You know, I love this place. But it confuses me sometimes.

[Robb]

I don't know why, but I kind of guessed this would happen, and it did. GD this morning:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8328159">4 Afghans beheaded in fierce fight with militants -- Replies: 0. Views: 28.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8327205&mesg_id=8327205">Boy's pet rabbit beheaded by elderly neighbor -- Replies: 40. Views: 799.

I know I've been chastised for pointing out how DUers in general http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7920128">are mostly interested in civilian deaths when it's NATO's fault, and I can even see the argument for it. I don't agree, but I understand the argument.

...But this?

I mean, I get the news business in general. A story in the city paper about someone's chickens getting loose can outplay anything usually on A1. But beheadings?? Can someone explain to me why a rabbit beheading is more interesting than human beings getting beheaded? Is it that rabbits command headline attention, even better than chickens? Or that beheading in general is passé?

[Oregone]

1. Humans are desensitized to bad guys killing good guys

How many thousands of years has that been happening?


But, when the good guys are killing, well, thats incomprehensible.


We like to believe we live in a world where the Taliban doesn't live next door to us.

[skygazer]

2. I think it's probably because people can relate to the second story better

Afghans and militants seem far away and sort of faceless. Little boys with pet rabbits and elderly neighbors are something we see all around us. And people automatically think about how awful that would be for the little boy while the situation in Afghanistan seems very far away and unrelated to our daily lives.

Human nature.

[TwilightGardener]

3. I think we can all agree that humans shouldn't be beheaded. Therefore, no discussion needed.

Some people seem to think it's just FINE to behead animals for the grave sin of eating lettuce, on the other hand.

[Oregone]

6. Of course humans shouldn't be beheaded

But something is wrong with you if you don't politicize the deaths and use the topic as a springboard to support military intervention against the bad guys in Afghanistan


:sarcasm:

[babylonsister]

4. I thing we're somewhat anesthetized to bad news

coming from overseas. But a neighbor inflicting pain on a little boy through his rabbit? The second story is also something we could relate to; could be my neighbor, or my boy. The Afghans and militants? Not so much.

But your examples are pretty stark. fwiw, I've noticed it, too.

[Ozymanithrax]

5. A rabbit, like all those non-combatants, is apparantly innocent...

Beheading the innocent, and killing non-combatants in a war, is horrifying.

But there are people who appear to feel that if you serve in the military, a self defense force, or the police, you get what you deserve when someone cuts your head off with a dull axe. To some, the whole endeavor is a tyranical crime and the criminals are allowed to kill each other. They see that as just another ho-hum war story and turn it off. War fighters do not deserve concern.

And, finally, it happened overseas. Four humans murdered in Afghanistan doesn't appear to equal one rabbit here in the U.S. of A.

At least that is what I think is happening.

[Oregone]

9. "Four humans murdered in Afghanistan doesn't appear to equal one rabbit here"

Of course. Those humans are outside of our Monkeysphere.

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

[Ozymanithrax]

A perfect explanation...

I've never read "Cracked." It is very, very good.

[mikelgb]

22. superb article

[Truth2Tell]

35. Thanks for that link Oregone...!

funny stuff...

...

A representative democracy allows a small group of people to make all of the decisions, while letting us common people feel like we're doing something by going to a polling place every couple of years and pulling a lever that, in reality, has about the same effect as the darkness knob on your toaster. We can simultaneously feel like we're in charge while being contained enough that we can't cause any real monkey mayhem once we fly into one of our screeching, arm-flapping monkey frenzies ("A woman showed her boob at the Super Bowl! We want a boob and football ban immediately!")

Conversely, some people in the distant past naively thought they could sit all of the millions of monkeys down and say, "Okay, everybody go pick the bananas, then bring them here, and we'll distribute them with a complex formula determining banana need! Now go gather bananas for the good of society!" For the monkeys it was a confused, comical, tree-humping disaster.

Later, a far more realistic man sat the monkeys down and said, "You want bananas? Each of you go get your own. I'm taking a nap." That man, of course, was German philosopher Hans Capitalism.

As long as everybody gets their own bananas and shares with the few in their Monkeysphere, the system will thrive even though nobody is even trying to make the system thrive. This is perhaps how Ayn Rand would have put it, had she not been such a hateful bitch.

