“Waving the bloody shirt”
It’s an expression I didn’t hear until a few years ago. It’s an old southern slave-owners complaint. It refers to Benjamin Franklin Butler who, while he was addressing Congress, displayed the shirt of a so-called carpetbagger who had been whipped bloody by the Ku Klux Klan. Southerners across the country were outraged by his show of the methods of the KKK. Their attitude was mostly “We didn’t do it”, “Maybe we did do it but you’ll never prove it”, “he had it coming” and finally “what are you going to about it?” It’s a defense of brutality and a mockery of those caught unaware or unable to defend themselves from being whipped like a disobedient slave. It is in short, a very ugly turn of a phrase… that Rod Dreher chooses to evoke in his column in the New York Times. Waving the Rainbow Flag Does he even realize that his phrasing is repulsive to anyone who thinks racism is a blight on this country? (Spoiler: no) I suppose with Trump’s popularity surging on a platform of naked racism, it was only a matter of time before older and cruder defenses of racism were employed by people at the intersection of religious fundamentalism and reactionary politics. I mean, just look at the breathtaking dishonesty of this framing:
The Times took a similar line in its lead editorial today, smearing G.O.P. politicians opposed to various L.G.B.T. rights laws with the blood of the Orlando dead.
This escalates the culture war to an openly religious conflict, in the sense that neither side can back down without compromising what it holds sacred. And it turns L.G.B.T. advocates into heretic hunters who persecute thought criminals by demonizing dissent.
This isn’t “smearing G.O.P. politicians… with the blood of the Orlando dead” this is pointing out that the hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric regularly spoken, printed and disseminated from the religious right has deadly real-world consequences. This is not an attack on religion. This is an attack on bigots who wrap their bigotry in religion. The heretic hunters aren’t LGBTQ people and their allies, the heretic hunters are the same hateful opportunistic weirdos that see no problem exploiting the most hateful messages of any scripture they can find to get power by stepping over a mound of corpses. If Rod Dreher doesn’t like the way that looks, he should really stop looking in mirrors.
Oh, he spends a paragraph saying Christians have sometimes been cruel to gay people… in the past, like a long time ago, and despite the fact that gay people are “broken” they are created in the “image of God”. But he jumps right back into his retrograde theology and morality as if it were as if “the meaning of sex and marriage within the cosmic order” were spelled out in letters of fire a thousand feet tall on the side of Mount Everest instead of being arrived at through successive translations of ancient manuscripts allegedly dictated to mythological heroes whose existence can charitably be described as “unproven”.
and of course he defends his point of view with this twaddle:
But I strongly reject the oft-heard accusations from the Left that opposition to whatever identity-politics goal it pursues can only be based in hate. It’s a crude and illiberal attempt to suppress dissent.
So, just what are the reasons LGBTQ people shouldn’t be able to live free from the fear of being targeted for mass murder for their identity? Are they being targeted out of regret, or jealousy, or envy? Does it make their murder better if the motive wasn’t hate? Does the possibility that they were murdered from boredom or ennui or post-thanksgiving-turkey sleepiness make them any less dead? What motivation is behind Rod Dreher’s depraved indifference to the mass murder of dozens of LGBTQ people? What motivation other than hatred could one possibly have for denying LGBTQ people the chance to live their lives with dignity and respect and free from the fear of senseless murder? I know the answer, it’s ‘love’. It’s the particular sick kind of love that fundamentalists have for people who suffer. It’s the ‘love’ that says they won’t lift a finger to help because the poor and downtrodden are going to a reward in heaven. That doesn’t sound like love to me.
As Madonna once said, we are living in a material world, Rod. Spiritual explanations might make a Ghostbusters plot, but they cut no ice in a court of law or in a scientific laboratory. I cannot vouch for their presence in Rod’s daily life, he certainly acts like a god bothering and god-bothered scold. But he might want to bring a microphone to the next one of his little chats with god, and see if it picks up anything besides his half of the conversation.
Because there’s lots of good Christian people, that don’t think the good news boils down to “purge the unrighteous”. I was raised Lutheran, and they at least had the good grace to be embarrassed about the part they played in the 30 Years War.
I would invite Rod, as diplomatically as I can, to look up the definition of “oppression”. Because “Not getting to make the lives of LGBTQ people as miserable as possible” isn’t it. Backing up the freedom of LGBTQ people to fully participate in society with the force of law isn’t oppression. Daily reminding Rod Dreher that he acts just like he’s so deep in the closet he’s finding Christmas presents, isn’t oppression. It may be mean but but he deserves that and worse for the fetid bilge he regularly spills into the national discourse. And that really is as diplomatically as I can put it.
So, as long as Rod is complaining about people “waving the bloody shirt” we can be secure in our knowledge that Rod is more comfortable defending the KKK or in this case the institutionalized oppression and murder of LGBTQ people, than he is for actually fighting oppression.
Well said!
Memo to Republicans, Bible-thumpers and ammosexuals…
When your “brand” is hatred, violence, and MOAR GUNS, don’t be surprised if sane people think you’re a real @#$%& a-hole.
