Sunday, February 5, 2017
Really "Brain Trust" You Should All Chip In And Buy One Of Those Old Kits To Improve Reading Comprehension - Stupid Mail
My piece this morning was not about the corporate-consumer, American imperial state's high-holy day, Superbowl, the word "Superbowl" doesn't appear in it, no reference to that event appears in it and it isn't alluded to in the course of the piece. I'm not even sure that when I wrote it at four in the morning I was aware that event happened today. I'm not a fan, after all and live alone. American football isn't even the subject of the piece, it is one of four or five examples given in the piece, the subject of which is identified in the piece, it wasn't even the topic which the objection I was answering in the piece mentioned.
The clue for the stupid member in standing in Duncan's self-identified "brain trust" was this:
I bring that up as another example of Duncan Black's accusation against Christianity that it is guilty of giving "people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are".
The piece was motivated by someone who whined and complained about me saying in a piece, yesterday,
The piece was motivated by someone who whined and complained about me saying in a piece, yesterday,
Well, yeah, but what entity in human culture does all those things. Ideology? Political identity, orientation, party? The Humanities, the so-called-social-sciences? Science proper? Drinking Liberally? Which of those "NECESSARILY steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs".
The whiny response I got was whining that I'd been so impious as to include science in that list, which is why I included several examples of such science that obviously does not necessarily steer people away from horrible moral and political beliefs and which have, in fact, led people into them. Eugenics of the past and such "ethics" as Peter Singers and his "ethicist" colleagues have been duly authorized by universities of the English speaking world taking up the same line of extreme eugenics the Nazis began their campaign of industrialized mass murder during the post-war period shows that advocacy for the most extremely horrific of moral and political beliefs will get you university professorships at some of the world's most prestigious academic institutions, onto a-list talk shows and published in influential journals published for both academic and popular audiences.
My point WHICH WAS PLAINLY STATED is that entirely secular institutions abound with such entities and so does American and British secular piety about such things as sports.
I know the TV addled class of college-educated Americans contains a large percentage of those whose reading comprehension has been damaged by lack of intellectual exercise but I can't constantly refrain from making points just because such idiots with degrees and the massive arrogance that isn't cured by our system of academic credentialing sells degrees to people who can't reason their way through a seven hundred word essay and understand what the explicitly stated topic of it is. Or that something which doesn't appear in it is NOT the topic of the piece.
Update: The mentally defective Brain Trusters are apparently repeating that the piece is about the Superbowl even after they've been made aware of this piece. Really, Duncan, you've got the stupidest "brain trust" on the pseudo-left blogs.
Update: The mentally defective Brain Trusters are apparently repeating that the piece is about the Superbowl even after they've been made aware of this piece. Really, Duncan, you've got the stupidest "brain trust" on the pseudo-left blogs.
I Prefer To Limit My Worship To The Real God Not The Myriad Of Those Set Up By Secularism
As you know, I loathe American football and absolutely endorse Walter Brueggemann's statement that with its glorification of violence, sex and money and, so tellingly, with its slogan "We own Sunday" it is the liturgy of corporate-consumer culture. I don't know if Brueggemann would go as far as I would in saying it is the gladiatorial sacrament of American fascism but, there, I said it.
As bad as it is in reality, the industry of American football and sports journalism have cloaked the violence, sex and money of it ESPECIALLY THE MONEY OF IT, in the most revolting of sentimentalized, pseudo-moralistic, goopily romantic, soft veiled, artificial autumnal lighting effect sentimentality. Football is sold with all of the revolting, manipulative cinematic insincerity of a made for Lifetime movie. And don't forget the flag waving, quasi-militaristic nationalism involved.
The claim that it builds moral fiber and character in the typically and notably conceited, notably sexist, notably violent, bullying, drunken, debauched, serially adulterous often raping players and coaching staff that spills over into crime reporting with alarming regularity is the biggest load of bull shit that is regularly fed to TV-addled Americans. In that it takes the same kind of crap invented about "sport" in Britland in the 19th century, its usefulness in teaching the values necessary for training the class that would carry out their imperial colonial oppression and brings it into the electronic media age in the dying American imperial period.
I bring that up as an other example of Duncan Black's accusation against Christianity that it is guilty of giving "people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are". It being American football, they have corrupted Christianity into the mix and the results are far worse, discrediting the idea of following the Gospel of Jesus than it is for the industry of football which hijacks the images and idea of that to its own ends. That, like the hijacking of Christianity for political purposes other than egalitarian democracy, everything that Jesus said has to be scrapped to claim it for that use.
It was mightily objected to when I noted that science also "gives people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are" which, for anyone who has followed my many posts shooting holes into the giant plaster St. Charles Darwin image of science will understand. Eugenics, in all of its forms from genocide through sterilization to genocide by murder, was sold as right through the sanctification of science and the ideal of scientifically producing a master race, which was hardly exclusive to the Nazis. You can read how the eugenicists said so in virtually everything they wrote from Charles Darwin, Francis Galton .... to today's eugenicists. Today's eugenicists sell even proposals for infanticide up to an unspecified age that way. I find thinking about how Peter Singer and his fellow, university based "ethicists" turn the very idea of morality upside down that way and it's not respectable for the academic-liberalish type to say it.
And, lest you forget, it was the equally sanctified high-priesthood of theoretical and applied physics and chemistry who gave us the nuclear nightmare that has hung over humanity and which, with Trump in power, is of renewed anxiety. That one might end up killing us all.
You can take virtually every institution of secular, modern culture and see that it also functions in the way that Duncan Black accused Christianity of . Listen to virtually any of the reporters who cover the Supreme Court as their beat, listen to the lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, look at the popular literature and theatrical productions dealing with the Supreme Court and famous Supreme Court Justices of the past. If you're honestly familiar with the actual character of that Court and its members over its existence the lying, hypocritical sanctimony concerning it is entirely in keeping with a false and romanticized view of Christianity as peopled by mere mortals. Only, you're allowed in polite, secularized, academic and journalistic life to say it about Christianity, you're not allowed to say it about the Court, or science and scientists or about American football.
Update: You can hear what I said in the putrid NPR selling of the far-right ideologue and almost entirely safe Republican-fascist vote on the Court, Neil Gorsuch this morning. I've gradually grown to loathe Nina Totenberg's reporting. She's a long, long way from when she reported Clarence Thomas's sexual harassment.
Update 2: When I read comments like that my first thought is somewhere there's a horse without an ass.
As bad as it is in reality, the industry of American football and sports journalism have cloaked the violence, sex and money of it ESPECIALLY THE MONEY OF IT, in the most revolting of sentimentalized, pseudo-moralistic, goopily romantic, soft veiled, artificial autumnal lighting effect sentimentality. Football is sold with all of the revolting, manipulative cinematic insincerity of a made for Lifetime movie. And don't forget the flag waving, quasi-militaristic nationalism involved.
The claim that it builds moral fiber and character in the typically and notably conceited, notably sexist, notably violent, bullying, drunken, debauched, serially adulterous often raping players and coaching staff that spills over into crime reporting with alarming regularity is the biggest load of bull shit that is regularly fed to TV-addled Americans. In that it takes the same kind of crap invented about "sport" in Britland in the 19th century, its usefulness in teaching the values necessary for training the class that would carry out their imperial colonial oppression and brings it into the electronic media age in the dying American imperial period.
I bring that up as an other example of Duncan Black's accusation against Christianity that it is guilty of giving "people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are". It being American football, they have corrupted Christianity into the mix and the results are far worse, discrediting the idea of following the Gospel of Jesus than it is for the industry of football which hijacks the images and idea of that to its own ends. That, like the hijacking of Christianity for political purposes other than egalitarian democracy, everything that Jesus said has to be scrapped to claim it for that use.