...

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere_p2.html

[seabeyond]

7. what an excellent point. what an excellent OP. agreed.

personally, i made myself watch the shit in iraq for the first handful of years. i felt an obligation to experience the horrors of war, to impassion my fight to oust bush.

now

i dont like seeing anything of the gruesome be it a rabbit or a human. not desensitized. just sickened.

[mopinko]

it's because we know what war is. and we (mostly) accept it. but kids

getting hurt, even indirectly, offends us instinctively.

i hate war. i oppose war. most people HERE hate war. but as a species, it is hard to argue that war has not served the victors well throughout the ages. we eat the fruits, we look away from what waters the tree so as not to be terrified every day.

[WeDidIt]

8. Robb, you glorious dingbat, I READ YOUR BOOK!

:evilgrin:

Nice pickup on the cognitive disconnect that can happen here

[SidDithers]

10. I'm just surprised the bunny beheading isn't somehow Obama's fault...nt

Sid

[dionysus]

17. i'll try! that poor old lady was so poor because of OBAMA, it reminded her

of the great depression. see, she was going to feed her starving family with the rabbit, but then obama showed up, extinguished a lit cigarette on her forehead, and then notified the press about the rabbits!111!

[AnArmyVeteran]

11. Just like war, most people are totally unaffected by it, unless one of their kids is in danger.

I like what Ross Perot proposed while running for office in 1992. He said any time the US was at war or were involved in combat every American should be taxed so they would feel some of the affect of war. It's sad how most people go about their every day lives while our soldiers are facing death every day. Perot had a good idea because if everyone was taxed you would see a big uprising against war, either reducing their frequency or stopping the wars early. Shared sacrifice, as occurred during WWII is gone. Now virtually no one cares about something they can't see or doesn't affect their lives. It's time we did something, like a tax, to wake them up out of their comas. Maybe then they would spring to action and start being good citizens.

[Soylent Brice]

12. priorities.

all fucked up.

[proudohioan]

13. What can I say? Guilty as charged....

....as one of the 799.:blush:


And you make an excellent point.

[elocs]

14. How many Afghans might be beheaded in your neighborhood?

Is it possible that a boy might have his pet rabbit beheaded by an elderly neighbor though?

There's no point or logic in comparing threads, one to another, as to whether they merit more views or replies. It is what it is.

[cbdo2007]

15. What are you confused about? It was meant to shock and get people worked up....

and your post proved that it did.

There really is no discussion to have about Afghan militants but a neighbor beheading someone's rabbit will have people siding with the neighbor and with the boy and with the rabbit and with Peta and whoever else.

It's all just about interaction and there really is no way to interact with the afghanistan story - of course we all think it's wrong and bad and there's nothing we can do about it. The "bad neighbor, poor kid" story we all can relate to easily.

[Oregone]

16. I think they are surprised people didn't politicize the Afghan event to advocate for more war

There are bad guys over there! Did you know that!

[ladywnch]

18. I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for this but......

beheading is what they do. After the first dozen or so the shock factor wears off........is it still abhorrently wrong?.....of course it is.......but not necessarily repines worthy. There is a war going on. Horrible things happen in war. I sometimes get the feeling that people here expect the war to be conducted with some kind of 'civility'. War is brutal, savage and barbaric which is why we should endeavor to NEVER enter into it.......or certainly not lightly.....not because some a**hole wants to get rich or avenge some family grudge.


ooookay.....have at me.

[The_Commonist]

19. Because bunnies are cute?

And Afghans aren't?

That's all I got...

[EFerrari]

20. Maybe the viewers were checking for a recipe.

[mitchum]

21. Well, I have never had a pet Afghan

[Prism]

23. Reminds me of the Joker's speech in Dark Knight

"It's all part of the plan."

I read a headline about beheadings in Afghanistan, I don't blink. I expect it. Just by reading the headline, I have a rough idea of what happened. It's normal for that part of the world in a war with religious fundamentalists.

A neighbor beheading a child's pet? It's unusual and abnormal behavior in America.

People will gravitate to those things that are abnormal in their world according the expectations they hold of how the world works - the plan.

