The Raveonettes
In the long run,
the greatest weapon of mass destruction
is stupidity.
--Thomas Sowell
the greatest weapon of mass destruction
is stupidity.
--Thomas Sowell
We've all gone mad
--Network (1976)
A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
and I decline
--The End of the World As We Know It,
R.E.M.
I saw the sign and it opened up my mind
And I am happy now living without you
I've left you
Oh, oh-oh-oh
--The Sign,
Ace of Base
______________________
--Network (1976)
A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
and I decline
--The End of the World As We Know It,
R.E.M.
I saw the sign and it opened up my mind
And I am happy now living without you
I've left you
Oh, oh-oh-oh
--The Sign,
Ace of Base
______________________
Lisa's post-inaugural reflections:
I spectated, agog, this political season. It was all so clear, and for speaking my truth, I was given no quarter by the erstwhile victors.
Some people once close are still angry with me. Still I am not sure why, for I was just the camera.
I saw my society in decline, born of a toxic blend of technological savvy, arrogance and entitlement. No party had a monopoly on these traits, but the party which had historically laid claim to be the protectors of the downtrodden (the Democrats) came across as impossibly smug and dismissive of those downtrodden with whom they felt no kinship.
It was hypocrisy of the highest order, and their tone-deafness lost them the election. The sorry inability of the entitled, erstwhile thinking, people in the Democratic camp to engage in a dialog about the phenomenon unfolding before them in plain sight was shocking.
My observations of the deracinated in our midst was met with horror by those supposedly in the know. Except, they did not know. They engaged in a robust cognitive dissonance because the plight of some did not fit in with their perceptions of "neediest cases" -- their personal tokens.
Now-President Trump revealed us to ourselves. We are angry, clannish, disputatious, and worse. We think well of ourselves when we shed crocodile tears for the right minority, and belittle and dismiss those who do not further our insular paradigm, one which is usually constructed for and received by us fairly early in life.
Over the course of the election season, I began to feel shamed for thinking myself a liberal. These were not my people, and I was now one of the deracinated.
An edition of the New Yorker magazine filled with only Trump-derision cartoons (poor ones, at that) came from a place of audacious triumphalism and hauteur, as Ms. Clinton would surely -- simply had to -- win. Given.
Mrs. Clinton in her workaday Xanthippe shroud now infamously goaded Trump in a debate, "Will you accept the results of the election?" with the affect of a gladiator entering the arena. We had seen this posture before in her "veni, vedi, vici" speech in her capacity as stateswoman following the brutal assassination of Libyan President and former Time coverboy Muommer Gaddafy.
In retrospect, it was a marvel of ineptitude, like bringing tomato aspic to a 2nd grade Valentine's Day party.
It was shame-faced strong-arming, straight from the Mayor Daley or Boss Tweed Machine playbook. Just like in a banana republic, she had a token opponent (Jewish socialist Uncle Bernie) . . . but, not really. Just like them, she was the presumptive shoo-in.
Pity for the (literally) poor sops who donated their often meager holdings to his campaign coffers and who still refuse to remove their "Bernie" bumper stickers (all while the machinations of the Clinton campaign moved to discredit him, another bit of soul rot for which she, and they, will have to atone.)
My marveling continues as I read the discredited New York Times daily trying to beat its swords into plowshares.
The NYT calls their advertising spiel ("50% off new subscriptions!") their "Inauguration campaign". A few, for your amusement, with following RAW editorial comment:
"True, original, independent, always" [well, not exactly "always".]
"The truth is what we do better" [and, we do lies even better!]
"Searching out truth is What We Do" [But, it is a "search and destroy" mission.]
"Discover the truth with us" [if you enjoy solipsism, we will make it up as we go.]
"Read news that values the truth" [Tautology. Shouldn't "the news" = "the truth"?]
"Truth: it's vital to our democracy" [Maybe so, but we won't deliver it.]
"Finding truth matters" [But even if we find it, we will not give it to you.]
"Eager for the Facts?" [Then go someplace else to get them.]
"Original"? Yeah, in terms of being divorced from reality, much in the same way that a kindergartener's lollipop drawing is an original imaging of a tree.
"Independent"? Ditto. Actually, blandly following the party line in their construction of reality is more to the truth. Writing with egg all over their face is the fact.
Our salvation as a nation may come (hopefully) when people don't feel so comfortable in Plato's cave anymore. However, the comfort and addiction of one's personal social media ego feed make this increasingly unlikely.
