Eliminationist Rhetoric
Jan. 12th, 2006 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI complain about the way the Right speaks of the left.
Then I see things like this:
That, my friends is one of a line of products (coffee mugs to baseball caps, hoodies and softball shirts) all sporting the same thing. I look at that, and wonder where the idea that such a thing is acceptable to wear in public might come from. It's right up there with Liberal Hunting Permits
For more on that, see this piece of Orcinus.
People will defend this, say it's meant as a joke (never mind that when the tables are turned and someone on the Left tries to make a point in the same vein, and obviously; to me at least, in a satiric vein, the people who were saying Liberals ought to be strung up like, "strange fruit," are all of a sudden calling out the FBI (Dean Esmay which was a response to this. The contextual post of Sadly No can be seen here)
But it isn't, it's part and parcel of an environment of active hatred. One person, maybe a whack-job. A lot of people, might be a group of whack jobs, but when the people they are attacking make up a large group, and the people who have bully pulpits are some of those who do the inciting, and those who claim this is the fruit of a few bad apples don't take those bad apples to task, in fact continue to pay them large sums of money and give them access to the airwaves... then I must assume that, at the very least they don't care if one group is actively inciting another to go out and abuse the other. I might even be justified in thinking they wanted such a thing to happen.
Perhaps they think it will intimidate the oppostition. Perhaps they actually want (as Coulter said) some liberal to be killed, so the rest of us will know it can happen and shut up.
For a list of those who've said such things, and the things they've said (and this politicians in office, former politicians, religious leaders, pundits and and the like. These are names. People who can't really be brushed under the rug with, "nobody listens to them," because people do; and in the millions. Some of the people who listen to them think them worth electing as Representatives and Senators (one of my favorites, if that's the right word) is Phil Grahm saying, "We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." and not in some back room, but in an interview with Mother Jones.
Or this gem from John Derbyshire, "Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed."
- National Review, 02-15-01
For more, go to Paperweight's Fair Shot
Then I see things like this:
That, my friends is one of a line of products (coffee mugs to baseball caps, hoodies and softball shirts) all sporting the same thing. I look at that, and wonder where the idea that such a thing is acceptable to wear in public might come from. It's right up there with Liberal Hunting Permits
For more on that, see this piece of Orcinus.
People will defend this, say it's meant as a joke (never mind that when the tables are turned and someone on the Left tries to make a point in the same vein, and obviously; to me at least, in a satiric vein, the people who were saying Liberals ought to be strung up like, "strange fruit," are all of a sudden calling out the FBI (Dean Esmay which was a response to this. The contextual post of Sadly No can be seen here)
But it isn't, it's part and parcel of an environment of active hatred. One person, maybe a whack-job. A lot of people, might be a group of whack jobs, but when the people they are attacking make up a large group, and the people who have bully pulpits are some of those who do the inciting, and those who claim this is the fruit of a few bad apples don't take those bad apples to task, in fact continue to pay them large sums of money and give them access to the airwaves... then I must assume that, at the very least they don't care if one group is actively inciting another to go out and abuse the other. I might even be justified in thinking they wanted such a thing to happen.
Perhaps they think it will intimidate the oppostition. Perhaps they actually want (as Coulter said) some liberal to be killed, so the rest of us will know it can happen and shut up.
For a list of those who've said such things, and the things they've said (and this politicians in office, former politicians, religious leaders, pundits and and the like. These are names. People who can't really be brushed under the rug with, "nobody listens to them," because people do; and in the millions. Some of the people who listen to them think them worth electing as Representatives and Senators (one of my favorites, if that's the right word) is Phil Grahm saying, "We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." and not in some back room, but in an interview with Mother Jones.
Or this gem from John Derbyshire, "Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past - I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble - recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin's penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an 'enemy of the people.' The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, 'clan liability.' In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished 'to the ninth degree': that is, everyone in the offender's own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed."
- National Review, 02-15-01
For more, go to Paperweight's Fair Shot
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 02:20 am (UTC)what country do these people think they live in?
