a sports analogy for every occasion

[rone]

Israel's like the obnoxious Yankees fan who insisted on moving to Boston because he can trace his ancestry all the way back to Plymouth Rock, then attends every Red Sox game at Fenway Park drunk to the gills, where he loudly taunts the locals about the Babe Ruth trade, Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner, Aaron Boone, and the Yankees' 26 championships.

And, to extend the analogy, Arab infighting is very reminiscent of the way Boston fans and media venemously argue over what the team should be doing next. And in the end, the Yankees and the Red Sox get way more notoriety than they deserve.

Comments

[crisper.livejournal.com]

Israel's like the Indian tribe that got driven almost totally into extinction by smallpox blankets and the Winchester 1873 lever-action rifle, but now scrapes billions of gambling dollars out of the pockets of the great-great-grandchildren of the people who tried to kill them off.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Heh, that, too.

[thedarkages]

Interesting. So, if we follow this analogy out, the government redresses near-annihilation of the Indians with casino licenses, but near-annihilation is now sort of OK because the Indians are making too much money?

Do you realize how close you're coming to an invocation of Godwin's Law?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I think the "near-annihilation is now sort of OK" part is an inference that's all on you.

[thedarkages]

I'm working with the analogy. We've got Indians, who were done an injury in the past. The government "made them whole" by granting them casino licenses. But I think the implication is that the Indians were more than made whole by the grant. They are, according to the analogy, enriching themselves excessively -- I think the OP would go so far as to say "unjustly." That's far enough so that the moral suasion by which they got their licenses no longer sounds so persuasive; they have "used up" their moral credit. I don't think the moral credit gets used up, and that's where I think the OP gets into Godwin-esque territory. But I think I have remained true to the analogy.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

But I think the implication is that the Indians were more than made whole by the grant.

I don't. I don't even think the government "made them whole" by letting them have casinos. I have no idea where you're getting this.

[thedarkages]

I think it's inherent in the analogy. Suppose we eliminate the step of "redress" between what are now just two events:

1. The near-annihilation of the Indians
2. The Indians' enrichment at the hands of their near-annihilators.

There's now no causality between 1 and 2; the events are unrelated, except by sequence. The Indians appear to have gained the upper hand in their struggle, on a historical level. No judgment is made about their good fortune.

The entire reason I believed that the OP made his analogy was that he believed that there was causality, and that an over-balancing of justice had occurred -- i.e., that justice had erred too far in the other direction.

If, in fact, I am reading causality in, then the OP's analogy was non-judgmental in character, and would be an expression of Israel's paradoxical success at survival, an observation with which I can agree.

Thank you for helping me double-check my thinking.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I read it primarily as an expression of irony.

Also, extending others' analogies is usually a recipe for trouble.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I don't think the government granted them casino licenses as much as granted them sovereignty and didn't back down on that grant when they created a venue for something the government has outlawed as vice. The reasons for which indian reservations are not hotbeds of prostition, drug production and slavery are, one presumes, reasons of the Indians alone. (And their desire not to put test to the circumstances of their existence.)

Heck, in the case of slavery, we might be compelled to act regardless of Indian sovereignty. In that respect, some moderation is its own act of self-preservation.

[crisper.livejournal.com]

Near-annihilation is the new take-back-the-night.

[arian1.livejournal.com]

So, out of guilt, we let Israel just dictate whatever it wants in the region? What sort of ass-backwards idea is that? They antagonize *just* as much as anyone else, even if their choice is not bombimgs.

[thedarkages]

If they antagonize "*just* as much as everyone else," then why is their behavior exceptional?

[arian1.livejournal.com]

Because when they do things such as current events, some how it's always "OK" in American eyes.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Self-preservation is a legit motive in the eyes of the US; is Egypt's very existence threatened by the loss of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, or Jordan's, having lost the West Bank? No and no, and yet Israel's is when they lose same.

Some might see it as preserving some Zionist ambition or preserving the Jewish... I dunno, race or core or history or something. And of course various people are in favor of or against those things.

[crisper.livejournal.com]

I totally love to rub the hell out of Godwin's law until it's, like, RIGHT on the very EDGE of release and then I stop and let the sensation subside for a while before STARTING AGAIN.

[palecur.livejournal.com]

To copy xtingu, I think this should be posted to onesentence.