Readers of The Times and other badly skewed outlets have the temerity to laugh at Rupert Murdoch, but the lot of 'em are no better. They are just crusaders for their particular brand of lie. This writer will scan it to keep current with The Agenda, but for the news? Nevermore.
There was a time when tabloids were tabloids, and newspapers delivered facts (yes, yes -- albeit, with a slant.) No more. Election season 2016 stuck a fork in that beast.
Many years ago, as crime began to take up its cruel residency in our neighborhood, my family (like many others) took flight from the D.C. suburbs to Florida. My father left the now-defunct Washington Star (D.C.'s then conservative answer to The Post) and needed a job in a poor hiring climate, so he interviewed with the National Enquirer (the wicked pleasure of conspiracy-theorists, pre-Internet.)
He was offered the job, but warned that the burnout rate for creating outrageously false "news" was usually two years for bona fide newsmen. It seems that caveat no longer applies. The nuttier, the better.
Barnum and Bailey Circus recently reported that they were closing shop. As co-founder P.T. Barnum presciently said, "there's a sucker born every minute." Someone will have to take up their torch for amusing that public, and that someone may as well be fake and painfully based media outlets like the once-trusted Times.
Who wants to be told he is a bastard every day of his life? And yet, that is the average liberal's posture towards the new President. Unremitting, arrogant and entitled, as ever.
If the "Not My President" crowd could see their project with the benefit of perspective, they would know that their stance is sort of adversarial, sort of disrespectful, of the schoolyard bully variety. Adult behavior, it's not. Reaching across the aisle, it is not.
The nasty behavior is, at best, explainable as "tit for tat". But the liberals should be better than that.
They have lost the moral high ground.
It does not bode well for a healthy democracy.
Labels: hypocritical liberals, new presidency 2017, not my president crowd, post-inauguration 2016
posted by Lisa at 9:10 PM
38 Comments:
Lisa -
Deracinated? If so, it was by your choice, not mine and not Hillary's. Come back to the fold. You may think that is not possible for you as you are already waist deep in the Trump ocean. But please at least consider working with us to fight some of the Republican Congressmen who want to turn the Social Security Trust Fund over to Goldman Sacks, and turn Medicare over to the corporate insurance giants. Wasn't that a Trump promise, to keep them as they are?
We need your energy and your intellect.
I think Mr. Trump is (ahem) misunderestimated.
During the campaign, he showed brilliant ability to manipulate the press by creating controversy and therefore dominated the media, because they reacted in an entirely predictable manner. Mr. Trump continues to have the media manipulation skills and now, as President, has a much greater ability to generate controversy. This shows up as a much louder noise when the impulse is returned by the media coverage.
In other words, the media, while not completely passive, are forced (by both their culture and bottom lines) to dance the steps as called out by President. If you don't like where the dance has lead us, then look to the leader, not the follower.
Lisa,
i think that the death of objective news reporting facts ACTUALLY died in Viet Nam when news always was subverted to the national propaganda effort against the communists.
maybe it started with Joe Macarthy?
for sure the lies that are the fabric of our society blossomed in the Phony WOT. lies became the common currency.even before that the Clintons shoveled their version of the truth pretty freely..
as we both advocate -words have lost their meaning.
jim hruska
Ael,
Sorry, but this is a non-sequitur:
If you don't like where the dance has lead us, then look to the leader, not the follower.
No -- look precisely to the followers (who are also, the leaders) for the dreck with which we are daily assaulted. Your presumption is that President Trump enjoys being belittle, reviled and dismissed every day since he he threw his hat into the presidential rink. "Falstaff" they said -- that's all he is or can be.
And yet, he is now President.
Go and talk amongst yourselves.
Ael - Being a good president and being able to manipulate the media may or may not turn out to be the same thing, but certainly Trump showed how amateurish traditional political PR work was compared to that of a professional showman (which he is, amongst other things). Major networks like CNN may lean liberal, but they approach elections essentially as sporting events. I suppose sooner or later that meant it would devolve into professional wrestling.
On Lisa's main point -- I still wonder whether we are witnessing the kind of political pole reversal that happens once or twice a century at most.
Class-based leftism was the original identity politics but it seems to have very little real place in Democratic partisan identity nowadays, at least of the Clintonian variant. This year saw an alliance of globalists and other "left" identity politics against traditional class politics and traditional conservatives in the Republican Party.