The real question is, why the fuck is the NY Times publishing Rod Dreher? Is Douthat insufficiently moral scold-y?
welcome back!
B^4 asks the real question:
I suspect it was the opposite, that the False Pope of New York*, Ross Cardinal Chunky Reese Witherspoon**, was too moral scold-y, in a way that even the editorial board of Even the Liberal New York Times*** couldn’t pretend had anything to do with the God of love and mercy.
* The real Pope of ALL New York, Idaho, and the Great Pacific Northwest, ordained by J.R. “Bob” Dobbs himself, is of course the Rev. Dr. Doktor (Mr. M.D.) David N. Meyer II, appliance-healings and acubeatings by appointment only.
** If you’re reading this, Ross: no, as a matter of fact, we will never let you live it down.
*** The paper’s official name as writ down in the SKOR by the Copyright Angels, as in “Even the Liberal New York Times thought Whitewater was more than just the smoke from two sticks being rubbed together.”
These come from the comments at Edroso’s place:
And yes, apparently that is an actual picture of Rockin’ Rod, believe it or not.
From a reddit thread in /r/Catholic, on the Florida Catholic Bishop who said “‘It is religion, including our own,’ that targets LGBT people”
I have long felt that the source of tension is not merely Church teaching on the matter but also what the LGBT population is demanding. What the Church can give (compassionate tolerance) is not what LGBT advocates demand as their right (acceptance and celebration).
[…]
LGBT is on a crusade to change hearts and minds,
(Yes, yes we are, I replied) and when what they wish to change is morality itself, it will naturally breed antagonism because people are under ideological attack
[…]
I desire to do my best to love them despite the fact that we disagree on nearly everything and are enemies when it comes to morality and truth. [My emphasis, of course.]
That’s right, rather than discuss his own Bishop’s statement, he explains why LGBT people are his enemies, and the reason is his ideology is under attack.
If he feels the need to defend his ideology, he might first start with defending it from the attacks of Protestantism, Reform Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Eastern Orthodoxy, and myriad others. Does he consider those other faiths to be attacks on his ideology? I’m guessing no.
He should be defending his ideology against the Episcopal Church USA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Presbyterian Church USA, certain UCC polities, the Quakers, Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Swedenborgian Church of North America, and a host of others who, by virtue of their endorsement or condoning of same sex marriages, are attacking his ideology. But he doesn’t resent those “attacks on his ideology” does he? Those people aren’t his enemies, are they?
I asked him why his ideology trumps our civil rights. He did not say.
Dreher is just spouting more of the same, “my ideology trumps your rights.”
From a reddit thread in /r/Catholic, on the Florida Catholic Bishop who said “‘It is religion, including our own,’ that targets LGBT people”
As someone who was raised religious and still has inclinations in that direction sometimes, I couldn’t have agreed more with that guy, and would fucking love to see more of this from *every* religion out there. (Many groups have already come around on this. But we still need more).
Bishop Lynch, who’s the Bishop of St. Petersburg (Florida), published his pretty strong declaration of Christianity’s, and religion’s in general, responsibility for anti-LGBTQ violence in The Washington Post http://wapo.st/1UgrCwy. Since we were alluding to him, I figured I’d include the original link.
His is the most publicized cry against this violence with the acceptance the religion has huge responsibility for it, though far from the only one. Every time I turn around my own bishop (Episcopal bishop from Chicago) has a new statement against the violence.
Rod Dreher needs to shut the fuck up. Period. LGBTQ people seeking rights is in no way a threat to religion unless your religious “integrity” is based entirely on whether “sinners” (as you see them) are wholly shunned and driven to secrecy, in which case your religion is crap and you need to shut the fuck up. Some important dude in Christianity, whose name escapes me, had some words about that bullshit. So Rod, go to Hell. Literally.
“This is not an attack on religion”.
Agreed. Orlando is an attack BY religion, the one Helmet conspicuously and cravenly declines to mention, the violently homophobic and misogynistic monotheism which remains cripplingly unreformed, unlike its Abrahamic cousins, the one with self-righteously murderous puritanical rigor in the decided ascendancy not decline worldwide. The one the late strip of ambulatory scum Mateen expressly cited as auspices for his slaughter spree against the “filthy ways of the West”.
We grown-ups do understand that pedagogical “Bad America, Bad West, Bad Israel” conditioning makes Muslims for liberals all-purpose, credentialed geopolitical social-justice victims, and that calling out Islam, even when–especially when–overwhelmingly justified, makes liberals first frightened and disoriented, then angrily defensive, and prone to minimizing, rationalizing, contextualizing, bitter blame-shifting and furious subject-changes. On with the cognitive dissonance!
Thanks, stink barrel, for reminding us liberals how much we love Muslims.
Now fuck off.
And thanks for reminding us that conservatives really do believe all terrorists are Muslims and all Muslims are terrorists. Now eat literally all the shit, starting with that turd you just extruded into the mashed potatoes, and die in a penis fire.
Hey, go easy on stinkbarrow, he’s got his bogeyman and he’s sticking with it. (Sun Tzu is laughing hysterically in his grave)
Here’s an idea stinky – fight your bogeyman by invading Korea or somewhere equally irrelevant to the massacre. The guy sold you that bogeyman would approve.
