Role Reversal

On the way home tonight, I got to thinking that there seems to be an odd sort of role reversal regarding actual behavior vs. stereotyped behavior of the political Right and Left.

The folks on the Left frequently portray themselves as logical, enlightened, evolutionists, while to them; the poor benighted fools of the Right are just a bunch of moralistic, ignorant, Bible-thumpers. Not that this is actually the case, its just the impression one gets reading all those posters at the anti-war protests (twice a week in front of the courthouse -- rain or shine) in my little slice of Heaven.

So how do many of the folks on the Left wish to deal with terrorism?
Turn the other cheek
Love thy neighbor
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone
Thou shall't not kill
Sounds like a Sunday school lesson doesn't it.

Meanwhile, many on the Right (especially those in the military)think thusly about the GWOT.
Clash of civilizations
Nuke 'em 'till they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark (my personal favorite from many years in the past)
Barbarians at the gate
Do unto others before they do unto you
Gee, pretty hard-headed, pragmatic, survival of the fitest sort of attitude. Darwin would be pleased.

Now obviously, the above is mostly just a bunch of crap, and should not be taken seriously. Yet, I have a sneaking hunch that there is just a little bit of truth buried in there as well, and I hope it might lead my one or two readers into some beneficial thinking about how we each make generalizations.

I guess the thing that set me off is that I hate slogans. Slogans are just spoon-fed generalizations; which means they have very little to do with our real, messy, complex world. Thats why you will never see a bumper sticker on my car. If I'm going to make a fool of myself exercising my right of free speech, I prefer to do it with my own words, not someone else's.