The question in my mind is whether that was just a freak event caused by the unique politics of Donald Trump or whether we are seeing the beginnings of a permanent shift.
It's only eight short years ago that it was Obama campaigning on a promise to revisit NAFTA, and this year the Democrats billed themselves as the party of free trade.
Scratch below the surface of course and one may find in four years that after an initial round of bombast this administration ultimately changes very little.
Ah yes, the inclusive, accepting and loving liberals now hurling fire bombs like they hurl poisoned ink, beating unconscious anyone wearing a red cap or threatening to say words they don't like, attempting to break away from the union and form their own Spacecadetistan on left coast. Demanding respect and to be taken seriously as they shout in the streets in full sized vagina costumes.
Naughty spoiled brats all, angry that real adults are in charge again.
avedis
I'm not sure the ones who are hurling fire bombs ever claimed to be accepting or loving.
You could, of course, dismiss them as a mere basket of deplorables. No doubt that would shock them into coming to their senses.
David,
i'd like some info on the shooting in quebec.
it's being called T , but i think its a simple hate crime, done by a crazy.
also i hear no comments on how such a country with very strict gun controls can experience such an event.
i'd like to kick this around, but the facts aare being held close.
jim@rangeragainstwar.com
Jim,
When a white guy shoots more than a couple strangers it is always a terrorist act. When a Muslim shouts "allah u akbar" and kills, the motivation is always "uncertain" - perhaps repressed homosexuality or something else quirky. This is govt think. It permits liberals to then quote the resulting statistics that muslims are harmless and the real threat is domestic terrorism by white racist Christians.
I have wondered the same things. Where did the shooter get the gun? How crazy is he? For how long has been crazy? Who/what groups is he affiliated with, if any?
avedis
Jim, Penny dug some info on the shooting.
http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2017/02/quebec-shooting-questions-about.html
Lisa, You are right on the corp. owned demodogs. I was once in the party but have moved on to the Greens who platform is more my way of thinking. The demodogs are about Branding and not about what will help the people of the nation. They ran on hate of trump, the Russians are controlling the election with no proof other than the normal Believe Us. Then the fbi was against us. They never once talked about jobs, healthcare for all and stop the wars. I love the fact they running around with their hair on fire complaining about trump and yet offering nothing new that might help win offices on helping Amerikas citizens. The new normal, Sadly.
Well, I believe that one reaps what one sows.
Canadian media are reporting that the Quebec shooter was worried about white marginalization..
Restricted weapons can be fairly easily obtained. From Quebec, the USA is a bit more than an hours drive away and the border there is, shall we say, porous.
Jim --
I agree on the lack of facts but some thoughts based on in-laws in the next province over, which are offered strictly on a "this may be worthless information" basis:
- The guns may have been legal. Canada's laws are extremely strict with regard to carrying weapons in cities, slightly less so with regards to actual ownership. That said, they didn't know what guns were used and while this information can probably be found in a media report, I am not sure how reliable such a report would be.
- Particularly through the native reserves that lie on both sides of the St. Lawrence, there is a fair amount of illegal smuggling of everything from cigarettes to guns. (Cigarettes are legal, obviously, but highly taxed.)
- Canada has hate crime laws which might apply instead of terrorism. However, I did check on this part and it seems like there were no hate crime charges either.
On a personal note, I've been back and forth across the land border a number of times. Granted my wife and I probably don't match whatever profile the border patrol is looking for, but we've never been checked past the usual few screening questions. One can imagine that someone intent on bringing guns into Canada could just drive in the usual way while crossing their fingers.
Now on the terrorism point -- this goes to the objectives more than to the act itself. On this point I don't know any more than you do. If memory serves, a couple of years ago, someone sympathetic to ISIS killed a reservist in Canada who was standing guard at a war cemetery or maybe a war memorial. Was that terrorism, too? I guess the country's law would determine that.
jo6pac - Pretty thin gruel on which to base a conspiracy theory. Who in your mind would be behind such a plot? The Huffington Post?
While I value some of the accomplishments of the Department of Education, I have been introduced to the many dimensions of why liberal institutions have lost the trust of the people.
I have been cited by a female Resident Assistant in my new school for asking too many questions. About the college. Literally. This, a guy going to a new school who ended up in the worst rundown thirty-year hall with broken faucets and no renovation. I'm moving to a new hall and plan to appeal but this is outrageous. If she wanted to take the semester off for living in the dorms cost-free all she had to do was tell me. I ended up asking a male RA the same number of times- two. No problems.