Pup, will that internets be carry-out or delivery?
I do, however, have a question for Inkberrow: Omar Mateen’s father, who is also a Muslim, condemned his son’s actions as un-Islamic. If your assumption that the Pulse massacre represents the true and only face of Islam is true, Siddique Mir Mateen must be lying, or deceived, or insane.
Here with an opposing view is a Communist Muslim follower of a radical Christian preacher:
“Groups like ISIL and al-Qaida want to make this war a war between Islam and America, or between Islam and the West. They want to claim that they are the true leaders of over a billion Muslims around the world who reject their crazy notions. They want us to validate them by implying that they speak for those billion-plus people, that they speak for Islam. That’s their propaganda, that’s how they recruit. And if we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims with a broad brush, and imply that we are at war with an entire religion, then we are doing the terrorists’ work for them.”
So dropped the mic, and the countryside did shake with that feedback.
That’s what I get for editing on the fly. The question, I think, was something like “Which one represents the true face of Islam?” Which is kind of like “Who represents the true face of Christianity, Jimmy Carter or Ralph Reed?”
Some guy:
Your handle and your content match nicely.
Pup:
Why don’t you tell the Orlando victim families that sharia homophobia is just a “bogeyman”? Or are you actually positing Mateen’s conflicted relationship with his creed is no more causally material to the slaughter as him being an avid bowler? Just as you, no hypocrite, we all know, loudly urged no causal connection be drawn between abortionist assassin Scott Roeder and the Christian fundamentalist climates of hate which arguably inspired him? Silly ostrich! Tricks is for kids!
Austin:
Best go wheedling to the site moderators now for protective censorship from Discouraging Words, like you feebs did on the trans validation psychodrama thread. That way you come out a Winner!
Meanwhile, Mateen’s father is likely equal parts lying, deceived and insane. He’s a son-loathing sharia Muslim, after all, and that’s before we even get to taqiyya. And that conflicted loathing existed well before his son sought grandiose, blame-shifting atonement for succumbing to the West’s “filthy ways”, as did jihadist imam Anwar Al-Awlaki (prostitution arrests), Nidal “Fort Hood” Hasan (strip clubs, HIV fears), the Tsarnaevs (pot and women), Osama himself (Western porn), the Seattle gay nightclub arsonist (duh), and the Portland, Oregon holiday tree and Detroit underwear bombers (campus sex & drug jags), and on and on. Maybe a pattern of blame-shifting, hateful expiation? That who these most violent swine are, and they are an all too frequent product of their unreformed patriarchal creed. Pulse Nightclub, or German girls in shorts—how dare they (the gays and girls)??!!
Since you asked, the true face of Islam is, for good and decent liberals, anyway, what President Obama says it is. He’s now a self-appointed authority on what counts as “true” Islam and “real” Muslims”. Naturally, his own powerful self-identification as Christian was sufficient as such, and how dare anyone question otherwise?! But the self-identification of angry but observant Muslim fundamentalists, on the other hand, is somehow not dispositive as far as the Theologian in Chief. They’re only “using” Islam for their own “personal” ends, he prates– (typically the advancement and dignity of Islam., but…). Still, he ordered bin Laden’s sharia compliant funeral to avoid offending real Muslims, you see, the ones Certainly Not hothouse-prone to hateful, aggrieved religious violence. How insulting to suggest otherwise? They”re the warm fuzzy “Not ALL Muslims…” we love to hear about! But if we offend them, you see, they might suddenly radicalize too into, er, ersatz, or former, Muslims like bin Laden, or peripheral, happenstance Muslims, like Mateen. Bottom line is the West owes Islam an explanation, apology and accomodation in general based on the geopolitical status quo, not the other way around.
America’s in good hands with the Big-Brained, Americans First prez and his sanctimoniously stupid fellow travelers…
Shorter inkberrow (spellcheck suggests “ink error”): because Omar Mateen was a Muslim, Eric Rudolph is no big deal.
Smarter Big Bad Bald Bastard:
Given (admittedly valid) liberal “climate of religious hate” sermons after the likes of Eric Rudolph and Scott Roeder, liberals have got a lot of gall tapdancing around Mateen’s express Muslim-centered motivation for killing ten times the number at once And there are a thousand violent Muslim fundamentalists, recent past and present, for every creepy Judeo-Christian colleague, in the States alone.
By the by, anyone seen Southern Poverty Law Center spokesweasel Mark Potok on teevee since Orlando? Gee, he’s ubiquitous after events like the Sikh temple attack with expertise on the pernicious influences of fundamentalist religious ideology. Maybe the certified non-hypocrite and nonpartisan SPLC just isn’t answering the phone, nor using it. Surely the news channels have asked for commentary?
And there are a thousand violent Muslim fundamentalists, recent past and present, for every creepy Judeo-Christian colleague, in the States alone.
Aww, it’s so cute when you think you have the facts.
The real issue is not any particular flavor of fundamentalist Abrahamic monotheism, but the very nature of authoritarian religious fundamentalism, which is conservative by its very nature. As far as radical Islam goes, the main purveyors of kill-em-all Wahhabist Islam are our good friends the Saudis, who are joined at the hip with inkberrow’s precious Bush family. Bandar Bush, anyone?