Date: 2006-01-13 02:58 am (UTC)For all that I hate conservatives, good Lord, I would never advocate that we declare open season on them. Coulter, well, she calculatingly says whatever will shock liberals the most and make the dittoheads cheer. I don't think she even takes herself seriously, just her career. I ignore her. But Gramm? Sheesh.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 04:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 05:18 am (UTC)Put NRA and ACLU tags on it too, just to make their heads explode.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 05:27 am (UTC)With ACLU stickers! Genius!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 05:53 am (UTC)Which is why I'm an anarchist. As long as there's a regime, somebody's gonna be out of favor with it. But my personal idealistic wickywacky aside, If y'all would just strap up like folks have been telling you for decades, this kinda shit might cool off. Why do you think when your side's in office, they're sorta careful about who they publicly rag on? Coz the hard right's heavily armed. Waco-style stunts will fly once in a while, but if everytime you step on somebody you get shot in the toe, eventually you run out of toes. Or, in this case, you run out of cops willing to follow orders. And, it get exponentially harder to keep it off the front page. Bleeds = Leads, yaknow. Bleeding feds make even bigger headlines.
The reason the antiabortion folks feel free to shoot at clinics and assassinate docs is because nobody shoots back.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 06:13 am (UTC)The Left is "careful of who it steps on" because we actually have respect for difference of opinion.
I, for one, am "strapped up". The Right can fantasize about "Rising up" and taking on the Left but 1: There are a lot more armed members of the left side of the aisle than most people think and two, more of those than most people think have been in the Army/Marines (take a look at the enrollment figures of Congress and the Senate... public service is public service) and that translates to a more effective group of people.
The anti-abortion folks feel free to shoot at people because, absent war in the streets, anyone who goes off the deep end can do so.
Barring an actual break (and I mean of the social contract) those who rise up will face the fate of Nat Turner, John Brown and the Whiskey Farmers and followers of Shay. The Feds have something the rebels won't, training, materiél and a willingness to walk in harm's way. These days most of the Army also has practice.
What they are doing when the trot out shit like this, and when they shoot talk-radio hosts and doctors is trying to intimidate people. When people allow this kind of crap to go unchecked they think they have real support, as opposed to apathy.
Hitler came to power with something like 12 percent of the vote. If more of the silent majority had opened their mouth, the world might have been spared a lot of grief.
To take a page from the history of AIDS, "Silence = Death"
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 06:37 am (UTC)Yes, I'm being sarcastic. It's what I have instead of a personality.
As for The Left is "careful of who it steps on" because we actually have respect for difference of opinion, you must know different Leftists. As a member of a political minority that gets in the neck from both sides of the fence, that respect doesn't seem to extend very far most of the time. Folks busy stabbing each other over who gets to wear the hob-nailed boot this time around seem to take it so personally when somebody suggests that maybe the boot's not the best way to organize society.
As for the Right "rising up", they don't have to now. They're already on top. They've got the guns, and a bunch of folks who promised to obey orders, and not all (or even most) of those folks seem to be able to recognize the difference between legal and illegal orders. Yeah, there's you and a couple other folks I know of, but how many of your fellow soldiers would say "Sir, I respectfully decline to obey that order becaue I believe it to be illegal" when it came to the real deal? Most of the grunts I know (and I know quite a few, current and ex-) would just shut up and soldier. That's what the training's for.
I dunno, maybe I'm just cynical. Studying history will do that to you.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 06:50 am (UTC)As for what would happen in an uprising, the gov't is going to do what it always does, say the uprising is rebellion.
Barring a complete break (a la the CSA) the uprising will be quelled.
At present there isn't the territorial unnity to cause such a break to have traction, without borders the only things that can happen are devolution (and the result of the civil war in Lebanon was anarchy, which was my point, anarchy is only present in absence of gov't, and not something people actually want, but rather something they endure, it leads to Hobbes war of all against all, and Tennyson's "nature, red in tooth and claw) or quelling.