It was mightily objected to when I noted that science also "gives people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are" which, for anyone who has followed my many posts shooting holes into the giant plaster St. Charles Darwin image of science will understand. Eugenics, in all of its forms from genocide through sterilization to genocide by murder, was sold as right through the sanctification of science and the ideal of scientifically producing a master race, which was hardly exclusive to the Nazis. You can read how the eugenicists said so in virtually everything they wrote from Charles Darwin, Francis Galton .... to today's eugenicists. Today's eugenicists sell even proposals for infanticide up to an unspecified age that way. I find thinking about how Peter Singer and his fellow, university based "ethicists" turn the very idea of morality upside down that way and it's not respectable for the academic-liberalish type to say it.
And, lest you forget, it was the equally sanctified high-priesthood of theoretical and applied physics and chemistry who gave us the nuclear nightmare that has hung over humanity and which, with Trump in power, is of renewed anxiety. That one might end up killing us all.
You can take virtually every institution of secular, modern culture and see that it also functions in the way that Duncan Black accused Christianity of . Listen to virtually any of the reporters who cover the Supreme Court as their beat, listen to the lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, look at the popular literature and theatrical productions dealing with the Supreme Court and famous Supreme Court Justices of the past. If you're honestly familiar with the actual character of that Court and its members over its existence the lying, hypocritical sanctimony concerning it is entirely in keeping with a false and romanticized view of Christianity as peopled by mere mortals. Only, you're allowed in polite, secularized, academic and journalistic life to say it about Christianity, you're not allowed to say it about the Court, or science and scientists or about American football.
Update: You can hear what I said in the putrid NPR selling of the far-right ideologue and almost entirely safe Republican-fascist vote on the Court, Neil Gorsuch this morning. I've gradually grown to loathe Nina Totenberg's reporting. She's a long, long way from when she reported Clarence Thomas's sexual harassment.
Update 2: When I read comments like that my first thought is somewhere there's a horse without an ass.
Oh, I Upset One of Tommy's Fan Boys
It was being generous when I said that some of Thomas Jefferson's writing was done under the influence of alcohol, which would account for the bizarre quality of so much of it. In the corpus of his correspondence, as published, you'll find very lucid, very clear, very moderate and rational letters and some which sound like he was pie-eyed and ranting. If all of it were like those letters, he'd be rightly considered a nut case. But, being the "Sage of Monticello" we're supposed to genuflect and pretend we don't see that he's making no sense and needed to dry out.
We do know that, like many 18th century and, even more so, 19th century men he drank a lot, every day. He said in a letter to Dr. Utley Vine,
..... I double however, the Doctor's glass and a half of wine, and even treble it with a friend; but halve its effects by drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors and cider are my table drinks,
Someone who drinks that much every day is probably justifiably considered an alcoholic. Or, to put it plainly, a drunk. Especially considering the possible alcohol content of ale, beer and cider as made on his plantation would possibly have a higher alcohol content than what's sold commercially, today. I also guess by "weak wines" he meant wine of typical strength which wasn't fortified like sherry or port. If it had too little alcohol in it, with 18th century methods of preservation, it wouldn't be wine, it would be vinegar.
Lots of the founding fathers were more like potted patriots who were mere mortals, not the demi-gods whose every word should guide us today that the federalist fascists have sold them as being. You'll hear lots of the neo-confederate, federalist-fascist bull shit like that during the Gorsuch hearings. All that founders junk pretty well came from the white supremacist backlash against the Civil Rights movement. I'm happy to mock it and diss it and show people they don't have to buy it every chance I get. Those rotted corpses have no right to strangle our right to equal justice today.
We do know that, like many 18th century and, even more so, 19th century men he drank a lot, every day. He said in a letter to Dr. Utley Vine,
..... I double however, the Doctor's glass and a half of wine, and even treble it with a friend; but halve its effects by drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors and cider are my table drinks,
Someone who drinks that much every day is probably justifiably considered an alcoholic. Or, to put it plainly, a drunk. Especially considering the possible alcohol content of ale, beer and cider as made on his plantation would possibly have a higher alcohol content than what's sold commercially, today. I also guess by "weak wines" he meant wine of typical strength which wasn't fortified like sherry or port. If it had too little alcohol in it, with 18th century methods of preservation, it wouldn't be wine, it would be vinegar.
Lots of the founding fathers were more like potted patriots who were mere mortals, not the demi-gods whose every word should guide us today that the federalist fascists have sold them as being. You'll hear lots of the neo-confederate, federalist-fascist bull shit like that during the Gorsuch hearings. All that founders junk pretty well came from the white supremacist backlash against the Civil Rights movement. I'm happy to mock it and diss it and show people they don't have to buy it every chance I get. Those rotted corpses have no right to strangle our right to equal justice today.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Saturday Night Radio Drama - Eileen Horne - The Lost Sister
Eileen Penny Downie
Mona Lia Williams
Ken Kerry Shale
Mother Dearbhla Molloy
Elsa Dearbhla Molloy
Greg Patrick Cremin
Mr Devlin Danny Webb
German Cop Danny Webb
Deiter Danny Webb
German Cop Jasmine Hyde
Dr Streep Jasmine Hyde
Siri Jasmine Hyde
Leenie Shea Hall
Mona Eliza Harrison Dine
Richard Michael Carney
Charlie (Older) Thomas Cassidy
Charlie (Younger) Bertie Cassidy
Susan Jacqueline Hass
Did Someone Really Say That? Atrios?
They Don't Care?
Not in the mood to pick personal fights but I saw one of my old sparring partners of the "all Dems need to do is pretend to love Jesus more" variety appeal to conservative Christians about potential food stamp cuts.
They don't care? I mean, of course plenty of self-identified Christians care and some self-identified conservative Christians care, but appealing to the consciences of "conservative Christians" will get you no further than appealing to the consciences of "conservatives," which is to say maybe somewhere but not very far. Conservative Christianity as a political movement (again not all conservative Christians or all pastors who identify as Christian conservatives) is opposed to the welfare state as it competes with private, and more importantly, good Christian charity. There's nothing magical about being a "Christian" that isn't completely modified by that modifier "conservative." I'm not interested in one true Christian arguments about what Jesus does and does not want as it's not my business. This is not a theological argument. Christian conservatives are part of the conservative movement, and while one can perhaps tease out some differences in emphasis between the subset and the whole, caring about food stamps isn't really one of them. They (notallthey). Don't. Care. Frankly, I find liberal Christians suggesting that "good" Christians should care about X because of their religion to be kind of offensive. Their deeply held religious beliefs are what they are. The point is to stop pretending that religion (and in the US we mean good Christian religion) necessarily steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs, because all that does it give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are. Religion might be wonderful for individuals but it doesn't elevate the morals of one group over another. I think this should be somewhat obvious by now.
They don't care? I mean, of course plenty of self-identified Christians care and some self-identified conservative Christians care, but appealing to the consciences of "conservative Christians" will get you no further than appealing to the consciences of "conservatives," which is to say maybe somewhere but not very far. Conservative Christianity as a political movement (again not all conservative Christians or all pastors who identify as Christian conservatives) is opposed to the welfare state as it competes with private, and more importantly, good Christian charity. There's nothing magical about being a "Christian" that isn't completely modified by that modifier "conservative." I'm not interested in one true Christian arguments about what Jesus does and does not want as it's not my business. This is not a theological argument. Christian conservatives are part of the conservative movement, and while one can perhaps tease out some differences in emphasis between the subset and the whole, caring about food stamps isn't really one of them. They (notallthey). Don't. Care. Frankly, I find liberal Christians suggesting that "good" Christians should care about X because of their religion to be kind of offensive. Their deeply held religious beliefs are what they are. The point is to stop pretending that religion (and in the US we mean good Christian religion) necessarily steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs, because all that does it give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are. Religion might be wonderful for individuals but it doesn't elevate the morals of one group over another. I think this should be somewhat obvious by now.