If Reagan had followed Jimmy Carter’s policy of developing alternatives to fossil fuels, we probably wouldn’t have this global fundamentalist Islamic problem.
Meanwhile, the GOP should change its symbol from an elephant to a gnat, because they really don’t have a memory for anything older than a day or so.
Gnat? No— ostrich.
Hey Inky, here you are blathering on and on and on and on and on about how _this_ guy neglected to say this particular string of magic words, and _that_ guy neglected to emit another different string of magical words, and how _this other_ guy hasn’t shown up on teevee.
This is all very entertaining, but it hardly supplies us with what you might call a final solution. Not being mind-readers, we can’t guess what you’re hinting at here. How about if you break down and tell us what _you_ think the magical words are, which, if they were uttered by politicians and teevee talking heads, would relieve your awful fear of the Moslem Terror? What is the magic incantation? “Mohammed is a poopy-head!”? “Vote for the orange moron!”? “Exterminate the brutes!”? “Tax cuts for millionaires!”? All of the above? What are the words, and how will they work?
Also, even after we “exterminate the Moslem brutes,” we’ll still have a problem with all the non-Moslems in America’s population of heavily-armed mass murderers, e.g. the shitheads who shot up that theater in Colorado and that classroom full of elementary school kids in New Jersey. Now what will you do about them?
Hey, look everybody, Inky hasn’t said a word! Sure, those guys butchered dozens of your fellow citizens, but they weren’t Moslems, so you’re cool with them, right?
Look, you call us civilized people “sanctimoniously stupid fellow travelers” because we neglected to make a big deal out of Omar Mateen’s paper-thin religious beliefs. By your reasoning, because you neglected to even mention America’s home-grown, unaffiliated mass-murderers at all, I accuse you of being a “sanctimoniously stupid fellow traveler” of the Adam Lanzas and James Holmeses of this country.
Of course, like all your whiny, wordy rubbish, that accusation makes no sense at all. But it does convey a childish insult on a blog.
Which brings us to this outstandingly moronic statement:
Still, he ordered bin Laden’s sharia compliant funeral to avoid offending real Muslims
So Obama sends Special Forces halfway around the world, they bust into bin Laden’s hideout, shoot him dead and dump his corpse into the Indian Ocean. You cite that act as proof of Obama’s softness and acquiescence to Moslem Terror.
Damn, boy, you’ve got shit for brains.
This is all very entertaining, but it hardly supplies us with what you might call a final solution. Not being mind-readers, we can’t guess what you’re hinting at here. How about if you break down and tell us what _you_ think the magical words are, which, if they were uttered by politicians and teevee talking heads, would relieve your awful fear of the Moslem Terror? What is the magic incantation? “Mohammed is a poopy-head!”? “Vote for the orange moron!”? “Exterminate the brutes!”? “Tax cuts for millionaires!”? All of the above? What are the words, and how will they work?
You mean it’s not “ooo, ee, ooo ah ah, ting, tang, walla walla bing bang?”
Shorter inkberrow (spellcheck suggests “ink error”): because Omar Mateen was a Muslim, Eric Rudolph is no big deal.
And as near as I can tell, that’s the whole point of all this.
The thing to keep in mind is that conservatives over the last ten years have lost, as completely as it’s possible to lose in our system, the conversation over gay rights – we have gays in the military, gay marriage legalized in all 50 states, etc. Worse, they’re not just losing, they’re actually starting to face blowback – as North Carolina is finding out, even your Chamber of Commerce buddies’ loyalties can be tested when you’re seen as a homophobe. It’s becoming harder to be seen as overtly anti-gay, much like it was harder by the late sixties to be seen as overtly anti-civil-rights. But at the same time, they can’t actually change these positions – it would cost them too much in homophobe votes. So, they really need to find a way to just change the subject, to something that doesn’t make them look as bad but also doesn’t require them to walk back any of their previous positions.
The present combination of “look, over there, other homophobes,” “can we all agree that homophobia’s bad when these people do it,” and “you know, we’re the toughest in the world on these people” is what they’ve come up with.
Except more and more of this in the future.
Mateen’s express Muslim-centered motivation for killing [citation desperately needed]
But hey, projectors gonna project.
Hey, it’s nice to know that conservatives like Inkberrow are suddenly all about protecting the gays.
Sure their behavior over the last, oh let’s say 40 years, had me wondering but I’m glad they’ve finally come around.
@W. Kiernan & @Chris: have an internets each. More coherent than I’ve managed to be in replying to Inkberrow, and way more coherent than Inkberrow himself (which explains, but does not necessarily excuse, my incoherence).
Big Bad:
Non-responsive.
Some guy:
Baby steps!
W. Kiernan:
It’s not my job to provide a solution. I’m not qualified for that. I’m just here puncturing liberal sanctimony and hypocrisy balloons, and you’re over-tasking the inconvenient messenger. Be honest with yourself, and much is possible.