[NJmaverick]

24. K & R!

[woo me with science]

25. You see the answer in many of the replies here.

It is unacceptable to express concern about beheadings or gas attacks on young girls or stoning or child marriages in Afghanistan, because it might disintegrate ANY AND ALL anti-war sentiment in this country and turn every single American into a Republican.

[Nye Bevan]

26. Simple. Human beings are frequently beheaded in the Middle East.

But this is the first time I have ever heard of a bunny being beheaded.

Classic dog bites man vs. man bites dog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog_%28journalism%29

Here's another example. Consider the following two hypothetical stories:-

1. Three Iranian women stoned to death for premarital sex;

2. Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton get into a semi-nude catfight on Hollywood Boulevard.

Which of these stories is more important, really? And which would get more attention on DU?

[Duer 157099]

27. On the most recent episode of The Tudors

One guy was beheaded just because he had "known" the Queen Catherine Howard before King Henry had even met her. Yes, he was retroactively guilty of seducing the Queen. And of course, her current lover Thomas Culpepper was also beheaded, along with the Queen and her lady in waiting.

And this was supposedly a very civilized time and place.

Human beings are cruel, always and everywhere.

[librechik]

28. thx for the spoiler, I missed that episode

good riddance, Culpepper! (and Katherine, for that matter)Thank god no rabbits!

Feh--I'm feeding the sentiment of the thread! Ack!

[kenny blankenship]

29. Sorry, but your story JUST ISN'T NEWS. Not in Afghanistan, and not in that part of the world

The story you linked to and are now so sanctimoniously hectoring us about is an every fucking day occurrence in Afghanistan. It has been a typical Afghanistan non-story for as long as Obama has been President. It has been a typical Afghanistan non-story for as long as the US has been stumbling around Afghanistan's wastelands. It predates Obama. It predates Bush. It predates Clinton. It predates the other Bush. It predates Reagan. It has been a typical Afghanistan non-event since the Soviets invaded, occupied, massacred, lost, left and were then replaced by the Northern Alliance, who then lost, left for the hills, and were replaced by heroin warlords, who then lost and were replaced by the Taliban, who then lost and were replaced by Hamid Karzai and the heroin warlords again. A story like that would barely make the newspapers there, if they had any papers. And since the US had the pigheaded stupidity to attempt to invade and occupy Afghanistan in 2001, it has become a depressing and monotonously typical non-story coming out of Afghanistan in our press. It's an everyday occurrence there and if you went back 300 years it would still be an everyday occurrence there.

You want people to get worked up about it and rally to your flag. It's boring as shit. No wonder nobody "cares" like you want them to. You're not "confused" at all about the depressed silence you get, you're just grinding your nicked and bloodsoaked axe, and persisting in a murderous folly which is older than all of us combined.

When I was young I read stories of two games that centered on brutality. They didn't have anything to do with one another directly, except they were both played from horseback and seemed like the same kind of game: not just violent but intentionally gory. Since I learned about them around the same time I have always remembered them together. One was the sport of polo that was allegedly first played by Europeans during the Crusades. What I read purported to be the origin of polo in the west. They didn't invent the game themselves, but they adapted it after contact with the Islamic world, where it was already established, to a style they liked. Christian knights on horseback would attempt to shoot on a goal line using their swords or lances in place of mallets. They would pass the "ball" and defend against advance of the other team and try to seize control of it in order to mount their own attack on the other team's goal. In their westernized adaptation, the role of the ball was fulfilled by the severed head of a Saracen (Muslim). The other sport I learned of and remembered in association with this probably apocryphal tale about polo was Afghan Buzkashi, which is said to be that country's national game. In this game, sometimes called "goat polo", whose origins are lost in the mists of Afghan time, the players on horseback struggle for possession of a bag that contains the carcass of a kid goat that has been freshly beheaded and de-hooved in the opening ceremony. Of the two games, the first seems far more barbaric and brutal to me now. I don't know what I thought about the relative brutality of them when I was eight. Regardless of whether I have matured and changed in my estimation of the brutality of Crusader polo, it is certain that the countries which invented this parody of polo would blanch and utter scandalized denunciations against the Crusaders if their noble ancestors were return to life somehow and do again today what they did back then. The West has changed in its views of brutality, and yet we still send Crusaders to remote parts of the world to "bring to the natives the Light" a light which apparently we alone represent and embody. Or else bring the natives to the Light forcibly, if the Light won't come spontaneously out of the natives of its own accord. Or else just kill the natives, if they are so stubborn as to refuse our gift of a morally superior culture. Oh certainly, we have changed! The West is even full of vegetarians now. However, buzkashi is still the national sport of Afghanistan, and they have not learned yet to make shamefaced apologies for the way they are. Goat polo is still goat polo there, and war is still war. Want to do the people of Afghanistan a big favor? Stay the fuck away from them. You'll be doing your own country an even bigger favor. We, the victors, aren't changing Afghanistan nor Iraq nearly as much as they, as our victims, are changing us.