This is why New York is bleeding population. And why Trump won. If Trump really abolishes the Department of Education at least a better alternative can be built from scratch by left forces (should they choose). The ruin can't be saved. Don't underestimate the vote of the people who said "burn it all down" themselves. Maybe Trump will buckle in even this endeavor. We will see.
A well-researched primer by a woman at the liberal Atlantic.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/12/college_rape_campus_sexual_assault_is_a_serious_problem_but_the_efforts.html
Avedis, good to see you're still on. E-mail is now beyondmountzion@yandex.com. I try to check it as often as my (current school if I don't transfer altogether) e-mail.
jo6pac,
That is it exactly: hatred is not an agenda. We've got problems right here in River City, but the nattering Democrats could not and can not get past their hatred and sense of entitlement to address them.
I do not even believe they see their sad plight for what it is. As you say, it is the new normal, ushered in by a crop of journos which escort them down that rabbit hole daily. They commiserate, but do not innovate.
We will see if we are witnessing a sea change, as David suggests. Certainly this ambling, this horrible disrespect for the Office of President, is not sustainable. I thought they would all cry in their cups for a week or so, then snap out of it.
It seems the shameless vitriol only increases. One of "their" Hollywood stars was reported to have recently said something "Shocking" (quote): that President Trump was indeed President, and that we should respect that fact and move forward.
The muckrackers were having none of it, and the star was branded outre for his maverick 20/20 vision.
A Good Liberal must now be a Mr. Magoo, and a meanie, at that.
As long as George Soros finances MoveOn.org, the protests will continue. Whether they coalesce into a campaign to bring back the dreaded Neo-Liberal Democrats or into something more independent remains to be seen. But the danger is there. Former NYU-educated lawyer and now Anarchist tax resister Arthur Silber writes about tribalism, specifically, liberal tribalism. https://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/search?q=tribalism. The series is well worth a read (and a couple of cents in the cup for being hounded by the IRS for his stance). I feel this has been encouraged by the powers that be and for too long. The herding of people into controllable groups for their own interest. It has given rise to the police state and the degradation of civil liberties, the unchecked rise of inequality and government inaccountability generally.
Its the boiling of frogs and the shepherding of lemmings.
I can't say yet that Donald Trump is not just another face of the two wings of America's Single Capitalist Party. But it says a lot that the minority Republican Party in the nation were allowed to vote in their candidate by the millions of disillusioned from 2008 who didn't even show up to vote. Counting of course the pro-Trump blacks and Democrats this election who played a much smaller part in his victory. Democrats (bigger by registered membership) and the Republicans (smaller) have been eclipsed entirely by people who identify neither for the first time in recent memory.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/188096/democratic-republican-identification-near-historical-lows.aspx
Consider that.
Imam Hassan's Guillet's address at Quebec's funeral for victims. Worth reading.
AEL,
What did the imam have to say about hateful ideologies after the San Bernardino and Orlando massacres?
"..........."
That's what I thought
Another Muslim playing the naïve infidel like a master rug dealer at the bizarre.
avedis
bazar , bizarre same dif in this situation
avedis
I do not know what the Imam personally, so I don't know what his track record is about speaking against hateful ideologies in general. Given what I know about our local mosque and how similar the Imam sounds to what our locals say, I am confident that it was not silence.
Why do you think that the Imam is playing the native infidel?
He was speaking at a funeral and I think he was speaking primarily to his grieving congregation. I know of no evidence to suggest that he has ulterior motives or amended his speech to play to the media rather than the people actually at the event.
Nikolay,
Thanks for bringing the provocative perspective on the liberal tribalism. To me, it seems painfully clear.
Per your,
But it says a lot that the minority Republican Party in the nation were allowed to vote in their candidate by the millions of disillusioned from 2008 who didn't even show up to vote.
I think it says even more that the majority of the Republican party did NOT even lay claim to Mr. Trump, right up to the election. Perhaps, not even now.
As the poll suggests, this election was an outsider job, wrought by people who are fed up with all of the lies from every Presidential wanna be. They know that none have their better interests at heart. Personally, I am amazed that they made it out of their Barcaloungers to the polling sites, so enervated and eviscerated have most become, strung out on their Statins and garbage news programs.