First, no, he wasn't talking about me because a. I doubt he reads me, b. I've never made that argument or any of those claims, c. I've never said anything remotely like the few alleged statements buried in that mass of qualifications contradicted immediately by their refutation and then qualified again. I don't know who he's referring to in the first sentence but the rest of it is a straw man, one he doesn't seem to be able to push over after he sets it up. If he is referring to something someone published, he should have provided a link, at least, if it's something that isn't published, well, so what?
I will go to what Duncan said his point was, first, though it's about the last thing he said.
The point is to stop pretending that religion (and in the US we mean good Christian religion) necessarily steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs, because all that does it give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are. Religion might be wonderful for individuals but it doesn't elevate the morals of one group over another. I think this should be somewhat obvious by now.
Well, yeah, but what entity in human culture does all those things. Ideology? Political identity, orientation, party? The Humanities, the so-called-social-sciences? Science proper? Drinking Liberally? Which of those "NECESSARILY steers people away from horrible moral and political beliefs". I will point out that a number of them have had the straw man status that Duncan assigns to religion, that, science, for example, that ideologies, for other examples "give people a magical cloak to hide how horrible they are". I would suggest he look at that photo of Sartre and de Beauvoir stylishly pushing Maoism in the name of free speech* posted below, for example. Does his blog community not have that pretension, at times if not most of the time? I don't look at it much these days but I doubt it's changed for the better in the past five years.
While, yes, there are religious hucksters and others who pretend the same thing about their religious identity, who claim that all they have to do is declare themselves, like Trump to be a Christian or to be "born again" and like the extinct Muggletonians that everything, therefore, goes. But that is hardly Christianity that is based very firmly on the Bible in which just about every text advocates continual self-reflection and consideration of how well someones' actions stack up against the Law and, the Prophets and the Gospel of Jesus. I would like him to point to me where in the Bible that kind of hypocritical finality is advocated or endorsed. Years ago a woman I heard put it extremely well, "It's so much easier to praise the Lord than to follow him".
But I've got to repeat my amazement that someone with Duncan Black's academic qualifications as a Brown University PhD in economics who has been associated with such places as the London School of Economics and the University of California system could be so entirely clueless about how politics works. You win in politics by putting together more votes. That's how you win elections and, within a legislative body, that's how you either prevent a law from passing or how you pass one. And when it's at that stage, you need to get constituent to pressure their members of the House and the Senate and state legislatures and even within the executive. CONSIDERING THE HUGE MAJORITY OF VOTERS IN THE UNITED STATES ARE CHRISTIANS MOST OF THAT PRESSURE MUST COME FROM CHRISTIANS. Is there some math-free option for getting that degree?
That the Gospel of Jesus, the Law of Moses, the Prophets all say it is a religious duty to feed the poor, to actually feed them, not to go through the motions, to refuse to use that fact to pressure people who claim to follow those to put their politics where their professions are is something that MIGHT BE EFFECTIVE WHERE OTHER PRESSURE WILL NOT.
I would love to ask those in danger of losing their food stamps if they agree that because someone like Duncan finds Christianity icky that Democrats shouldn't request Christians to pressure their legislators and members of Congress to do what Jesus said they should do. I have a feeling that most people who are in danger of going hungry would think what Duncan Black insists on is just plain stupid. Not even most of those who hadn't finished sixth grade could fail to see that.
* I'd love to know what would have happened to them if, that year, they'd gone to a street in Beijing and distributed The Declaration of Human Rights or whatever document asserting a right of free speech. Especially in defiance of the law in Mao's China. Or, rather, if a Chinese intellectual had done so - without backing from a stylish vedette intellectual milieu such as the one those two phonies operated in.
Update: What JR and Simps know about music is the equivalent of patty-cake. That Brit might be even stupider than Tlaz, and if she's actually achieved that it's the only thing she's ever done that's hard to do. Hoodwinking the Eschatots into believing that she's smart isn't that hard and not all of them have bought it.
An Ignoramus Who Never Read Sartre Is Trying To Use Him To Taunt Me
Get back to me when any of them have the slightest idea of what Sartre meant by one of his stupidest, most incredibly egocentric, egomaniacle inanities.
The full version of that famous quote, about the only thing most college educated Americans think they know about Sartre's turgid, voluminous and entirely pointless writing is
GARCIN: Le bronze .. . (Il le caresse.) Eh bien, voici le moment. Le bronze est là, je le contemple et je comprends que je suis en enfer. Je vous dis quentout était prévu. Ils avaient prévu que je me
tiendrais devant cette cheminée, pressant manmain sur ce bronze, avec tous ces regards sur
moi . Tous ces regards qui me mangent .. . (Il se retourne brusquement.) Ha ! vous n'êtes que
deux ? Je vous croyais beaucoup plus nombreuses. (Il rit.) Alors, c'est ça l'enfer. Je n'aurais
jamais cru ... Vous vous rappelez : le soufre, le bûcher, le gril... Ah ! quelle plaisanterie . Pas
besoin de gril : l'enfer, c'est les Autres.
GARCIN: This bronze. Yes, now's the moment; I'm looking at this thing on the
mantelpiece, and I understand that I'm in hell. I tell you, everything's been thoughtout
beforehand. They knew I'd stand at the fireplace stroking this thing of bronze, with all
those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were
more; many more. So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were
told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives'
tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS-OTHER PEOPLE! [Not my translation, one taken from the web, but it will do.]
What Sartre meant is that the very fact that there are other people in the world with us is hell because we have to think of what they think of us as they observe our behavior. It's the philosophy of a sociopathic, solipsistic jerk.
If I cared I'd go look up the relevant passages in Being and Nothingness, etc. to back up the point. But why bother with people who don't even know that much of the context of the thing.
And, I'll remind people, Sartre was such a great moral force and thinker on such things that he was a famous and active - if pretty much a for-show as a reigning vedette of the intellectual Parisian Left - Maoist at the height of Mao's reign of murder, outdoing Hitler at the height of his reign of murder.
For someone who found it so existentially painful to have to think of other people looking at us while we might merely touch a bronze statue, he seldom lost an opportunity to make a world-wide spectacle of himself as an advocate for the reigning champion of murder as he passed out Maoist hand-bills in Paris, mugging for the cameras that would record it for all the fashionable journals. The biggest Vichyist, collaborating apologist for Hitler at the height his mass murders is as worthy of respect as Sartre was. The only thing either deserves is absolute and total scorn.
Update: No, dopey, I wasn't making that up. Here's a picture of Sartre and his equally assholish girlfriend and fan of de Sade, Simone de Beauvoir, doing exactly that in 1970, the height of the Cultural Revolution that killed an unknown number of people, scholars estimating the figure well into the millions. We don't know because there is no transparency in Sartre's workers paradise, which he and his girlfriend, notably, did not elect to live in.
The full version of that famous quote, about the only thing most college educated Americans think they know about Sartre's turgid, voluminous and entirely pointless writing is
GARCIN: Le bronze .. . (Il le caresse.) Eh bien, voici le moment. Le bronze est là, je le contemple et je comprends que je suis en enfer. Je vous dis quentout était prévu. Ils avaient prévu que je me
tiendrais devant cette cheminée, pressant manmain sur ce bronze, avec tous ces regards sur
moi . Tous ces regards qui me mangent .. . (Il se retourne brusquement.) Ha ! vous n'êtes que
deux ? Je vous croyais beaucoup plus nombreuses. (Il rit.) Alors, c'est ça l'enfer. Je n'aurais
jamais cru ... Vous vous rappelez : le soufre, le bûcher, le gril... Ah ! quelle plaisanterie . Pas
besoin de gril : l'enfer, c'est les Autres.