Chris:
Gays are just the latest victims, though as you no doubt grokked from my previous comments, conflictrd homophobia is one facet of the pathological interface between Islam and West-blaming, puritanical fleshpot guilt of all sorts. Sure, Christians have folks like Jimmy Swaggart, but mass murders do not occur as a result. Try to fight through your anti-imperialist conditioning and see that you actually should hate Islam even more than Judeo-Christianity, in their modern iterations anyway.
Pup:
To the extent you’re interested, Mateen’s mid-spree statements to police concerning motivation and auspices are available to concerned adults. If you’re one of those desperately sad liberals content with the The Golfer’s characterization of Fort Hood shooter’s “Allahu Akbar” warcry as a happenstance concomitant of workplace violence, then don’t worry your fuzzy little head about it at all. What The Golfer’s general said after Fort Hood, and what his Attorney General said after San Bernardino, should hold after Orlando too for lazy feebs like you: as great a tragedy as we this was, an even greater tragedy would be to fail in our highest priority going forward, namely preventing an lslamophobic backlash, to include put-upon furrows in their hothouse foreheads.
Major:
I’m a pro-LGBTQI rights conservative, and always have been. Even if I wasn’t, one Orlando victim is worth five hundred of the retrograde filth that is the sharia Muslim cadre worldwide. Meanwhile, “40 years”? Don’t forget The Golfer sat at Rick Warren’s feet with John McCain in 2008 and pledged Bible-centered allegiance to One Man, One Woman. Sure, he was lying like a dirty rug, as is his wont, but do get off your high horses.
Austin:
I’ve been repeatedly censored here for “incoherence”, then, not for disturbing the cloister with a nonconforming habit, as I’d assumed from the sequence of events?
Folks who cannot carry their weight in debate on the merits frequently resort to manner ‘n mode criticisms so as to imagine they’re not obliged to contend on substance.
Try to fight through your anti-imperialist conditioning and see that you actually should hate Islam even more than Judeo-Christianity, in their modern iterations anyway.
Ok, agreed.
So now what?
I’m a pro-LGBTQI rights conservative, and always have been.
And there it is.
Twenty, maybe even ten years from now, every conservative will swear before Jesus that they were always in favor of gay marriage, in favor of gays serving in the military, and otherwise “pro-LGBTQI rights conservatives,” just as every white man who was voting age before 1965 seems to have always been Martin Luther King Jr’s greatest admirer. This is just where it starts.
Some guy:
Bipartisan policy response accordingly. Immediate cessation of “refugee” immigration from Middle Eastern and African Muslim-majority nations, to begin with. Removal of CAIR-sponsored and Obama-approved investigation protocols which not only sanitize but perversely insulate Muslims and mosques from hate-crime surveillance and enforcement. Targeted, speedy removal of all those overstaying student or work visas from whatever nation of origin.
Chris:
I don’t claim to be anything pretextually or post hoc for anyone, let alone to ingratiate myself with random liberal partisans, most of whom thoroughly disgust me. I’m a libertarian, foreign-policy conservative who is–always have been–pro-choice, pro-legalization, pro-gun control, and even pro-single payer, having grown up in the UK. Regardless, this is about ravening Muslim religious warriors, not me.
That said, I will note that MLK Jr’s deservedly sagging reputation was rescued by the assassin’s bullet. He’d been long passed by in the eyes of Black Power types as a semi-Tom, what with his tiresome optimism, his white-man’s religion, his love of America, and his rejection of whining or bellicose race-first solidarity and separatism. Had he survived, he’d be a second Booker T. Washington by now.
Inky. You’re a special little snowflake and the abject terror with which you regard the Muslim community is also a special snowflake. By which I mean it’s precise form is individual but it’s substance is as common as dirt. Count the earth, Take your time, I can wait as long as you need to get to one. There is only one Earth. All the wealth ever created, is right here, not counting the vanishingly tiny fraction of the global economic output shot into space. And it’s all been claimed. Every drop of oil or fresh water, every stalk of wheat, every lump of coal. All spoken for, sometimes, spoken for twice or three or ten times over, and none of it is free for the taking. So what’s a refugee to do? What’s a guy, with only the shirt on his back, who just wants a square meal, for him and his family and some shelter safe from gunfire going to do? Stay in a war zone and die, or go looking for a safer place?
Look at just the 20th century. There were what I’m going to call a “shit ton” of unnecessary early deaths, caused by humans. War, famine, genocide, disease, the 20th century is the leading century for sheer number of humans killed for no damn good reason. From the Armenian Genocide, at the start all the way through all the big name atrocities winding up with ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and another pointless genocide in Rwanda. And a few world wars but who’s counting? The point is, humanity is capable of killing more people faster right now than at any point in history. There are more people who are around to die in some pointless tragedy than in any point in history. The world is a giant pile of dry sticks tinder and twigs. And assholes like you think it’s great fun to spread as much gasoline and hand out as many matches as they can.
The enemy isn’t Islam. The enemy isn’t communism, socialism republicanism or fascism. The enemy is this idea that we can kill our way out of problems.
