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Idiocy
Rachel Corrie was recently killed when she stood in front of a bulldozer that was demolishing / about to demolish a house in the Gaza strip. It was not an accident. She was opposed to the demolition, and apparently in her mind, that made it a good idea to stand in front of an advancing bulldozer. The news media is reporting her death as a murder by Israel, and even a murder by America.
This is one of the things about the news media that makes me extremely angry. No one is willing to state the truth of the matter here. The truth is that Rachel Corrie was killed for acting like an IDIOT. She did something IDIOTIC, and got herself killed. That is the only way that an honest person can explain this situation.
Was it wrong for the driver of that bulldozer to intentionally drive over her? I believe that it was. Does that make Rachel Corrie’s actions any less idiotic? Absolutely not. She made an exceedingly bad decision when she chose to stand in front of that bulldozer.
I understand that the idea was to make the driver stop the demolition. However Rachel chose an asinine strategy for achieving that goal. She forfeited her life, and there will be little if any benefit from it.
Some people incorrectly believe that man is "basically good" and tends to "do the right thing" most of the time. Perhaps Rachel Corrie subscribed to that false concept. Unless she had a death wish, it’s safe to say that at least in this situation, she expected the driver to do the right thing.
But that is not the real world. In the real world, you can’t expect anyone to do the right thing. You can hope for that, and you can believe that people should strive for that, but to expect it is either naive or, more likely, idiotic.
Don’t get me wrong; a person has been killed here, and that is a sad thing. I’m not trying to minimize that fact. But my point here is that it’s lamentable that the media will not say that what Rachel did was foolish.
A similarly ridiculous scenario that is all too common is when a girl gets raped while she is drunk, because she was unable to say / enforce "no" to the guy. Is it wrong for her assailant to rape her? Of course. But she made the idiotic decision to get drunk, and that is what prevented her from saying no. (I’m not talking about a situation where the guy overpowers the girl, but the situation where he takes advantage of her because she’s drunk.) She deliberately put herself out of control of her own body. That is a supremely stupid decision that she chose for herself. She has every right to be upset and hurt and mad about being raped, but she has absolutely no right to be surprised about it. Because to be surprised about it, she must believe that all people are basically good and therefore no one ever rapes anyone -- indeed, she must believe that we live in a perfect world. Only in a perfect world would it be anything other than IDIOTIC to put yourself out of control of your own body by getting drunk.
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