So, "Bravo" to those who voted for the guy no one loved. Now THAT is the American way, for we are the rough frontiersmen (if that is still in our cultural repertoire).
It remains to be seen (it is so early!) whether President Trump will forge a new way, or simply be a centrist Republican/Democrat hybrid, as was Mr. Obama. They are all mostly all crpto-Democrats or Republicans, as the money and the spirit moves them.
Avedis,
Too true -- a huckster at a bizarre bazaar. (They're probably all a little bizarre.)
Don't we all just LOVE playing the ingenue? All like the officious Capt. Renault, shocked, we are.
<...snore>
AEL,
As a non-lawyer arguer and a resident of planet earth, most of the time, for more than 5 decades I'm going to take a wild guess and say that El Immamo was most surely aware that the media would be attending the event and was expecting to hear him say the appropriate words. I'm also pretty sure his condemnation of the terrorism in the US is most tepid at its most severe.
I am also quite sure that he would say anything to protect his religion and its adherents and improve their beach head in your country. I'm sure he sees you as an infidel that must be converted or defeated. That's what fundamentalism is. But he'll sing kumbaya with you if he must to keep you on board with the plan. And the laugh heartily at how Allah aided him in deceiving the infidel (you).
No? He's a reasonable guy? Tell me about your big master in the sky and what He demands of you. I mean you have one right? No?
avedis
avedis - I'm not sure why it would surprise you that there would be a comparatively liberal Muslim cleric in Quebec. Most of the Islamofascist groups spend most of their time killing other Muslims, not Western Christians, specifically because they think they are weak, soft, and, well, liberal.
By the same token, they view many Western non-Muslim progressives as useful idiots because they believe our civilization will be similarly weakened by such elements.
As for what he had to say about San Bernardino or Orlando, I have no idea, but why must he say anything? Last I checked, he's not even in the same country.
You seem to be assuming Islam is some sort of organized coherent force operating under a unified command. It isn't, any more than Western Christendom is the unified front that Islamofascists claim it is.
Avedis, have you ever been in a mosque? Talked to an Imam?
The Muslim community in my home city (Edmonton) goes back a long way. The original local mosque is either the oldest mosque (or second oldest, depending on how you count) in North America. The congregation is as Canadian as I am.
As far as my relationship with god goes, my dog tags say UCC. Why not tell us about your relationship with the almighty?
Guys,
calm down a bit.
we do not need to attack one another.remember that we are all friends here.
i've always espoused that effective counter terror is to play the groups off on one another.
this is what the us political parties do to we the taxpayers every day of the week.or is it , every day of the weak.
mossads successes are often based on playing the groups v. one another.the problem is that to do so you must have moderates in the equation, and you must not kill them in drone strikes. a lesson the us leaders have not absorbed.
jim hruska
To all,
forget all the exit polls.
all of our elections and leadership has devolved into exercises of hatred, which polls can't track.
in my life time the POTUS has been hated , or loved depending on your affiliations.
JFK was gunned down in a texas town.
LBJ had to abdicate.
Nixon sold hatred, and sponsored a thinly veiled police state.
Ford, well Ford was Ford. Some think he was a non-elected POTUS as a payoff for his service on the Warren Commission.
Carter enabled the rise of the Gipper which was totally exploited by the Bushes.
THIS IS WHERE THE HATRED REALLY BLOSSOMED.
After 41 Clinton became a item to hate for the christian right.This hatred was transferred wordlessly to HRC in 2016.
Bush 43 pushed hatred and fear as his control mechanism.
HBO was demonized in hatred, much stemming from our present Potus.
so is it any surprise that our days are filled with hateful talk?
now here's the sad part.i see no way out of this downward spiral.
hate is never productive.
i also want to say that neither party is willing to abandon hatred as a party plank.
i'm amazed that the US citizenry can have an election after +/- 15 supposed years of war and NO ONE will even broach the words of anti-war proposals. we never even addressed the issue of war in our last joke fest that of an election.
jim hruska
Apologies. I suppose that if there was ever a moderate imam and congregation, it would be found in Quebec. Recently took some time to catch up with a buddy I haven't seen in years, I became exposed to what has happened in Dearborn, MI. There are section of the city that, if you didn't know better (and if not for the snow), you'd think you were in Saudi Arabia. Seriously. These people are not assimilating and don't appear to want to. There are Muslim men with four or five wives and they're all using those cards that replaced food stamps. We are paying for an invasion of our country by people that don't like us. I cannot accept that. The imams, the propaganda, are all over the place. They're deliberately using our system and sense of fairness to defeat us - and I do believe "defeat" is the right word.