Given the rhetoric on the right, should they actually try to kill all the "liberals" the result will be Stalin, or Lebanon. In either case they shant get what they expect, and a lot of blood will be shed, on all sides.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 07:16 am (UTC)Heh. Probably not. Didn't help, though.
Given the rhetoric on the right, should they actually try to kill all the "liberals" the result will be Stalin, or Lebanon. In either case they shant get what they expect, and a lot of blood will be shed, on all sides.
Hey, that sounds familiar...
Problem is, a fair amount of the folks in the top rungs right now are awfully fond of the notion that will alone is needed to achieve goals, and actual results don't matter. Some folks will just keep grabbing that electified muffin, no matter how many times they get zapped. When it's other folks getting zapped, well...why even think about stopping?
As for the social breakdown = anarchy, you might wanna listen to a certain masked insurrectionist, currently being played by Hugo Weaving: "This isn't anarchy, Evie. This is chaos." Lotta folks conflate the two. Society is not government, and can (and has, on many many occasions) get along just fine without it.
But I'm kinda derailing your thread. Sorry about that. In short, I agree with your initial thesis that armed liberals is a positive social good, and should be encouraged. I would also probably buy one of those t-shirts, especially if you make one with a IWW tag on it too.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 01:47 pm (UTC)I would love to know about some of these instances. Imo anarchy would inevitably lead to the bigger, meaner and better-armed guys running everything, human nature being the aggro monkey thing it is.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 03:00 pm (UTC)Examples please. Nation states, perhaps, can be done without, but the social contract <i>is</i>government. It may be small, but lack of rules/laws, is chaos. Where there is no limit to what someone can do, someone will act without limit. That will spread.
And, for all that it may seem that way, I am not advocating, per se, armed liberals (though I am not against it). What I am arguing against is the idea that the Right is no worse than the Left when it comes to eliminationist rhetoric.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-01-14 09:07 am (UTC)I think we're running into the classic term-definition problem that plagues human discourse. Are you talking about the "social contract1" between people that keeps them from killing each other when nobody's looking? Or are you talking about the "social contract2" between ordinary people and other people claiming to be their representatives and/or rulers that says "We'll do what you say, and if you hurt us, we'll ask you to stop, but not too loudly"? Because, for me, social contract1 is society, and social contract2 is government. Breaking down social contract1 results in chaos and destruction, usually replaced with whatever form of social ordering can reforge the social bonds needed to sustain society-at-large quickest. Unfortunately, the quickest solutions are rarely the best ones for the long term, and often people stop there. Breaking down social contract2, on the other hand, can (and often does) strengthen social contract1, because the manifestations of social contract2 tend to usurp the functions of social contract1 to the detriment of both sets of social assumptions.
More later, when it stops being as busy here at work. Thanks for the dialogue, though. Explaining my thoughts to other folks who disagree with me helps me to organize them more effectively.
Also, as far as What I am arguing against is the idea that the Right is no worse than the Left when it comes to eliminationist rhetoric goes, yeah, probably. The Right has a tendency towards more heavyhanded rhetoric than the Left, at least in the last several decades. Some of that's the influence of Fundie Xtianity on Hard Right culture, and some of it's due to the Hard Left getting pushed out of the political equation by the political managers who are running the DNC and most of the Left's political apparatus. The folks who push the Left political machine don't seem to, for the most part, believe in anything except getting into power and staying there, which tends to deflate harder rhetorical stances.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-17 10:22 pm (UTC)Lets take the first example you gave.
For a given group of people what they can do to others without social repurcussion varies, and it varies in relation to the understandings of the greater polity they live in.
Anglo-Saxons (like most Germanic people) had no legal problem with someone killing someone else out of hand, so long as the killer paid the price for the loss (with lesser costs if the damage wasn't fatal).
But if they killed someone in secret, hiding that they had done it, that was murder, and if discovered the murderer was an outlaw, and there was no price to be paid for killing him.
In Iceland it was rude, but not wrong, to kill a man's slave because one was angered with him.
In the South it was perfectly in keeping with the social contract (both of them) to abuse blacks for being, "uppity." If they go too uppity one could arrange to have them lynched. The greater social contract of the Nation was, nominally, against it.