If you are so concerned about awful brutality as you want us to believe you could easily find stories several times worse happening all over the globe. According to multinational peacekeeping forces in the Darfur region of Sudan, 107 people have been killed in tribal clashes since March, and the govt and rebel forces both appear to be massing for possible renewed fighting in this place that has seen so much slaughter already. But I suppose they were killed much more politely than the awful Taliban would do it. True, machetes are one of the most common weapons in that part of the world, but still- it's not Taliban stuff and ergo just not worthy of notice. Did you know an important Thai General was shot in the head by the other factions of the Thai military yesterday, and that anti-military demonstrators, who previously had received a measure of protection from this General, will now be facing troops with machine guns and tanks in the streets of Bangkok after today? Stuff is happening everywhere. But maybe you don't know about it because it doesn't coincide with the current imperial objectives of your government and its glorious leader.

[Robb]

32. Sanctimonious hectoring, indeed.

[Kitty Herder]

30. I think we get atrocity burnout.

It seems we here at DU sometimes don't want to think too hard about the beheadings and other horrific atrocities in other parts of the world. It's just too much and they happen every day somewhere. Far easier to focus on the small atrocity of a beheaded bunny. It's small enough to get our heads around without completely losing it.

And it's natural that we would pay more attention to civilian deaths when NATO is at fault. That's something we feel we might have some small amount of control over.

[hfojvt]

31. some of that is kinda logical

after the first 28 views if nobody replies then it falls off the front page. In the other case if people do reply that keeps a thread on the front page and then people check their replies and that creates more views and a thread on the front page is already gonna get more views than one which has dropped off.

Like you said though, if the first thread had been about deaths caused by American troops there would have been more replies of remorse, shock, anger, etc. all directed at the good old US of A.

[MicaelS]

33. Because certain people think animals are better than people...

When you see members here state the earth would be better off without humans beings, that should tell you a great deal about that type of mindset.

One DU-er said they would like to stand on the chest of a person who killed a feral cat and shoot the cat killer's eyes out with a BB gun. That's flat fucking sick.

I've even seen people who claim they're against capital punishment, turn around and state they would kill someone who would kill a cat or dog.

When you see how many Americans treat their animals as a substitute for a human child and lavish more money on the animal that some humans in poor countries will ever see in a lifetime, I'm not a bit surprised at the type of response you refer to.

[Forkboy]

34. I have a theory on this, Robb.

Sometimes we see stories that are too much to wrap our heads around and we find that we really don't know what to say. I see this a lot when heartbreaking stories are posted here, and I don't think it's because people don't care. I think it's just too heavy sometimes. I also think a lot of people have said so much about Afghanistan that when we see a story like this there just isn't much to say anymore.

Now, while the bunny story is horrific, it's limited to one person, not a whole country and culture that's entwined in a brutal fight, and one that has so many tangled webs (the bunny story is also novel, in a sick way). It's much easier to talk about this one deranged neighbor and what happened than it is to fathom the mindset of a entire group that thinks this way, and that it's done to humans (I'll save the issue of animal vs human cruelty for another thread).

Both sets of beheadings are black and white issues when isolated, but only one is surrounded by a boatload of gray.

Or I could just be talking out of my ass. :)

[eridani]

36. MM made a similar observation about a scene in one of his movies

--featuring a family killing their pet rabbits for food. Way more indignation than the scene featuring an unarmed black man being blown away by cops.