GARCIN: This bronze. Yes, now's the moment; I'm looking at this thing on the
mantelpiece, and I understand that I'm in hell. I tell you, everything's been thoughtout
beforehand. They knew I'd stand at the fireplace stroking this thing of bronze, with all
those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were
more; many more. So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were
told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives'
tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS-OTHER PEOPLE! [Not my translation, one taken from the web, but it will do.]
What Sartre meant is that the very fact that there are other people in the world with us is hell because we have to think of what they think of us as they observe our behavior. It's the philosophy of a sociopathic, solipsistic jerk.
If I cared I'd go look up the relevant passages in Being and Nothingness, etc. to back up the point. But why bother with people who don't even know that much of the context of the thing.
And, I'll remind people, Sartre was such a great moral force and thinker on such things that he was a famous and active - if pretty much a for-show as a reigning vedette of the intellectual Parisian Left - Maoist at the height of Mao's reign of murder, outdoing Hitler at the height of his reign of murder.
For someone who found it so existentially painful to have to think of other people looking at us while we might merely touch a bronze statue, he seldom lost an opportunity to make a world-wide spectacle of himself as an advocate for the reigning champion of murder as he passed out Maoist hand-bills in Paris, mugging for the cameras that would record it for all the fashionable journals. The biggest Vichyist, collaborating apologist for Hitler at the height his mass murders is as worthy of respect as Sartre was. The only thing either deserves is absolute and total scorn.
Update: No, dopey, I wasn't making that up. Here's a picture of Sartre and his equally assholish girlfriend and fan of de Sade, Simone de Beauvoir, doing exactly that in 1970, the height of the Cultural Revolution that killed an unknown number of people, scholars estimating the figure well into the millions. We don't know because there is no transparency in Sartre's workers paradise, which he and his girlfriend, notably, did not elect to live in.
The Free Press Sold Us To Putin's Puppets Lie By Lie
Perhaps one of the stupidest and most hypocritical and utterly foolish things one of the most idolized of the "founders" said is also one of the most often cited with mandatory piety. It was everyone's favorite deified, slave-holding profligate Thomas Jefferson who said:
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Yeah, really. I can imagine if the people he held in slavery ever decided to take what a later and far more admirable president* would have said was theirs by "natural right" without the leave of Master Thomas and assert their full equality and those natural rights to the fruits of their labor, which he took from them by declaration of the government he had such a hand in setting up, his recourse in stopping them would not be to wave a newspaper at them. Look at his reaction to the successful slave revolt in Haiti if you don't believe me on that point.
The entire course of Jefferson's life as a wealthy slave holder, as a politician and an office holder shows that he was blowing smoke when he said that. And it is an utterly stupid thing to say in the late 20th century when it was a slogan the media industry sold its privileges through and today when we are beginning our terrible ordeal which is the result of their having the freest reign in their history, free to degrade the public discourse and the minds of a sufficient number of Americans so they would be duped into voting for the very Donald Trump who, not a month into his regime, they are finding they were deceived, duped into and are about to be cheated, robbed by and worse.
The American media had every chance to tell the truth when they were given free reign to lie and they chose to tell lies. From the sewer pit of Breitbart, to the stink stack of FOX right up through the cabloid and broadcast crappers and even up to the Great Gray Lady of the New York Times, the free press has lied us into Donald Trump. The sales job that turned one of Jefferson's alcoholic bromides into a slogan to sell people on allowing the press to lie was, actually, an experiment in what would happen when they did that and the results are they lied us into Donald Trump.
The ACLU, the Joel Gora style media paid shills and the many scribbling class copy boys of the media who pushed allowing them to totally escape responsibility for their lies are what gave us Donald Trump.
We've seen the media lie countries into fascism before, Italy got both Mussolini and Berlusconi that way, the German and Austrian people were corrupted and sold Nazism through the media. We've seen every dictator in the modern period use the media to get and consolidate their stranglehold on countries. We've, now, seen the media creation Trump sold to the American people using the media and the very same methods of snake oil salesmanship and fascistic methods of rule through creating and channeling hate talk.
Yet we are not to learn a single thing from that because people like Thomas Jefferson said shit in the 18th century which they certainly wouldn't have lived under themselves. If the newspapers, somehow, during Jefferson's lifetime, called for the immediate abolition of slavery and his slaves to be able to sue him for the property he stole from them - declared by Lincoln to be rightfully theirs - I'm sure he would have used every organ of the government to suppress such talk, even as slaves were forbidden by law to even learn to read a newspaper.
The free-speech absolutists are in fact if not in hypocritical proclamation, the ones who gave us Trump. We need to understand that because even if we were to, somehow, manage to escape the damage that he, his fascist party and the Supreme Court with whatever fascists he and Pence put on it, it will just be a matter of time before the regime of lies that now rules our countries thinking will give us another Trump or worse. Instead of getting the puppet of someone like Putin, we could get a Putin next time. We're no smarter than they are in Russia or in any of the other countries which have been duped into voting in their own dictators.
* I am referring, of course to Abraham Lincolns utterly American refutation to Stephen Douglas's racist remark during one of their debates that Lincoln must want to marry a black woman if he claimed she was equal to a white one. Lincoln's response proves he was in every way Jefferson's moral and intellectual superior.
Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.
Also: It's one of the stupidest aspects of anarchism that their pipe dream is that some wonderful, decent society would result if governments were to disappear when the results of no civil government and authority is fully known and proven in the most tragic of human experience many times over the entirety of human history. When legitimate authority is absent, rule by the most violent, ruthless strong-man style thugs and their organized criminals will replace it. Anyone who advocates anarchism is rightly considered either entirely stupid or entirely in favor of such strong-man fascism. It was one of the great surprises to me, when I was able to freely access many of her full pieces online that I saw the deified Emma Goldman was a huge admirer of Nietzsche. Her anarchism wasn't interested in universal freedom, she had great disdain for the majority of people, it was with a view fo some kind of amoral superman asserting his rule, or, probably in her fantasy, hers. Goldman is another of the biggest frauds ever sold to an ignorant and gullible left.
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Yeah, really. I can imagine if the people he held in slavery ever decided to take what a later and far more admirable president* would have said was theirs by "natural right" without the leave of Master Thomas and assert their full equality and those natural rights to the fruits of their labor, which he took from them by declaration of the government he had such a hand in setting up, his recourse in stopping them would not be to wave a newspaper at them. Look at his reaction to the successful slave revolt in Haiti if you don't believe me on that point.
The entire course of Jefferson's life as a wealthy slave holder, as a politician and an office holder shows that he was blowing smoke when he said that. And it is an utterly stupid thing to say in the late 20th century when it was a slogan the media industry sold its privileges through and today when we are beginning our terrible ordeal which is the result of their having the freest reign in their history, free to degrade the public discourse and the minds of a sufficient number of Americans so they would be duped into voting for the very Donald Trump who, not a month into his regime, they are finding they were deceived, duped into and are about to be cheated, robbed by and worse.
The American media had every chance to tell the truth when they were given free reign to lie and they chose to tell lies. From the sewer pit of Breitbart, to the stink stack of FOX right up through the cabloid and broadcast crappers and even up to the Great Gray Lady of the New York Times, the free press has lied us into Donald Trump. The sales job that turned one of Jefferson's alcoholic bromides into a slogan to sell people on allowing the press to lie was, actually, an experiment in what would happen when they did that and the results are they lied us into Donald Trump.
The ACLU, the Joel Gora style media paid shills and the many scribbling class copy boys of the media who pushed allowing them to totally escape responsibility for their lies are what gave us Donald Trump.