It happens that at least once the larger social contract led to the Supreme Court taking initial jurisdiction of a criminal case (the only time it has ever done so) because they ordered a stay, pending appeal, of a conviction for rape.
Without the greater contract, things like lynching, and other demonizations of "the other" have nothing, other than the brute force of people acting in concert, to prevent it.
Look at the lifestyles in the high valley of New Guinea, where warfare was endemic, and no one dared travel outside the bounds of the land controlled by thier tribe, and perhaps the lands of friendly neighbors. To cross the whole valley was inconceivable.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-01-17 11:23 pm (UTC)As
As <ljuser =tnh> would say, show your work.
My understanding, and my experience, is that breaking the larger contract leads to a destruction of the smaller, save for a very small group which people can trust implicitly. Anyone outside that group is fair game.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 06:53 am (UTC)Crazy(and not-normally gun toting, but...)Soph
(sorry for the brief double comment - morning coffee hadn't kicked in yet, and I put up the wrong number)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 05:27 am (UTC)"Liberal hunting permit? Bring it on, cracker. I'm the worst type of liberal -- a liberal with guns...."
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 05:37 am (UTC)"Why do neocons hate America?"
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 12:18 pm (UTC)Seriously, I look at this stuff and I just don't get it. Why does America now have this hate-filled polarization in its politics?
The 'polarization' is between two poles that are about 6 inches apart.
How many Americans want a revolution? How many want an end to capitalism and its replacement with (socialism/fascism/etc)? And electorally, how much substantive difference is there? A bunch of single issues (abortion, gun control etc) and some technical differences over regulating individuals vs businesses, where to draw the line between helping the needy and requiring personal responsibiity, etc.
All real enough and meriting many hours of argument down the coffee house. But talk about shooting each other? (OK, talk from one side about shooting the other, where the other is in principle opposed to talking about shooting anyone.) W? T? F?
Within living memory, the Spanish had quite an internal political disagreement. Anarchism, communism, fascism were all on the table. Should the Church help dictate policy or should it be destroyed altogether? Plus all options in the middle.
When Franco relieved the siege of the military academy in Toledo, the gutters ran red with blood. Can we really imagine the gutters of Toledo, Ohio, running red with blood?
Certain politicians and media figures have been pumping up rhetoric to further their own careers (and to cover up their own weaknesses and the emptiness of their policies). OK, this has always been done. But it seems that the irresponsibility and inflammatory nature of this rhetoric is at heights we haven't seen since the 19th century.
Or maybe I'm overstating the whole thing. This kind of furore seems to come and go in cycles. Maybe our problem isn't one of politics but of tastelessness.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 03:09 pm (UTC)I wish that were the case. It isn't. There are lots of social issues the two parties (if not the two sides; but that's a horse of a different color) aren't that far apart on.
There are a lot more where they are worlds apart. The power of the executive, the war in Iraq, the existence of a social safety net (and who should pay for same) the presence of state religion in everyday life (and conformity with same) privacy, equality (of sex, race and expression; be it sexual, political or artistic).
The Right is selling fear. The brown/gay/pagan/athiest/feminist/poor/other are going to steal your women/sons/virtue/jobs/religion/power/etc. and you have to stop them.
Add the traitor/baby-killer/evil meme to it and the folks who are afraid begin to lash out. They have threatened to kill judges, they have killed doctors, and gov't emloyees, and infants and women, and men, and homosexuals, and jews, and blacks, and....
They are afraid, and the people who shape their opinions, people who want power; all to themselves, are fueling those fears, for venal reasons (some after all, only do it because it makes them a lot of money, which is it's own power... the power to be eccentric, and to claim that silly little things like a drug bust only happened because the accused was rich/famous/conservative).
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-01-15 01:22 pm (UTC)I think that the main problem is stated in your last paragraph, above. On the one hand, as
On the other hand, I can't help suspecting that this isn't the first time in the Republic's history that we've been in such a situation. All the other times it proved to be a bad idea by the people pushing it, too.