Because I don’t for one minute think that you are doing anything but arguing for another pogrom, another round of ethnic cleansing, maybe another “short victorious war”. You think that America is invulnerable, and there’s no such thing as blowback or unintended consequences. Or maybe you weren’t paying attention when those heroic mujahedin turned into Al Qaeda or when the newly unemployed (but not disarmed) Iraqi army turned into Isil? Maybe you just don’t care and you want to watch another generation of American soldiers slaughter millions by remote control, just to inspire another generation of video games increasingly indistinguishable from an interactive snuff film? Maybe you don’t think that the people you are casually identifying as some kind of existential threat, aren’t really human, don’t think, don’t feel are simply not worth as much as your sweaty chairbound ass? Maybe you think that famines and war and plagues never spread? Maybe you think that stirring up hatred isn’t a crime on a level with shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. Maybe you think it’s all good fun, and if you aren’t personally burning crosses or assaulting refugees or stringing up some poor luckless bastard, that your hands are clean?
Bipartisan policy response accordingly. Immediate cessation of “refugee” immigration from Middle Eastern and African…
Sorry, hating Islamic fundamentalism doesn’t make that kind of discrimination acceptable.
I hate a lot of shit the Catholic Church has done over the years but that doesn’t make discrimination against Catholic immigrants acceptable.
What’s that sound like a bandsaw humming? Why, it’s Helmut sawing Inkberrow’s alleged ass off — slowly, carefully, and with great attention to the considerable detail involved — and serving it up to its former owner on the fine china, such as I have not seen since Santana Lopez said the immortal words “Kurt, I took what you said to heart and I thought long and hard about it, and it occurred to me that you may have a point.”
I think he’s arguing for that, to the extent he’s arguing for anything specific, but his apparent determination to get his picture into the dictionary next to the word “mealy-mouthed” makes it hard to say.
Inkberrow appears to regard Muslims the way Gabriel Syme regarded anarchists: “as a huge and pitiless peril, like a Chinese invasion.” He appears to consider that “Muslim terrorist” is redundant, perhaps doubly so, and that those of us who profess to believe otherwise have been bamboozled by the Kenyan Usurper and the LIEberal media.
He appears to think and be a number of things, mainly about being a “mean, burbling, insinuating” shit-stirrer who refuses to say anything specific enough to be argued with, anything on which he might be called. (“Dim and blubbery, loathsome Drolls are able to reiterate, so that beginning the third repartee round after one is scored upon it will begin to ignore its deteriorating position vis-a-vis other Drolls.”)
Again, to the extent I can get through his roller-coaster ride of evasions and implications, that seems to be what he’s trying to say without having to come out and say it.
I hesitate to say that somebody never thinks at all, but he’s certainly demonstrating what William James said about prejudice rearrangement and Lionel Trilling about irritable mental gestures. (And, for Exalted fans, how the Solar Socialize Charm “Twisted Words Technique” works.)
Once again, I’d like to treat him with the respect he’s due, the respect he’s treated every S,N! post he’s extruded his protributions* into, but I don’t have his home address, so I can’t invite myself into his house in the middle of dinner and take a shit the size of my own head on his plate.
(* Opposite of contributions.)
Fellas, you’re fulminating at the messenger instead of honestly confronting the Messenger. Try it. The honesty will make you feel good inside instead of intellectually constipated.
Helmut–human history ain’t beanbag. Plenty of blame to go around, but these self-righteous barbarians at and inside the gate are the worst thing currently on the planet.
S.G.–can you even define “hate” and “discrimination” except as a beauty pageant contestant would? Do fundy Muslims “hate”, perchance? Does hate-murder rate your scorn?
Austin–striking poses in the social justice mirror is your wont, then indignation at contrary voices like mine. But just once try to consider who Mateen–the killer–really was, and why.
Ink : a question. How come when you conservatives blame people for mass shootings, the Christian guys like Eric Rudolph , Timothy McVeigh, Lanza, Holmes, etc etc are all mentally ill lone wolves but this one Muslim guy is a representative of billions of guilty bad guys worldwide? Does this mean that all Christians, because of their faith, which, let’s be honest ,is hardly one of peace and love to all, no matter what the hippies say, are responsible for their mad shooters as well?
Consistency – I’m not seeing it.
I’m a pro-LGBTQI rights conservative, and always have been.
That makes what, maybe five of you guys?
It’s only been about two weeks since the right thought the greatest threat to western civilization was trans persons assaulting our women-folk if we let them use the bathroom.
I got the word “hate” from you, dumbass.
you actually should hate Islam even more than Judeo-Christianity
But please, answer suezboo’s posting, this should be good.
The Shitbarrow sed Mateen’s mid-spree statements to police concerning motivation and auspices are available to concerned adults.
Yep. “I pledge allegiance to the leader of ISIS! I don’t know who that is, don’t even know his name, but I sure do pledge allegiance. Also too I pledge allegiance to the leader of ISIS’ fierce enemy, whoever that group is I don’t really know anything about them.” The part where he said “I pledge allegiance to any group that justifies murder because ideology” was apparently redacted.
Herr Monotreme, I think you are correct in your assessment of the Shitbarrow. He reminds me of Michael Parenti’s sage caution: “Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.”
Shitbarrow’s fear that Muslims might harm America blinds him to the fact that anti-Muslim hatred already has.