We've seen the media lie countries into fascism before, Italy got both Mussolini and Berlusconi that way, the German and Austrian people were corrupted and sold Nazism through the media. We've seen every dictator in the modern period use the media to get and consolidate their stranglehold on countries. We've, now, seen the media creation Trump sold to the American people using the media and the very same methods of snake oil salesmanship and fascistic methods of rule through creating and channeling hate talk.
Yet we are not to learn a single thing from that because people like Thomas Jefferson said shit in the 18th century which they certainly wouldn't have lived under themselves. If the newspapers, somehow, during Jefferson's lifetime, called for the immediate abolition of slavery and his slaves to be able to sue him for the property he stole from them - declared by Lincoln to be rightfully theirs - I'm sure he would have used every organ of the government to suppress such talk, even as slaves were forbidden by law to even learn to read a newspaper.
The free-speech absolutists are in fact if not in hypocritical proclamation, the ones who gave us Trump. We need to understand that because even if we were to, somehow, manage to escape the damage that he, his fascist party and the Supreme Court with whatever fascists he and Pence put on it, it will just be a matter of time before the regime of lies that now rules our countries thinking will give us another Trump or worse. Instead of getting the puppet of someone like Putin, we could get a Putin next time. We're no smarter than they are in Russia or in any of the other countries which have been duped into voting in their own dictators.
* I am referring, of course to Abraham Lincolns utterly American refutation to Stephen Douglas's racist remark during one of their debates that Lincoln must want to marry a black woman if he claimed she was equal to a white one. Lincoln's response proves he was in every way Jefferson's moral and intellectual superior.
Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.
Also: It's one of the stupidest aspects of anarchism that their pipe dream is that some wonderful, decent society would result if governments were to disappear when the results of no civil government and authority is fully known and proven in the most tragic of human experience many times over the entirety of human history. When legitimate authority is absent, rule by the most violent, ruthless strong-man style thugs and their organized criminals will replace it. Anyone who advocates anarchism is rightly considered either entirely stupid or entirely in favor of such strong-man fascism. It was one of the great surprises to me, when I was able to freely access many of her full pieces online that I saw the deified Emma Goldman was a huge admirer of Nietzsche. Her anarchism wasn't interested in universal freedom, she had great disdain for the majority of people, it was with a view fo some kind of amoral superman asserting his rule, or, probably in her fantasy, hers. Goldman is another of the biggest frauds ever sold to an ignorant and gullible left.
Friday, February 3, 2017
This Speaks For Itself: Someone Sent Me This I Repost It
Details remain thin on the ground, but the head of Paris police confirmed that they "are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat, and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident.”
The attacker was shot five times and was shouting “Allahu akbar,” Mr Cadot added.
Responding to news of the incident, Donald Trump tweeted:
A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.
Mr Trump's speed at condemning the attack comes at no surprise of course. He is famed for his reactionary tweeting style.
However, what is interesting is his selectiveness of which incidents he reacts to in a public forum.
Earlier this week, the residents of Quebec were left in mourning after a shooting at a city mosque left six dead.
The man charged in connection with the terrorist attack is French Canadian student Alexandre Bissonnette , who was a fan for Donald Trump and far-right nationalist politician Marine Le Pen.
Along with the six people killed, five were left in a critical condition and 12 others suffered minor injuries.
Reality TV Meets Reality And The Result's Ain't Pretty
As I'm reading those in side the DC establishment who are scratching their heads over Donald Trump's dangerously pathological practice of picking fights with even our strongest allies, I think I see the habits of a deeply incompetent, deeply stupid, deeply unfit for his job, man. In his entire and complete ignorance and lack of knowledge about even the most vital and basic aspects of what an American president needs to know, the Pretender Trump is resorting to the tactic of bullying and threatening as a way to cover up his total ignorance. His call to the Australian Prime Minister is a good case to see this in, it was reportedly scheduled for an hour, which carried the huge danger that he wouldn't live in real time, without a director and film editing and scripting, be able to cover his fat ass, he resorted to what he did and cut the call short because he sensed he wouldn't be able to do it.
Donald Trump, a creation of, not even the movies, but "reality TV" is like a really incompetent star of TV trying to do a real play on stage for the first time while the whole world is watching him flounder and flub and forget, lines, cues etc. revealing he doesn't have the faintest idea what the play is even about. It's worse than that because there's no script and he's making a total and absolute ass of himself and deep, deep down in his 4-year-old mind, even the parts that he's forgotten are where he acts from, he has a sense that he's blowing it and getting caught and so he throws a tantrum.
"No Scientist Thinks Like You Claim"
There was an objection to my saying that the required ideology of the biological and, especially the alleged sciences dealing with the mind is materialist-Darwinist. Well, we've got fascists in the White House and running congress and about to install one in a stolen Supreme Court seat but, a quick one.
It just so happens that a couple of weeks ago I read the refutation of that in an old article from Scientific American. Jessie Bering felt it necessary, before he wrote about some of his personal experiences, his experience of which couldn't be true if his ideology were valid, to establish that he is a true believer in that very dogma. He began:
"I’m as sworn to radical rationalism as the next neo-Darwinian materialist. That said, over the years I’ve had to “quarantine,” for lack of a better word, a few anomalous personal experiences that have stubbornly defied my own logical understanding of them."
Based on what he described as his witness of the frequently experienced phenomenon of terminal lucidity in people who have had long or serious dementia, right before they died, it wasn't his logical understanding of his experience that was defied, it was his "neo-Darwinian materialist" faith. Atheist materialists are ALWAYS having to suppress the witness of their own experience, reject the reported experience of other people, having to resort to the most unfounded, even illogical and irrational and basest practices of debunkery on the basis of lies and ridicule to make it go away. But it won't because most people are not so stupid as to not believe their own experience, experiences as valid as any that the reporting of genuine science is made of. People who are fortunate enough to see and experience the terminal lucidity of their loved ones before they pass have every right to the evidence of their own eyes without atheist assholes telling them they didn't see what they saw and which the atheists seldom were there to see.
That "neo-Darwininan materialism" is the faith of the entire pseudo-skeptical-atheist materialist priesthood of science and academia that they coerce their colleagues to adopt or at least not violate, which they and their fellow atheists browbeat people with constantly. It is why, when I challenged atheists to explain how the brain could build the physical structures they claimed were ideas and thoughts BEFORE THEY COULD BE PRESENT AS A PHYSICAL STRUCTURE IN THE BRAIN, several of them, unable to come up with a real answer chanted "natural selection" which, in such atheism, is more a magic charm than a component of rational discourse.
And if I looked for the exact quotes and citations in written stuff, quite a list of them could be compiled. Maybe I should ask Jessie Bering for a list of "the next neo-Darwinian materialist" and then I could ask those two to the sides of him for more names.
It's a funny ideology that has to lie about its basic faith holdings and the fact that that is what they claim. It's almost as if they didn't really believe it, themselves, or maybe they just don't like anyone articulating what they're up to. They prey on the general ignorance and laziness in reading and looking up stuff that is ubiquitous among those who hold college degrees and those who like to think they're superior.
I haven't dipped into the foul little phenomenon of James Randi and CSICOP and pseudo-skepticism in a long while, maybe I should before the foul little creep passes.
It just so happens that a couple of weeks ago I read the refutation of that in an old article from Scientific American. Jessie Bering felt it necessary, before he wrote about some of his personal experiences, his experience of which couldn't be true if his ideology were valid, to establish that he is a true believer in that very dogma. He began:
"I’m as sworn to radical rationalism as the next neo-Darwinian materialist. That said, over the years I’ve had to “quarantine,” for lack of a better word, a few anomalous personal experiences that have stubbornly defied my own logical understanding of them."