OT: Brigadier Aywin-Foster's article
Date: 2006-01-13 02:16 pm (UTC)Re: OT: Brigadier Aywin-Foster's article
Date: 2006-01-14 01:44 am (UTC)My relations with the people of Iraq were successful. Very successful. And I have to say that our success what largely in part to the fact that my team had only one "Real American" in it. The rest were of Hispanic blood, first or second generation, including myself.
When we dealt with the Iraqis, we were not cowboys, nor were we racist, or elitists. We did not have that false macho bravado that it is displayed by many "Real Americans". We were respectful of their culture, we understood where they were coming from and treated them as our equals, because they were.
I felt like I was a guest in their country, not an invader. I ate their food, drank their water, and sipped their yogurt. I washed my hands, broke bread and cried with them. And in the end, I go to bed with a smile, and I wake up with the same smile in the morning (or afternoon, whenever I wake up).
So yes, I have to say that the common American soldiers (specially their commanders) have a little bit to learn on how to treat others. But that is not because of the military culture, it is because of the American culture.
We go to other countries, speaking only English, and expect that country to be another America, with steaks, orange juice, McDonald's in every corner and a freaking Starbucks next to it. Granted that it is happening in many other nations (our cultural invasion), but for the most part, countries keep their cultures and their ways of life.
So yes. Americans (not just the American Fighting Wo/Man) are seen as arrogant, spoiled, insensitive pricks.
Can you imagine how insensitive you can be when you have a gun, power, and much rather be somewhere else?
Re: OT: Brigadier Aywin-Foster's article
Date: 2006-01-14 05:03 pm (UTC)Re: OT: Brigadier Aywin-Foster's article
Date: 2006-01-14 06:43 pm (UTC)Have also been thinking about what killslowly said about American culture, and it suddenly struck me that it was a British officer making the original critique. I love the English but, sorry to say, I wouldn't really call them the most culturally sensitive people in Europe. The former squaddies I have met have been, almost to a man, supremacists of 'Englishness' or 'Scottishness' if not of race, and this is generally the image of the British Army I get from the Brits I know.
So if the British Army is able to behave with greater cultural sensitivity in a counterinsurgency environment than the American, it must be something in the training or culture of the British Army that is overriding the inclination of many of the soldiers, because it certainly isn't due to a greater 'multicultural' outlook of the British soldiers themselves.
Re: OT: Brigadier Aywin-Foster's article
Date: 2006-01-17 04:59 am (UTC)Re: OT: Brigadier Aywin-Foster's article
Date: 2006-01-17 10:26 pm (UTC)They have, however, from N. Ireland, and a dedication to peace-keeping missions, developed a decent doctrine for handling things like this.
They also, though it sounds odd, perhaps, have a higher willingness to accept casualties, which means they are willing to go out in ways which make them seem more personable (wearing berets and walking, rather than helmets and riding).
But they also do things like break into jails to bust out guys who were breaking local laws, so they are far from perfect.
TK
Re: OT: Brigadier Aywin-Foster's article
Date: 2006-01-19 02:04 am (UTC)When we were not properly supported by our unit, the Brits opened up their arms (and mess hall particularly) to my team, and we were well fed.
But the British Army is composed of human being, just like any other service.
The British have a complex very similar to the U.S. Marine Corps. They have a long tradition, high values, and honorable service. These components, when added with time and suffering, tend to make people think they are elite, better than the rest. Sometimes its true, but for the most part its not. It is also a complex shared by the European Community (EU). They are older, wiser, more educated, diplomatic blah, blah, blah. We Americans are arrogant, impulsive, cowboys and religious.
They have their good guys, they have their mediocre ones and they have their bad apples. This is human nature and it will never change. Utopia is not around the corner and until then, we will have to work with what chance and environment places within our grasps.
Terry mentions the willingness to accept more casualties. I think the British Army has a more "romantic" way of looking at conflict and war. I hate to use that word, thinking that it is outdated and crude. Our own officers probably had more of a willingness to accept more casualties, when it was a gentleman's call (or duty) to lead the destitute and ignorant masses into the fray (kind of like today?).