I’m not expecting his next comment to answer suez’ question. He may respond to it, in his usual weasel-worded implying way, but he probably won’t answer them in a way that commits him to his position. Look how evasive and butthurt he gets when people describe the implications of his insinuations*; if he ever spelled it out, he’d have to stand naked before himself and probably end up pouring himself down a bottomless well.**
I probably won’t read it either way. I thought about reading his latest comment, but then I said to myself, “Self, you wouldn’t, in real life, cover your eyeballs with butter and then slam your head against the nearest convenient wall until the hurting stopped. Why would you read words that you know, from bitter past experience, will have the same physical, mental and emotional effect on you as doing such a terrible thing to yourself? Life’s too short and brain cells are a non-renewable resource.”
* Not to mention the exagmination round his factification for incamination of work in progress.
** Is that thirty-eight?
“Rod is more comfortable defending the KKK or in this case the institutionalized oppression and murder of LGBTQ people, than he is for actually fighting oppression.”
Yes he is.
But…What are you going to do about it? After all, you had it coming. And you can’t prove it. And he didn’t do it anyway.
Austin, you are probably right about getting a weaselly response, but wtf, let’s see what he has to say…
Well, our friend is mysteriously silent…
But as long as we are on the subject, check this David Neiwert article out…
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/06/radical-islamists-and-american-far-right
?!?!?!?!?
Cruelly tongue-whipping a Billy-Goat Muncher, prolix?
Who you guys think you are, cliff-hating heterodox subniveal rodents or something?!
Sheesh.
I’d missed this one, but it deserves acknowledgment.
I hate a lot of shit the Catholic Church has done over the years but that doesn’t make discrimination against Catholic immigrants acceptable.
Having been raised in that church is a big part of the reason I take the approach that I do to this current mess: the America/Islam intersection today is pretty much identical to the America/Catholicism intersection for most of our history (till about 50 or 60 years ago). Which is why all the Islam-bashing tracts are the same, with the names just swapped out. “They have a weird and antidemocratic religion that’s incompatible with our civic tradition?” “They’re dangerous and bringing crime to our shores?” “They breed like rabbits and one day we’ll wake up and find out there are more of them than there are of us?” “They’re all infiltrators taking orders from a religious fanatic across the Atlantic?” Check, check, check, and check.
To be more detailed, and also to be fair:
There absolutely was a *lot* of legitimate criticism to be made of the Catholic world back then. It was made up in large part of cesspools of authoritarianism and corruption. Experiments in liberalism and democracy had been mixed at best. And whatever successes had happened were usually achieved by going *against* the traditional religious consensus, not with it. And that lasted a long time – in some places, it’s still true today.
But the Protestants having shit-fits about the Irish, Italian and Polish immigrants fresh off the boat weren’t some kind of Enlightenment spokesmen “punching up” against theocracy and despotism. They were garden variety bigots picking on an easy target, period. Similarly, the avalanche of military interventions in Catholic countries in Latin America and later the Pacific weren’t bringing liberal democratic values to these places. The opposite, in many cases.
Even more obviously, there was violent crime and organized crime in America before Catholic immigration, and there were theocratic inclinations in America before Catholic immigration. Both those things would continue to exist among non-Catholics even after Catholic immigration. And both of them blended very nicely with anti-Catholic prejudice among the Protestant majority.
Wish there was a single thing in all of that that didn’t apply to Islam and America today, for originality’s sake if nothing else. But then, if they were capable of inventing new shit, they wouldn’t be conservatives.
Well, our friend is mysteriously silent…
What, you want to listen to more?
Great link, by the way.
Not really. I’m torn between wanting to see what eloquent whipsongs he inspires and the knowledge that the people who write the replies to his comments will have had to read his comments, which is a fate I wouldn’t wish on anyone. On the other hand, over at The Rectification of Names, I found a perfect description of his writing style, as it is practiced by his Rule 63 counterpart Megan McArdle:
http://yastreblyansky.blogspot.com/2016/06/across-pondering.html#comment-2738935784
Chris
June 22nd, 2016 at 6:30 pm
Good perspective. I think there’s one aspect that deserves explicit mention.
As I lay in bed this morning, not wanting to get up because Iskender was snuggled between my legs and Bagoas was stretched out in the narrow valley between Teh Ho and I, being what we call “tube dog,” for some bizarre reason I was musing on the holy wars of Europe in the second half of the second millennium. (No, that’s not what needs to be said, that’s just my introduction, you sillies) If I were to create a topic sentence or title for my musings, it might be “The holy wars in Europe weren’t fought over theology. They were as much or more about power and money and identity as about theology.” Swap “ideology” for “theology” and there’s the title for your earlier comment.
Another article on this theme, this one a Golden Oldie from 2004…. have you ever noticed that fundamentalists of all religions have similar shit-lists…?
http://www.uuworld.org/articles/fundamentalist-agenda
have you ever noticed that fundamentalists of all religions have similar shit-lists…?
Brings to mind Anne Lamott’s observation:
“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
Good one!
“God is a very sensible guy; he agrees with all my opinions!”