Not that I think anyone should be shooting up their mosques. IMO, they shouldn't be here in the first place; certainly not in those numbers. Not when the imams are encouraging a separate life from US mainstream and not with the specter of terrorism out there somewhere in their midst.
avedis
Here's a good article, by oath taker infiltrators of the protest groups. Shows the source of a lot of the hate on the left.
https://www.oathkeepers.org/navyjack-operation-hypo-action-report/
Good read, IMO
avedis
Finally, it has bothered me that there haven't been major T attacks since 9/11. That just didn't seem right to me.
I have figured it out. I underestimated these people. They will hold off on T attacks because they have a superior strategy. They will invade by invitation then out breed us. They don't want to cause a disruption of that plan w/ a T attack.
In France, native birth rate = 1.8, but Muslim = 8. US is going the same way.
Future generations of progressives will be sorry when they are living under sharia, but at least they can feel good about themselves that their ancestors weren't "racists"
avedis
Jim - My guess is that most Americans are too detached from the military to care enough to decide a war has been going on too long except in the abstract. Vietnam, Korea, the world wars were different. Most people probably had a relative in service in both world wars if they weren't themselves. Nowadays most people at least in the major cities probably don't even know somebody in the military.
On hatred being the foundation for politics, sadly I do not see a way out of that. It is too useful for those in power to let go of.
Avedis - I doubt groups like Al Qaeda or ISIS are willing to sit around and wait for demographics to shift in their favour. You continue to insist there is some sort of higher command thinking this through. You're welcome to point out to me who is in it or even where it is.
However, you raise an important point about what I guess would count as a politically incorrect topic, which is that if you're going to accept immigrants, you also have to have ways to assimilate them into the native culture. If by the second generation Muslim immigrants are indistinguishable from the other French except for where they go for religious services, there really wouldn't be a problem.
David,
I do insist that there is a higher command thinking this through. 100% with no independent operators? No, of course not. But generally speaking, absolutely.
Humans love to be a part of a hive mind. They will surrender to such a soon as an appealing hive presents itself.
It's the same as if I talk to a lefty in Hartford Connecticut I get exactly the same rap as if I talk to a left in Gary Indiana. Or, if I talk to a Christian conservative in North Carolina s/he espouses the same everything as the ones I talk to in upstate NY. The message is passed through social media, " news" organizations that cater to the specific identity group and, especially, through the mosques and churches (university social science and humanities divisions substituting for church in the case of lefties). This isn't difficult to understand.
avedis
"If by the second generation Muslim immigrants are indistinguishable from the other French except for where they go for religious services, there really wouldn't be a problem."
Sure - that's not what's happening these days, but sure.
Of course, there goes "diversity" right out the window. Everyone becomes the same except skin color. LOL. Some of you are light hairy legged/faced liberals and some of you are dark hairy legged/faced , but you are all hairy legged/faced liberals. Dissention will not be tolerated.
Obviously liberals will not be able to get along with unrepentant/unchanged Muslims. My god! What if a Muslim baker is asked to bake a cake for a gay couple's wedding and he takes them up to the roof of the bakery and throws them off? Or when a woman is stoned to death on Main Street for removing her hijab? Already excuses are being made for all the rapes...made by people who make a living screaming about the evil "rape culture". I think that cannot last except on the extreme left fringes where ideology and mental illness blend seamlessly. Assessment of consequences is not a liberal strong point. Magical thinking is so much more fun.
avedis
You can "insist" on this all you like. It's the absence of evidence that concerns me, not the strength of your conviction. You'd be on stronger ground if you said the political Islamofascist groups were all of a kind, even though they're not really, but the fact is most Muslims are just like most everyone else, content if they can support their families and not paying that much attention to politics beyond their family, mosque, or tribe.
Who are these commanders of Islam? Or of Christianity, for that matter? The history and current day of both religions speaks against them all being unified, considering that when they are upset about something, the target is usually other Christians in the case of the Christians, and other Muslims in the case of the Muslims.