Now, we are less willing (or less romantic) because people are not that stupid anymore. Granted, I assume many of you will take a bullet for a friend, or jump on top of a grenade to protect the team, but other than that, we are very selfish, we like our skin and bones and we tend to think about surviving.
Commanding officers sometimes have to make a tough decision when leading their elements. "Should I commit a platoon to certain slaugther, while I maneuver the rest of the company in a flanking formation to annihilate the enemy". Granted, if he/she succeeds, he gets a medal or two. If he fails, he might die, but I can guarantee that many of his troops will die too.
Wow. I forgot where I was going with this.
Yeah. People are people, no matter where they are from. And people also have a centrist view on things, a ethnocentric way of understanding things, so it will take time for the US to learn how to deal with other cultures. Remember: European countries might be more successful, because they had to deal with their colonies. When you are (or were) an imperialist/expansionist kingdom, you had better learn how to deal with the natives.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-13 10:50 pm (UTC)If you want to talk familial taint, I've got a better suggestion..... *sigh*
Liberal Propagandists
Date: 2006-01-14 01:30 am (UTC)http://www.cafepress.com/votevotevote/417238
But then again, I used to wear Che Guevara's face plastered over t-shirts I hand made. Never mind that every time somebody wears the poster child for Marxism-Leninism on his/her chest, he/she reminds me of the millions of people communism murdered in the name of "equality and freedom".
But the best t-shirts and bumper stickers I've seen, are the ones that say: "I support the troops, but not the war" or any variation thereof. The only reason people say crap like that, its because it is "politically correct" or in vogue. They are to chicken shit to express their real feelings, like the progressive people of the 70s. At least those a**holes had courage, spitting at people and beating them up.
Terry, this is the lamest thing I've seen you blog. The lamest I tell you. then again, I am replying so that makes me lame too. Sorry. Some jackass redneck wearing a t-shirt with a donkey and crosshairs is pathetic, childish, sectarian, evil, stupid, or whatever words you choose to label these people. It is not a representation of our democratic process, its people or what out country stands for. They have hunting permits for Terrorists also. Is that also a bad thing? That does not mean that the same rednecks who plaster that permit on their cars are going to be courageous, join a service and go hunt tewowists.
Please, make a t-shirt about "Liberal with a gun" it expresses your real feelings and who you are. While you are at it, make me one that says: "I hunted Terrorists, while spreading Democracy". You can wear it too. (^_^)
Re: Liberal Propagandists
Date: 2006-01-17 10:35 pm (UTC)Then again, Maia has had people try to run her car into a concrete pillar because it has window placards they didn't like (the guy leaning out the passenger side window, screaming at her while he gave her the finger made her pretty sure it wasn't just clumsy driving.
When (to tread on Godwin's waters) Hitler was rising to power, there were those who said he was going to maltreat the Jews. Most people said, "Oh, no. That sort of thing isn't done anymore, that's just idiots talking, the Gov't would never allow things like that."
Theres a shithead in Canada (of all places) who spews this shit. He says how "awful" it would be if someone were to go to the house of "x" and kill him. After all, he went on, it only took me five minutes to find out his address at, "1234 Main Street" so someone who had more violence in him than I do might do something terrible.
This was said after he'd gone on, at length, about how this person was a miserable excuse for a human being, a traitor to the United States (this Canuck is very confused, let me tell you) and ought to be shot, or hanged, or just beaten to death.
The people on the fringes have always been violent, be they The Weather Underground, or the idiots who killed the talk-jock in Colorado. The difference is, the people on the Right are making it easier for the fringe types to become mainstream (see Arnie and his praise of "The Minutemen").
TK
Re: Liberal Propagandists
Date: 2006-01-17 10:36 pm (UTC)I can't speak for all of them, but the one's I know are sincere. The NOW Chapter in Lompoc has a weekly protest of the War.
Every six weeks, or so, they get together afterwards and mail out about 60 care packages.
There's a church group in Los Osos that does the same.