Greetings from the Great White North. I come bearing a link for any Brits in hte audience. I hope not to have to do something similar for youse Yanks come November.
Anywho, you’ll be quite comfortable here. We even still have Her Majesty on our monies.
Isn’t it interesting how conservatives criticizing liberals are merely exercising their First Amendment rights – yet liberals daring to criticize conservatives in return are somehow engaging in censorship?
Gee, it’s almost as though conservatives feel that only the right has rights.
RepubAnon skrev:
Or, as driftglass put it lo these many moons ago:
Shorter Pupienus: I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
Shorter FF: “Look! I made a doody!”
Is that FF the same admirer/stalker I recall from way back? Thee one who seemed rather obsessive, that is. The one who clearly loved to hate me, and apparently hated to love me, that is.
I am big, it’s the blogs that got small.
Or, as driftglass put it lo these many moons ago:
I had never seen that post. It is fantastic. The entire mainstream media in a nutshell.
Meanwhile, Trumpf watches Boris Teh Spider on the Beeb, audibly sniveling as he calls his new campaign manager & demands a crew-cut & a dye job…
Torture! That’s the answer!
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trump-responds-istanbul-waterboarding-torture
I guess it’s never occurred to RIght Wing Nut Jobs that Muslim Nut Jobs would retaliate by torturing US military personnel and civilians.
I guess it has never occurred to them that the US is a signatory to international treaties banning torture?
I guess it has never occurred to them that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than that of a bunch of $&#% criminals.
Sadly, no.
Some guy
June 29th, 2016 at 12:52 pm
Torture! That’s the answer!
How do we defeat radicalism? By becoming radicals, of course!
And yes, apparently that is an actual picture of Rockin’ Rod, believe it or not.
If one could shove/stuff/squeeze a metric shit ton of sanctimonious self loathing bullshit, into an industrial grade blender, the contents when finished blending might well resemble the cat pictured above. And as one who is in no shape to judge the appearance of toddlers, I feel that I can and must address Rod’s choice of Birth Control attire.The better part of Va lour suggests that ending here and stepping slowly away from the keyboard might be an appropriate call.
What with outlawing torture, illegal immigration amnesty, signing the IMF Treaty with Gorbachev, & that little “biggest tax hike EVAR” peccadillo, how long before junior wingnuts without the genuflecting instinct retcon Ronaldus Magnus as either an evil RINO or a one-man leftist sleeper cell?
AFAF
Plus Reagan had the audacity to be a victim of gun violence, and support the Brady bill…
Happy celebration of the onset of a minor proxy war between the French and British empires to all!
(Oh, come on. If Reagan and Charlie Wilson get more credit for running the Russians out of Afghanistan than the Afghans, I TOTALLY get to credit Independence Day to the French).
“The enemy is this idea that we can kill our way out of problems.” – Der Helmut.
This is well said. But it also points to why granting Islam carte blanche acceptance as a recognized religion in the USA and the Western World in general is problematic, and it also underlines why committing to a religious affiliation blind immigration policy in the Western World is a recipe for future sorrows; because many of the central tenants of the Koran are HEY WE CAN ALWAYS KILL OUR WAY OUT OF OUR PROBLEMS. In fact an honest straightforward reading of the Koran and the Hadiths would be JOIN ISLAM AND SUBMIT ALL THOSE WHO RESIST INTO JOINING ISLAM, KILL EM IF YOU HAVE TO. So how this ends up as a happy scenario for the un-islamic of this World is beyond me. And it doesn’t really fucking matter what the Torah, Talmud, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Lotus Scrolls, the saying of Roshi, or the splatters of the holly Flying Spaghetti Monster say; in comparison to the Koran and Hadiths the rest of the Worlds religions do not provide a spiritually rationalized declaration of war on the rest of humanity the way Islam does. So go on and pretend that Christian Fundamentalist disapproval of non traditional lifestyles is “the factor” in the atmosphere, and ignore the larger violence that is growing in power year by year and is coming to kill us all.
I want to sidebar this for a moment. Islam has many schools, some of which de-emphasize the KILL FOR VICTORY AND REDEMPTION aspect of the teachings. The most pacifist Muslim sects are the Ismailis and Ahmadiyyas. They preach non violence, but as a result they are mercilessly prosecuted and murdered by Muslim extremists, while the Muslim majority looks onsaddened but indifferent to their destruction. The problem is that the most violent schools of Islam, Salafists, Deobandis, (what ever the fuck you can call Taliban /ISIS Islam) are growing and controlling the religious conversation within Islam right now. There is a brutal shaking out within Islam that is going to take at least 400 years where they decide if they are going to live with the rest of the World or try and conquer it, so why expose the West to this explosive problem if we don’t have to be exposed?. Caution and small steps should be the watch word with Islamic immigration for the foreseeable future.
I understand how hard it is for cosmopolitan people to look at this because it shatters a bit of your worldview, it brings questions of culture and society back into the policy debate, one that threatens ideas of absolute social libertarian-ism; but social libertarian-ism can not be a suicide pact, so this will change.
Shorter Northern Observer:
“Your enemy is he who will give his life to kill you,” said the Time Traveler.