Based on what he described as his witness of the frequently experienced phenomenon of terminal lucidity in people who have had long or serious dementia, right before they died, it wasn't his logical understanding of his experience that was defied, it was his "neo-Darwinian materialist" faith. Atheist materialists are ALWAYS having to suppress the witness of their own experience, reject the reported experience of other people, having to resort to the most unfounded, even illogical and irrational and basest practices of debunkery on the basis of lies and ridicule to make it go away. But it won't because most people are not so stupid as to not believe their own experience, experiences as valid as any that the reporting of genuine science is made of. People who are fortunate enough to see and experience the terminal lucidity of their loved ones before they pass have every right to the evidence of their own eyes without atheist assholes telling them they didn't see what they saw and which the atheists seldom were there to see.
That "neo-Darwininan materialism" is the faith of the entire pseudo-skeptical-atheist materialist priesthood of science and academia that they coerce their colleagues to adopt or at least not violate, which they and their fellow atheists browbeat people with constantly. It is why, when I challenged atheists to explain how the brain could build the physical structures they claimed were ideas and thoughts BEFORE THEY COULD BE PRESENT AS A PHYSICAL STRUCTURE IN THE BRAIN, several of them, unable to come up with a real answer chanted "natural selection" which, in such atheism, is more a magic charm than a component of rational discourse.
And if I looked for the exact quotes and citations in written stuff, quite a list of them could be compiled. Maybe I should ask Jessie Bering for a list of "the next neo-Darwinian materialist" and then I could ask those two to the sides of him for more names.
It's a funny ideology that has to lie about its basic faith holdings and the fact that that is what they claim. It's almost as if they didn't really believe it, themselves, or maybe they just don't like anyone articulating what they're up to. They prey on the general ignorance and laziness in reading and looking up stuff that is ubiquitous among those who hold college degrees and those who like to think they're superior.
I haven't dipped into the foul little phenomenon of James Randi and CSICOP and pseudo-skepticism in a long while, maybe I should before the foul little creep passes.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Oh, For ......
Apparently it has never been noticed by you of the rump remnant of Eschaton but I haven't posted a comment on there in almost five years. I know, most of you are of an age when the light dims and the memory fades but, really, it's been that long. I certainly don't ask Simps to talk about me over there.
If Duncan Black didn't sponsor the lies that Simels and JR, Tlaz and Skeps, and a few other of you assholes over there tell about what I've said, I'd never mention him, his blog or his daycare for agéd atheists, ever again. NOTHING that he posts is of interest to me unless someone like Kevin Drum picks it up and, really, how often does that happen in a decade, these days?
If Duncan doesn't like it, he can stop posting lies about me and I will never have any reason to do other than pretend that he and you do not exist. Why don't you ask him, then you can pretend I don't exist, either. Whine where it will get you what you think you want. Don't complain to me.
If Duncan Black didn't sponsor the lies that Simels and JR, Tlaz and Skeps, and a few other of you assholes over there tell about what I've said, I'd never mention him, his blog or his daycare for agéd atheists, ever again. NOTHING that he posts is of interest to me unless someone like Kevin Drum picks it up and, really, how often does that happen in a decade, these days?
If Duncan doesn't like it, he can stop posting lies about me and I will never have any reason to do other than pretend that he and you do not exist. Why don't you ask him, then you can pretend I don't exist, either. Whine where it will get you what you think you want. Don't complain to me.
One Difference Between France And The United States Is That We've Actually Got A Fascist Government Here, They've Avoided It So Far
The emerging picture of the mass murderer who attacked the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Center, killing eleven and injuring more, shows that he's a fan of Donald Trump and the French neo-fascist Marine Le Pen. Le Pen has yet to control the government of France, which they can take some comfort in. We, in the United States, aren't so fortunate.
But he came across as intelligent to his peers, and joined the chess club at Laval University, where he studied anthropology and political science.
Bissonnette appeared to enjoy discussing politics with select classmates at university. Jean-Michel Allard Prus, who took a politics class with Bissonnette, said they often debated with each other on Facebook.
Muslim leaders find it difficult to ignore tensions that preceded shooting
In these debates, Bissonnette expressed fairly mainstream conservative views. A hunter, he opposed gun control and was pro-Israel, but otherwise didn't bring up more divisive issues such as Muslims or immigration.
But that was a year ago.
"I think … something happened. He radicalized a lot," Prus said. "He seemed just a normal right-wing individual."
As Bissonnette began to espouse more radical views, he stopped interacting with his fellow students. He took part in at least one informal discussion group, but quickly found its members too moderate and stopped attending.
"He was not interested by our politics meeting because we are conservative and moderate right wing," said Éric Debroise, a Laval University student and member of the discussion group.
"He is more far-right or alt-right."
Trump, Le Pen political idols
Debroise described Bissonnette as nice but anti-social. In their meetings, he said, Bissonnette often spoke admiringly of U.S. President Donald Trump and the French far-right politician Marine Le Pen Trump enjoys the support of the alt-right, a loosely defined political movement that includes white nationalists and white supremacists.
The alt-right is known, too, for its army of online trolls who circulate racist memes and virulent attacks on perceived opponents.
Within activist circles in Quebec City, Bissonnette has been considered an extremist troll in his own right.
In a Facebook post, a refugee support group said Bissonnette is "known to several activists in Quebec City for his pro-Le Pen and anti-feminist positions."
The group said Bissonnette is fond of using the term "feminazi" — alt-right slang for those who advocate women's rights.
First, let's call the "alt-right" what it is, FASCISM. To use the fascist Steve Bannon's own invented euphamism for his own fascism is to cooperate with his fascism. Our media has shown it is entirely willing to cooperate with it. That is when it's more accurate to call it neo-Nazism. Second, let's stop helping them by pretending that they are just some other political ideology which deserves to be allowed to air their views and propagate them BECAUSE AN INTRINSIC PART OF THEIR POLITICAL POISON IS TO KILL, OPPRESS AND DISCRIMINATE AGAINST OTHER PEOPLE. That certainly transforms them into something which normal people should not ignore, pretend is innocuous and allow the same rights as those who favor equal rights, economic justice and a peaceful, decent life for all people, a right, the denial of which defines the politics of fascism.
Anyone who insists that fascists, Nazis, white-supremacists, male-supremacists, Marxists, etc. who advocate inequality, oppression and murder of other people deserve an equal hearing so those intended victims can stand a chance of being oppressed and killed is a total asshole no matter what Ivy League law school they came from or what eminent newspaper or magazine hires them to write such crap. Only, these days, it's TV and radio and the internet that pushes that nonsense. I say let the advocates of such false equality put their rights, their lives, the rights and lives of their loved ones on the line for the absurd, nonsensical and entirely irresponsible and unnecessary pose. I'm sure if it were possible to make them the focus of the fascist "alt-right", setting them up to be those in front of their automatic weapons they'd quickly drop the crap. Those who oppose universal liberty, equality and good will have no legitimate claim to it for themselves. You might forgive them their errors but you have no right to risk them putting it into effect to target others.
But he came across as intelligent to his peers, and joined the chess club at Laval University, where he studied anthropology and political science.
Bissonnette appeared to enjoy discussing politics with select classmates at university. Jean-Michel Allard Prus, who took a politics class with Bissonnette, said they often debated with each other on Facebook.
Muslim leaders find it difficult to ignore tensions that preceded shooting
In these debates, Bissonnette expressed fairly mainstream conservative views. A hunter, he opposed gun control and was pro-Israel, but otherwise didn't bring up more divisive issues such as Muslims or immigration.
But that was a year ago.
"I think … something happened. He radicalized a lot," Prus said. "He seemed just a normal right-wing individual."
As Bissonnette began to espouse more radical views, he stopped interacting with his fellow students. He took part in at least one informal discussion group, but quickly found its members too moderate and stopped attending.
