the Manson murders of the late 1960s

Originally posted by FMF
Indonesian mass media has decades of hushing up atrocities by its own ruling regime under its belt and the media nowadays is cluttered up with celebrity-obsessing dross.

Then it might have more salient to have introduced one of these Indonesian Manson stories so we could compare 'apples with apples' rather than another in a long line of US atrocities on that S.E Asian peninsula.

The My Lai massacre would have also been a better comparison, whilst it was a relatively low body count compared to 'op menu' I can still remember the outrage it caused in the west including the US. Maybe it was not our lack of Humanity that lead to us identify with the fate of 20 or so Vietnamese villagers to a greater extent than millions of Cambodians but our common Humanity in so far as it is perfectly natural to connect emotionally with a smaller number of faces.


Perhaps it was the fact that these murders were committed up close and personal by villains who also had faces that we could identify with.

Originally posted by kevcvs57
Then it might have more salient to have introduced one of these Indonesian Manson stories so we could compare 'apples with apples' rather than another in a long line of US atrocities on that S.E Asian peninsula.

Nonsense. Manson in America 1970. America in Vietnam 1970. Indonesia has nothing to do with the thread topic.

Originally posted by kevcvs57
Maybe it was not our lack of Humanity that lead to us identify with the fate of 20 or so Vietnamese villagers to a greater extent than millions of Cambodians but our common Humanity in so far as it is perfectly natural to connect emotionally with a smaller number of faces.

I'd say you're describing the complete dehumanization of people here and not "common humanity".

Originally posted by FMF
I'd say you're describing the complete dehumanization of people here and not "common humanity".

I'd say you know lots about the world but very little about yourself, maybe you perceive human nature as being deficient because it will not bend itself to your world view.

You seem convinced that we get the news they want us to have, I am not sure we do not get the news we want. I would be more emotionally involved in the deaths of two people in my street than ten in the next town, now all I have to do is extrapolate from there.

Originally posted by FMF
Nonsense. Manson in America 1970. America in Vietnam 1970. Indonesia has nothing to do with the thread topic.

I thought you were posting from Indonesia, sorry, or is it that your possible geographic based bias is not up for discussion?

Originally posted by kevcvs57
I thought you were posting from Indonesia, sorry, or is it that your possible geographic based bias is not up for discussion?

As far as I am concerned, Indonesia - or my 'geography' - has nothing to do with American fascination with Charles Manson in 1970 or, for that matter, in 2013. Nor do"Islam animals" or repeatedly raped Greek women or Armenians.

Originally posted by kevcvs57
I'd say you know lots about the world but very little about yourself, maybe you perceive human nature as being deficient because it will not bend itself to your world view.

I am just expressing my view. If you feel it is an attempt on my part to "bend" you or to "bend" the the world, then that's for you. All you seem to be offering is argumentum ad populum.

Originally posted by kevcvs57
I would be more emotionally involved in the deaths of two people in my street than ten in the next town, now all I have to do is extrapolate from there.

What we extrapolate from there is that you apparently think "common humanity" is demonstrated by being more upset about 400 dead in My Lai than countless millions dead in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Charles Manson's victims weren't living in your street, just as the 400 dead in My Lai weren't living in your street.

Originally posted by FMF
As far as I am concerned, Indonesia - or my 'geography' - has nothing to do with American fascination with Charles Manson in 1970 or, for that matter, in 2013. Nor do"Islam animals" or repeatedly raped Greek women or Armenians.

You do realise that it is mostly non Americans like yourself that you are debating, the 'Tate murders' were big news because they struck a chord with the western psyche of that time and still resonate today as did the Vietnam war which to a much larger degree defined a generation in terms of it's opposition to that war.

The impactful / interesting thing about the Manson family is that they seemed to come from the ranks of that generation and were inevitably juxtaposed against the 'Summer of Love' which captured the zeitgeist three years earlier.

Originally posted by FMF
What we extrapolate from there is that you apparently think "common humanity" is demonstrated by being more upset about 400 dead in My Lai than countless millions dead in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Charles Manson's victims weren't living in your street, just as the 400 dead in My Lai weren't living in your street.

In the absence of a counter arguement I guess obtuseness will have to suffice.

Originally posted by kevcvs57
The impactful / interesting thing about the Manson family is that they seemed to come from the ranks of that generation and were inevitably juxtaposed against the 'Summer of Love' which captured the zeitgeist three years earlier.

Sounds like proto-Jerry Springer to me. You seem to be opposed to me being unimpressed by it all.

Originally posted by kevcvs57
You seem convinced that we get the news they want us to have, I am not sure we do not get the news we want.

This has more or less been my point all along. People in 1970 "wanted" news about Manson more than they "wanted" news about countless hundreds of thousands of people being deliberately killed.

Originally posted by kevcvs57
I thought you were posting from Indonesia, sorry, or is it that your possible geographic based bias is not up for discussion?

"Geographic based bias"? Vietnam is more or less as far away from me as Iraq is from you.

Originally posted by FMF
I am just expressing my view. If you feel it is an attempt on my part to "bend" you or to "bend" the the world, then that's for you. All you seem to be offering is argumentum ad populum.

You are offering nothing but another sermon from mount FMF. I will try to put it as simply as I can, Human beings invest emotionally more in relation to how close they feel to any given victim, couple that with mind boggling numbers involved in the Vietnam war and you give us some idea of how upset we need to be in order to avoid the charge of being dehumanised.

Why do you think that we should be more upset about the death of a million people than one individual person, the million people are all individual 's but we cannot be a million more times upset, or can we?

Originally posted by kevcvs57
Perhaps it was the fact that these murders were committed up close and personal by villains who also had faces that we could identify with.

Didn't the American military personnel in Indochina have faces that Americans "could identify with", faces just like Charlie Manson?