this when it would not help them. For example, many of these people could come up with a long list of things which FDR did, and got away with, that they don’t like. But if Obama did them, the apologists would certainly not say ‘FDR did it, so any Democratic president gets a pass’.

Back a few years ago somebody mentioned some pope (in the early Rennaisance?) who publicly came out against torture, under the reasonable belief that confessiing under torture are what people make when the pain gets too bad.

I realized that he had to go against most of what he was taught to believe, because he grew up in a world where judicial torture was considered a good and moral thing. He transcended his world. The people who apologize for torture now are people who were brought up in a world where torture was considered to be an evil thing. They’ve anti-transcended their world.

I think the reason it makes emotional sense (at least to Horne) is because of Macho Sue-ism. In Horne’s mind, the Cowboy is a Macho Sue:

It’s not uncommon for Macho Sue to be prejudiced, or at least suspicious of the unfamiliar, and he’s almost always unusually disrespectful to others; he has a particular propensity for taking an unreasonable dislike to somebody on sight (only to have it validated later). When thwarted, he tends to be affronted as well as frustrated, in a way that suggests neither he nor the narrative think it right that anyone but him should ever get their way.

Horne despises negotiation, compromise, and treating people with respect even when they disagree with him.

As Whitfield says, this is all wrapped up in ideas about masculinity, which IMHO is why it’s been 12 years since a white male was US Secretary of State: you can’t do the Secretary of State’s job and still be respected as a Real Macho Man, yet it’s too important to be shuffled off on a John Bolton who will take the position only to publically mock it. The only choice has to be someone without Real Macho Masculinity to be threatened.

Lets get this straight. Cowboys and Indians is a necessary and useful pedagogical tool for teaching kids about good and evil, but its not about violence, even though violence is the best and only effective way the good stand up to evil. Also, it is unfortunate to Horne that the Indians lost- even though the indians must, if we extend his good/evil dynamic correctly, represent evil. So Horne fights it unfortunate that the evil side lost, and he is baffled why Indians would ever take offense to being considered the side of evil in his interpretation of the cowboys/indians game. Amazing.

I swear, sometimes the ignorance of my fellow conservative bewilders me. The best defense of cowboys/indians isn’t that its a deeply symbolic and meaningful game, but that its merely a harmless and playful extension of historical imagination. Kids play cowboys/indians for the same reason they play cops/robbers: its an amusing fantasy involving the embrace of a novel and romantic identity.

Oh, and I forgot. If kids play cowboys and indians to learn about good and evil: then isn’t playing the Indian a BAD thing? Perhaps the game must involve like 10 cowboys and 1 Indian, so the ratio of good/evil is still worth it. Or maybe we should pull Arabs out of torture chambers and make them play the role of indian for our kids.

I think though we have come a long way in acknowledging not merely the past injustices, but about how, literally through legal documents and treaties, those injustices still claw their way into the present. I don’t think its unfair to point out for instance that much of the slaughter was merely codified and made proper in the form of “land-deals” and other such absurd non-sense. Pointing out that the victims of that might want to re-negotiate doesn’t indicate that everyone whose a descendant of those original people are responsible, but that they DO enjoy the fruits. Merely throwing one’s hands up saying its a fait accompli is easy enough for the people winning it, from American’s to Israel to any number of other situations.

It’s one of the reasons why the idea that America will ever leave Afghanistan or Iraq is absurd; like Japan or South Korea we will become the 800 pound gorilla in the room overseeing, and eternally being responsible for, the situation we ourselves intervened in.