"He was not interested by our politics meeting because we are conservative and moderate right wing," said Éric Debroise, a Laval University student and member of the discussion group.
"He is more far-right or alt-right."
Trump, Le Pen political idols
Debroise described Bissonnette as nice but anti-social. In their meetings, he said, Bissonnette often spoke admiringly of U.S. President Donald Trump and the French far-right politician Marine Le Pen Trump enjoys the support of the alt-right, a loosely defined political movement that includes white nationalists and white supremacists.
The alt-right is known, too, for its army of online trolls who circulate racist memes and virulent attacks on perceived opponents.
Within activist circles in Quebec City, Bissonnette has been considered an extremist troll in his own right.
In a Facebook post, a refugee support group said Bissonnette is "known to several activists in Quebec City for his pro-Le Pen and anti-feminist positions."
The group said Bissonnette is fond of using the term "feminazi" — alt-right slang for those who advocate women's rights.
First, let's call the "alt-right" what it is, FASCISM. To use the fascist Steve Bannon's own invented euphamism for his own fascism is to cooperate with his fascism. Our media has shown it is entirely willing to cooperate with it. That is when it's more accurate to call it neo-Nazism. Second, let's stop helping them by pretending that they are just some other political ideology which deserves to be allowed to air their views and propagate them BECAUSE AN INTRINSIC PART OF THEIR POLITICAL POISON IS TO KILL, OPPRESS AND DISCRIMINATE AGAINST OTHER PEOPLE. That certainly transforms them into something which normal people should not ignore, pretend is innocuous and allow the same rights as those who favor equal rights, economic justice and a peaceful, decent life for all people, a right, the denial of which defines the politics of fascism.
Anyone who insists that fascists, Nazis, white-supremacists, male-supremacists, Marxists, etc. who advocate inequality, oppression and murder of other people deserve an equal hearing so those intended victims can stand a chance of being oppressed and killed is a total asshole no matter what Ivy League law school they came from or what eminent newspaper or magazine hires them to write such crap. Only, these days, it's TV and radio and the internet that pushes that nonsense. I say let the advocates of such false equality put their rights, their lives, the rights and lives of their loved ones on the line for the absurd, nonsensical and entirely irresponsible and unnecessary pose. I'm sure if it were possible to make them the focus of the fascist "alt-right", setting them up to be those in front of their automatic weapons they'd quickly drop the crap. Those who oppose universal liberty, equality and good will have no legitimate claim to it for themselves. You might forgive them their errors but you have no right to risk them putting it into effect to target others.
In Political Results Black Hoods = White Hoods
The Black Bloc "anarchists" hijacking peaceful protests are doing for Donald Trump what Donald Trump's anti-Muslim executive orders do for ISIS.
Black hoods are the new white hoods. They should be driven out of any demonstration, they should be suspected as being fascist agent provocateurs, perhaps sent by the Comey FBI as the Hoover FBI used to do.
Update: Oh, for crying out loud. James Comey illegally inserted himself and the FBI into the presidential campaign on behalf of Trump and his Republican-fascist party DO YOU THINK HE'S ABOVE SENDING IN AGENTS DRESSED IN BLACK HOODS TO DISCREDIT THE PROTESTS AGAINST HIS REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS AND TRUMP?
I don't, I think he deserves to be suspected of that until proven innocent beyond any reasonable doubt. A reasonable doubt he never gave Hillary Clinton as he targeted her as he didn't target the massively corrupt Donald Trump. He doesn't get to have one for himself, now.
Black hoods are the new white hoods. They should be driven out of any demonstration, they should be suspected as being fascist agent provocateurs, perhaps sent by the Comey FBI as the Hoover FBI used to do.
Update: Oh, for crying out loud. James Comey illegally inserted himself and the FBI into the presidential campaign on behalf of Trump and his Republican-fascist party DO YOU THINK HE'S ABOVE SENDING IN AGENTS DRESSED IN BLACK HOODS TO DISCREDIT THE PROTESTS AGAINST HIS REPUBLICAN-FASCISTS AND TRUMP?
I don't, I think he deserves to be suspected of that until proven innocent beyond any reasonable doubt. A reasonable doubt he never gave Hillary Clinton as he targeted her as he didn't target the massively corrupt Donald Trump. He doesn't get to have one for himself, now.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
The Power Of Hate Talk Radio And Those Who Profit From It
To follow up on what I mentioned about the Bill Clinton administration not silencing the Rwandan hate-talk radio even as it was telling the equivalent of Einsatzgruppen where to find the equivalent of Jews to murder because "free speech" here's a piece about what many in Quebec believed might have inspired the white-supremacist mass murderer in Quebec the other day or at least created the milieu which his mind inhabits.
Quebec City’s popular mayor, Régis Labeaume, also appeared to criticize the radio stations. Speaking at an outdoor vigil in memory of the victims Monday evening, he denounced those who “get rich from peddling hatred.”
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard acknowledged Tuesday that the province has “its demons” and that “xenophobia, racism and exclusion are present here.” But he told reporters that Quebec society is generally open and tolerant.
“Whenever you happen to listen to this trash radio, you hear clearly xenophobic language,” said Mohammed Ali Saidane, who has lived in Quebec for 30 years.
“What I reproach with these media is that they import problems from elsewhere, especially France. We don’t live in ghettos here. It’s not the same as France,” he told the Journal de Quebec newspaper.
“The real danger of this kind of radio is that they play with the line between news, opinion and demagoguery,” said Louis-Philippe Lampron, who teaches human rights law at Laval University.
Being experienced in the two-step that the free-speech absolutist dances whenever someone gets killed as a result of hate-speech, they'll claim that "there's no proof" that hate-talk radio actually lit the fuse that exploded in many deaths. Or, more likely, "there's no link" between the two phenomena. I have come to the conclusion that for these absolutist asses, no amount of causation could be proved that they would admit as evidence, no number of people killed would matter to them - they rarely constitute the kind of people who are at danger of being attacked and killed or having their loved ones attacked and killed. And there's always money to be made from broadcasting hate and defending it. No matter how depraved it is.
Jeff Fillion, one of the best-known hosts, was fired last spring by Bell Media, owner of Energie 98.9 FM, after he ridiculed a prominent local businessman who had publicly grieved his son’s suicide. But soon after, Fillion was back on the air at another station.
“It’s like reality TV,” said Guillaume Verret, a 21-year-old college student and part-time barista as he sat with friends at a Starbucks in suburban Sainte-Foy. “It’s completely stupid and easy. They don’t give you facts. They just give you opinions that provoke people.”
Like reality TV. And, as we're seeing in the ACLU fund-raising campaign in the face of the developing Trump-fascism, they'd claim that "there is no evidence that reality TV ever hurt anyone".
I really hate the lawyers and writers and other liars who promoted the lie that what is said in the mass media, over and over again has no effect on how people act and, it being mass media, that masses of people can't be led to do everything from the foolish, to the bad, to the evil to the mass murdering influenced by the same techniques TV gets big bucks to use to sell people junk between their hate fixes. There's no evidence that they're not a bunch of money grubbing liars and hypocrites who don't care how many people get killed and if it leads to a fascist government in the United States. Pretty much the whole professional scribbling syndicate is in on it, too. With a few exceptions.
Quebec City’s popular mayor, Régis Labeaume, also appeared to criticize the radio stations. Speaking at an outdoor vigil in memory of the victims Monday evening, he denounced those who “get rich from peddling hatred.”
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard acknowledged Tuesday that the province has “its demons” and that “xenophobia, racism and exclusion are present here.” But he told reporters that Quebec society is generally open and tolerant.
“Whenever you happen to listen to this trash radio, you hear clearly xenophobic language,” said Mohammed Ali Saidane, who has lived in Quebec for 30 years.