TK
Re: Liberal Propagandists
Date: 2006-01-17 10:41 pm (UTC)Yes. Because it feeds on stereotype.
Trivia Question, who has perpetrated more terrorism in the US, Islamic types, leftish types, or rightish types?
The Islamic type are at the bottom.
Are the people with those "terrorist hunting permits going to think Eric Rudolph looks suspicious, and shoot him? Did they think it was a white guy who blew up the Murraugh Building in Oklahoma?
What about the guys in Texas who were trying to deliver bombs loaded with sodium cyanide. They were born again Christians.
The Weather Underground, they were suburban kids.
But the folks with those "permits (all number, 9-11) are planning to worry about brown folks, and other, "un-American" types. It's the rhetoric of demonising. It lets them practice bigotry in public.
It's wrong.
TK
Re: Liberal Propagandists
Date: 2006-01-19 02:34 am (UTC)When you say who perpetrated more. Are you asking number of operations? Number of casualties?
If you say number of operations, then I must say that fringe right has perpetrated more operations. These include the operation rescue, shooting doctors, firebombing abortion clinics etc.
Probably followed by fringe left with ALF, PETA, driving spikes into threes to prevent deforestation etc.
Also do you mean currently? or historically? Currently, the McVeigh types are probably in the lead. Historically? Maybe the WU and BP were pretty busy.
When you say terrorism, do you include criminal activities that terrorize the populace? If you include that, then I guess gangs (apolitical groups) might take the lead.
But if you mean numbers of casualties, I think that the Islamo-fascists are in the lead. I do not have statistics, so I cannot back up what I think is correct, and my mind has been changed many times with a valid argument (you know that). New York, Washington D.C. Africa, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran... many operations against our interests with many, many casualties.
Terrorist Hunting Permits (along with Liberal ones) are a way to vent. Like the protest signs against the war, these permits (and t-shirts) are a way for people to support their causes without actually doing anything about it. Like magnetic yellow ribbons in cars, they do not a thing to actually alleviate the situation. We are such a fascist/racist nation, that after 9-11, maybe one person died from revenge (and he wasn't even an Arab).
Want to hear something funny? My roommate is from Iraq. He can travel freely within our borders, be gainfully employed, enjoy the freedoms our country stands for, and even joke with me (the fascist army guy) about how fucked up things are in Iraq, and how badly we are handling things.
Besides the morally superior elite in Europe, I find it very difficult to name countries that would allow something like this to take place.
So, we are not as bad as many people think. We could be better, but overall, we are not a bad people. I cannot say that about everybody (some people in the administration come to mind), but I can say it with certainty that the majority of the "American" people, are pretty squared away.
My two cents plus a quarter.
Re: Liberal Propagandists
Date: 2006-01-19 02:18 am (UTC)I remember the first demonstration I saw after returning from over there. Broadway and Brand in Glendale, CA. Nice group of people. Expressing their feelings and opinions in a free environment (I kept thinking how this would have turned out if it was during Saddam's regime, in Baghdad).
A nice old lady had a big sign that said: "Support Our Troops". I kind of giggled. I approached her to thank her for such a great sign. We chatted a while, she found out where I've been, and I asked her what organization she belonged to. I also asked what steps were they taking to "Support Our Troops". She said that demonstrating against the Bush Regime was all she needed/wanted to do. I asked her how many letters to the troops she or her organizations have written, how many care packages they've sent, etc...
What I am saying with this is: sitting in a corner with a placard will accomplish nothing. Be it a right wing loonie or a left wing psycho, without action, nothing happens. Granted, a placard shows dissent, it spreads the message, it shows unity. But in the end, its just the egoists way, a way that makes you feel all warm and fussy, like you accomplished something, but only shows how arrogant you truly are, so sophisticated and more in tune with whats going on.
I am not saying that the troops need to be showered with care packages and letters of approval. We have the system for that (the military and our families). But if they are going to politicize my profession, then at least show some effort.
So it is refreshing to hear that these people in Lompoc put their money where their mouth is (same thing with the church in Los Osos).