What is happening nowadays isn't relevant to my point really. Up until the past 30 years, immigrants were assimilated. That's my point. Nowadays there seems to be an increasing belief that in the name of "diversity" you shouldn't need to assimilate: just bring your "differences" with you and we'll welcome them. This is fine whet it's small numbers on the margins, but sooner or later I'm not sure a society can function if its made up of totally different groups who don't speak to one another and only hate the other.
The hijab/niqab issue is a perfect example of where modern liberalism ties itself into knots on this. Is the niqab a symbol of sexist oppression that should be opposed, or a symbol of a diverse foreign cultural tradition that should be accepted? One can see where the lines have been drawn on this.
David,
This seems like a reasonable study by reasonable people: http://www.meforum.org/2931/american-mosques
avedis
It's an interesting study although the implications are questionable for several reasons.
1.) You just finished telling me that "the Muslims" have decided not to engage in violence because the demographic approach is more effective. Yet these two guys say that a large number of mosques are seemingly promoting violence. Are they right, or are you right?
2.) Either you're right and they're completely wrong, or they're right about the promotion of violence, but it's spectacularly ineffective in actually achieving results, given the notably very low number of violent incidents compared to the number of mosques. Perhaps preaching about violence in a mosque is approximately as effective as teaching against premarital sex in a church is?
3.) The instructions given to surveyors are unclear and the definitions of "violence-positive material" similarly so. The Old Testament contains violence-positive material, but I think a survey that identified every synagogue and church in America as housing violence-positive materials would raise a few eyebrows.
I wonder if Shia and Sunni mosques were equal in the results. Before you suggest that in your eyes they are the same, consider that tribal and sectarian divisions account for a large proportion of the actual violence in the Middle East.
avedis,
I simply must approve of what should be a new category in the DSM VI (but of course, it is too politically-correct a publication to allow for that):
"the extreme left fringes where ideology and mental illness blend seamlessly."
We're all on a sliding scale, dontcha know? We are all spectrum-disordered. No more Aspergers, you see -- poof! That guy Lanza in Newtown (CN)? Just on a spectrum . . . like being somewhere out on the rainbow. Spectrums and prisms are pretty things, no?
There -- now it's all better, eh?
--Lisa
All better, thank you.....look at all the pretty colors! Wow!
avedis
I think that much of the refugee crisis has to do with the breakdown of globalized capitalism. Something that can't be solved by moving around its contradictions anymore. That should be the issue, especially the climate change that its causing. Thats the biggest predictor of refugee waves.
That and the Terror Wars of course. The problem is, the board members of Lockheed Martin don't sit around wondering how to make peace in the Middle East. That doesn't make them profits for their shareholders. So until they're finished making their killing (pun intended), most refugees wait for what they've always wanted to do: go home.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/05/syrian-refugees-we-want-peace-want-to-go-home
Oh and Liberals and the "extreme" left are two different things... although you can be an extreme liberal. Although I don't like the two-dimensional right-left dichotomy, I prefer the term radical left. Because if you're going to be a leftist you have to stick to your principles, going to extremes isn't about that. I will demonstrate that to you.
Assimilation is rich, when you think about the fact that another politically incorrect fact of Western society is street harassment. This is avoided in other countries by strict gender protocols... and modesty. I believe that certain Arab retailers are the only ones that actually market mens swimming trunks, those that go down to the ankles. Conversely, when an American woman began wearing a hijab against her Muslim husbands wishes, the men on the street that cat-called her before now stared in shock. Whether this was in disbelief that a white woman could adopt such a headdress or her newfound modesty, the cat-calling ceased. This despite the fact that the Muslim husbands sisters were harassed in a store for wearing just such a headdress- while "looking" Muslim.
Dressing your women as sex objects or as sacred beings has its own strengths and weaknesses. Why are all these Western fasion designers men?
It puts things in perspective.
P.S.- It is on record you know that General Petraeus testified that using Al-Qaeda against ISIS was a legitimate tactic. In a sitting U.S. Congress. But the CIA and Al-Qaeda's antecedents and successors have been in an abusive relationship for decades, from the honeymoon years of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan to the more complicated relationship now. The war on Communism (and Indepedent Arab Nationalism and Arab populism) never truly ended. Why would it when theres important things like controlling (and most of all really) distributing the worlds last economically profitable hydrocarbons? Shale is only being financed by the pumping of oil that actually breaks even with the cost of digging it out. Which is no where in the Global North.
Some food for thought as I retire my fact-baking in RAW for a season in light of college.
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Things NieR: Automata Doesn't Tell You
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