“What I reproach with these media is that they import problems from elsewhere, especially France. We don’t live in ghettos here. It’s not the same as France,” he told the Journal de Quebec newspaper.
“The real danger of this kind of radio is that they play with the line between news, opinion and demagoguery,” said Louis-Philippe Lampron, who teaches human rights law at Laval University.
Being experienced in the two-step that the free-speech absolutist dances whenever someone gets killed as a result of hate-speech, they'll claim that "there's no proof" that hate-talk radio actually lit the fuse that exploded in many deaths. Or, more likely, "there's no link" between the two phenomena. I have come to the conclusion that for these absolutist asses, no amount of causation could be proved that they would admit as evidence, no number of people killed would matter to them - they rarely constitute the kind of people who are at danger of being attacked and killed or having their loved ones attacked and killed. And there's always money to be made from broadcasting hate and defending it. No matter how depraved it is.
Jeff Fillion, one of the best-known hosts, was fired last spring by Bell Media, owner of Energie 98.9 FM, after he ridiculed a prominent local businessman who had publicly grieved his son’s suicide. But soon after, Fillion was back on the air at another station.
“It’s like reality TV,” said Guillaume Verret, a 21-year-old college student and part-time barista as he sat with friends at a Starbucks in suburban Sainte-Foy. “It’s completely stupid and easy. They don’t give you facts. They just give you opinions that provoke people.”
Like reality TV. And, as we're seeing in the ACLU fund-raising campaign in the face of the developing Trump-fascism, they'd claim that "there is no evidence that reality TV ever hurt anyone".
I really hate the lawyers and writers and other liars who promoted the lie that what is said in the mass media, over and over again has no effect on how people act and, it being mass media, that masses of people can't be led to do everything from the foolish, to the bad, to the evil to the mass murdering influenced by the same techniques TV gets big bucks to use to sell people junk between their hate fixes. There's no evidence that they're not a bunch of money grubbing liars and hypocrites who don't care how many people get killed and if it leads to a fascist government in the United States. Pretty much the whole professional scribbling syndicate is in on it, too. With a few exceptions.
Aural Ipecac
A university music department, for music majors, is something like a second family. Only you're more likely to feel an obligation to try to like everyone in your family. Back, about half a century and it's none of your business ago there was a guy in our music department who was on work study and who worked for the music department. I worked in the library, wanting to get out of the music wing of the arts building as much as possible.
Anyway, this guy, I'll call him "Bob" because that wasn't his name and the real guy might still be alive, if he managed to avoid someone throttling him, was a ubiquitous presence and constant irritant. He wasn't that bright but, somehow, several times a day, he managed to, somehow, find the right thing to say that would be really embarrassing to someone or really hurtful. He generally did that as he was being helpful. People would roll their eyes and say, That's just Bob being Bob, he's not too bright. Only, after a while I realized there was no possible realm of possibility in which someone could be so accidentally malevolent without planning involved. I came to the conclusion that, far from being an innocuous dolt, Bob was a mean little bastard who you should be careful of. He obviously liked pushing peoples' buttons and causing them pain. No one would do it so consistently by accident.
I think the same is true of a majority of Republicans, especially those who present themselves as moral or idealistic. Paul Ryan, James Comey, the entirety of those who are presented as moderate in the lying media. They love to hurt people, they love to think about hurting people, they love seeing that people are hurting and the love that they are the ones who have the power to make people hurt.
The Republican Party that finally pushed Nixon out the door and onto the helicopter is not the Republican Party of today. Those people all died and their successors are all the Nixon type. There is, literally, no one of any good will in that party now. Anyone with any shred of good will either left the party or died. You can remember that during the confirmation hearings as you hear calls for comity among Senators. Democrats should go for the neck, every time.
Looking for that old post from my first blog, I also came across this haiku.
Senate Hearings Haiku
Take some comity.
Add old football metaphores.
Aural ipecac
Anyway, this guy, I'll call him "Bob" because that wasn't his name and the real guy might still be alive, if he managed to avoid someone throttling him, was a ubiquitous presence and constant irritant. He wasn't that bright but, somehow, several times a day, he managed to, somehow, find the right thing to say that would be really embarrassing to someone or really hurtful. He generally did that as he was being helpful. People would roll their eyes and say, That's just Bob being Bob, he's not too bright. Only, after a while I realized there was no possible realm of possibility in which someone could be so accidentally malevolent without planning involved. I came to the conclusion that, far from being an innocuous dolt, Bob was a mean little bastard who you should be careful of. He obviously liked pushing peoples' buttons and causing them pain. No one would do it so consistently by accident.
I think the same is true of a majority of Republicans, especially those who present themselves as moral or idealistic. Paul Ryan, James Comey, the entirety of those who are presented as moderate in the lying media. They love to hurt people, they love to think about hurting people, they love seeing that people are hurting and the love that they are the ones who have the power to make people hurt.
The Republican Party that finally pushed Nixon out the door and onto the helicopter is not the Republican Party of today. Those people all died and their successors are all the Nixon type. There is, literally, no one of any good will in that party now. Anyone with any shred of good will either left the party or died. You can remember that during the confirmation hearings as you hear calls for comity among Senators. Democrats should go for the neck, every time.
Looking for that old post from my first blog, I also came across this haiku.
Senate Hearings Haiku
Take some comity.
Add old football metaphores.
Aural ipecac
I'm Sure The Ivy Soxers Will Object
Oh, and, yeah, I suspected that Neil Gorsuch is a product of the Ivy League, in his case Columbia, Harvard and the Brit factory of servants of the ruling class, Oxford.
American democracy is being strangled by that ivy that covers the Supreme Court. If I were a Democrat I'd mention something like that in attempting to do everything I could to prevent or at least slow his confirmation and to expose as much as I could that would damage him with the American public. I've gone to war with invasive ivy, all out slash and burn is often the only way to get rid of it.
The sales job that the Ivy League elite has done on the American People is one of the most successful of their con jobs. If I had a dollar for every time an alleged liberal got the vapors when I dissed them I'd probably be able to buy a really good computer.
Oh, and, I don't think I'd necessarily ask Neilsie about her, specifically, but his mother was the criminal Ann Gorsuch McGill Burford who, appointed by Reagan to head the EPA did her best to destroy the agency and to mishandle and perhaps misdirect funds to clean up some of the worst hazardous waste dumps there are. She was a Flint poisoner type decades before Flint. Surely finding out if he shares his mother's philosophy of government regulation is relevant to the job he's asking for. I'm sure the Steve Inskeeps, other NPR hacks and the rest of the media would say that was out of bounds, though it is necessary if protecting the very lives and health of the American People is important, which it clearly isn't to them.
American democracy is being strangled by that ivy that covers the Supreme Court. If I were a Democrat I'd mention something like that in attempting to do everything I could to prevent or at least slow his confirmation and to expose as much as I could that would damage him with the American public. I've gone to war with invasive ivy, all out slash and burn is often the only way to get rid of it.
The sales job that the Ivy League elite has done on the American People is one of the most successful of their con jobs. If I had a dollar for every time an alleged liberal got the vapors when I dissed them I'd probably be able to buy a really good computer.
Oh, and, I don't think I'd necessarily ask Neilsie about her, specifically, but his mother was the criminal Ann Gorsuch McGill Burford who, appointed by Reagan to head the EPA did her best to destroy the agency and to mishandle and perhaps misdirect funds to clean up some of the worst hazardous waste dumps there are. She was a Flint poisoner type decades before Flint. Surely finding out if he shares his mother's philosophy of government regulation is relevant to the job he's asking for. I'm sure the Steve Inskeeps, other NPR hacks and the rest of the media would say that was out of bounds, though it is necessary if protecting the very lives and health of the American People is important, which it clearly isn't to them.
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