Thugs of the World Unite(d)
It's all about respect, isn't it? Underworld figures demand respect from their cohorts and their challengers in other gangs. There is a recognized hierarchy of respect, and woe betide those unfortunates who challenge that code. This has trickled down to the youth gangs who also demand 'respect'. To 'disrespect' someone is tantamount to ordering one's own funeral. Look askance at someone and they bridle at the lack of 'respect'.Withholding respect from street thugs is guaranteed to result in a violent attack. An impromptu education in street manners. It works, doesn't it? Respect is accorded thugs by civilians eyeing their handguns with full acknowledgement that guns don't kill, people do. Violence is meted out when evidence of lack of respect for the presence of sociopaths becomes evident; a tincture of diplomacy may save the day - or someone's hide.
During wars, captured prisoners of war, housed in prison camps learn 'respect' for their captors the hard way. Regimented prisoners face an iron discipline of survival, the uppermost lesson of which is a readily-evidenced 'respect' for one's tormentors. Bullies thrive on respect, it builds on their own lack of self-respect, their tenuous hold on their place in a society that has rejected their presence.
Look at the strangely incidental similarities presented by the Taliban and al-Qaeda and their treatment of prisoners. Torture and mangled, dismembered bodies don't necessarily equate with respect for those who have satisfied their sadistic urges along with their need to wage holy war, but there is actual puzzlement demonstrated by these perpetrators at the grim distaste of their actions by those whose morals don't permit of the notion of wanton murder.
And then we have the sweeping, all-encompassing expressions of outrage expressed by a vast multitude of 'believers', fundamentalist Muslims who see a lack of respect for their most sacredly-held ardour in clinging to Islam, the Prophet Mohammad and Allah. Should a hint of skepticism be whiffed from a Western source, the entire world's congregation of Muslims unleash unbridled rage at the lack of 'respect' from the West.
A whisper that someone, somewhere, at some time, took the sacred writings of the Koran in vain, or the name of the Prophet, or questioned the illogicality of demanding respect when it is not due, and a universal rage ensues with full-throttled rampages and eventual harm to unfortunate individuals, even unto death. A rumour that someone, somewhere, at some time, destroyed a copy of the holy Koran?
March en masse in a vicious mode of revenge and burn down an entire library of Western publications. Among which will inevitably be, among other books on religions of the world, a few Korans, made available for the edification of the curious and the enlightened. Publish a clever cartoon lampooning the hypocrisy of Islamists and utilizing an unfortunate depiction of the Prophet? Out come the slavering mobs demanding decapitation of the offenders.
'Respect' hard earned by violence, by bullying tactics, by threats, by bloody murder.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, August 06, 2007
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