Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2: Chewing over the News
537 Responses
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Or a t-shit.
Oooh, I want a GOD HATES DOUCHE BAGS one. Especially when those Westboro loons have miraculously found a new low to hit. Really tempted to say something that, under the circumstances, would just be getting in their gutter.
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recordari, in reply to
t-shit.
Whoops. r. But somehow seems appropriate.
However, the group known for its anti-homophobic and anti-military signs will not be at the funeral of the 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green. Rather, the group has promised to stay away from the proceedings in exchange for airtime on radio stations in Canada and Arizona.
Speechless.
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Ah. Now we're getting somewhere:
Osler continued, "he didn't listen to political radio, he didn't take sides, he wasn't on the left, he wasn't on the right." Instead, Banfield reports that Osler pointed to a web-based documentary called Zeitgeist, that focused on currency based economics that "poured gasoline on his fire" as Banfield reports. "The Zeitgeist documentary had a profound impact on Jared Loughner's mindset" Osler claimed.
This makes sense. From the Wikipedia article on Zeitgeist: the Movie:
According to the film, the US was forced by the Federal Reserve Bank to become embroiled in these wars, not with a view to win but to sustain the conflict, as this forces the US government to borrow money from the bank, allegedly increasing the profits of the "international bankers". The film then goes on to claim that the Federal Income Tax is illegal.
This section also claims the existence of a secret agreement to merge the United States, Canada and Mexico into a "North American Union". The creation of this North American Union is then alleged to be a step towards the creation of "One World Government." The film speculates that under such a government, every human could be implanted with an RFID chip to monitor individuals and suppress dissent.
Those of you with your paranoid-style bingo cards ready can begin now.
You'll note one of Senator Rand Paul's favourite batshit conspiracy theories, the North American Union, there. The popular"Federal income tax is illegal" meme. And, of course, an oldie but always a goodie: the "international bankers".
This is why I'm not sure that the 1960s civil rights battles are all that relevant in discussing this episode of political violence. They were part of a completely different kind of politics.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Speechless.
Yup – it’s a very special kind of extortion isn’t it? While I don't negotiate with terrorists, keeping those monsters away from the funeral of a child would be grounds for a re-think.
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But it’s worse, today, really.
It is not discernably different than 5 years ago. It is just big tent politics, where the opposition party appeals to the widest possible strands of the dissatisfied voters.
5 or 7 years ago some supporters of the then government were suggesting that opposition rhetoric was disloyal, almost supporting terrorism. That to say things like America was engaging in unnecessary wars of aggression, looking to start a new crusade or that the things like the Patriot Act were unnecessary - all supported the "terrorist" case and would lead to acts of violence against Americans.
Same shit. Different channel.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
And, of course, an oldie but always a goodie: the “international bankers”.
... which is code for?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
But it’s worse, today, really.
It is not discernably different than 5 years ago. It is just big tent politics, where the opposition party appeals to the widest possible strands of the dissatisfied voters.
I was referring to the mainstreaming of a particularly aberrant strain of political thought, and, yes, it is different, and the current acceptability of that thought is, I'm fairly sure, unprecedented.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
… which is code for?
You know it.
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Martin Lindberg, in reply to
… which is code for?
You know it.
John Key.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Come on, I want to hear you "blood libel" poor innocent truth-tellers standing up against the New World Order of liberal-homosexual-atheist-Socialist tyrrany. Or something.
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"international bankers"
rhyming slang, innit
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Just to lighten things a little... a lady gorilla in a tutu!
OK, I'll get it right next time.
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I'm going to pull my head from out of my thesis for a moment and say that I'm really thankful that, in the last election, no one made any mileage out of the fact that both John Key's mother is Jewish and that John Key was part of the international banking fraternity. I mean, we have, as our Prime Minister, an exemplar of the kind of thing anti-semite conspiracy theorists would love to point to and go "See! See!"
More generally (I've been following the thread but trying not to engage with it; this thesis must be finished), the rhetoric we're seeing here, with each side blaming the other and all of them putting forward either the claim that "This is what happens when you talk this way" or "This is what they intended to happen all along!" really is a textbook example of Hoftstader's commentary on American politics (which Russell has already referred to). For example, this post over at Peter Cresswell's blog argues that the Left have it (angry, hate-filled rhetoric) coming because the Left position is simply immoral. When the debate starts to be phrased in such a way that there is nothing good the other side have to offer, then you have pathological politics. Exactly what you do to fix that, I don't know.
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Key is technically Jewish (like my kids)as Jewishness is passed down matrilinearly – that makes him NZ’s third Jewish PM (which I think is kind of neat and wonderfully multicultural)
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Sacha, in reply to
Palin claims that acts of monstreous criminality begin and end with the individual and have nothing to do with the state.
she's making the exact opposite mistake that some of her critics are making.
That's because it's a good representation of their respective ideologies - collectivist vs individualist. Maggie Thatcher's "There's no such thing as society" was a classic of the genre, as was John Donne's "No man is an island."
Another recent example would be Cactus Kate in that Brian Edwards discussion about Amanda Hotchin asserting that the only people who are allowed to have an opinion are Hanover investors directly wronged. The state taking justice against criminals on behalf of all of us must be a troubling concept for her.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
While I don't negotiate with terrorists
Are you often asked to, up there in Auckland?
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Sacha, in reply to
We call it public transport
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Martin Lindberg, in reply to
For example, this post over at Peter Cresswell's blog argues that the Left have it (angry, hate-filled rhetoric) coming because the Left position is simply immoral.
Aaargh, that linked post hurt my brain. Then the comments made it hurt even more. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Also, my name (and yours) is apparently hypocrisy. I consider myself duly told off by Anonymous.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
More generally (I've been following the thread but trying not to engage with it; this thesis must be finished), the rhetoric we're seeing here, with each side blaming the other and all of them putting forward either the claim that "This is what happens when you talk this way" or "This is what they intended to happen all along!" really is a textbook example of Hoftstader's commentary on American politics (which Russell has already referred to).
I had to stop reading AmericaBlog when it started to develop a kind of mirror-image of teabaggery: a common point being a disdain for Obama that supasseth reason.
When a commenter on a "liberal" blog refers to a black President as "the bellhop" and no one -- except me -- bats an eyelid, that's when I go elsewhere. It still find it hard to tell between good-faith commenters and concern trolls there, but it can't all be concern trolling.
I did post a few comments telling off John Aravosis for being a hysterical dick, but curiously enough, he didn't see my point of view.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Aaargh, that linked post hurt my brain. Then the comments made it hurt even more. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Also, my name (and yours) is apparently hypocrisy. I consider myself duly told off by Anonymous.
The “I’m not saying the Left are exactly like Hitler, but …” comment is really priceless. I don’t think these people have any idea how they might look to anyone who isn’t in their cult.
Was tempted to do some schooling, but a ride seems like a better idea …
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
It is not discernably different than 5 years ago.
But it's very different from 20 years ago, when Americans seemed to precede an opinion with the disclaimer "I may not agree with your liberal commie pinko viewpoint, but I'll defend to the death your right to express it". That sort of nicety went out the window with the take-no-prisoners attempt to portray twice-democratically-elected Clinton as Public Enemy No. 1.
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Martin Lindberg, in reply to
The “I’m not saying the Left are exactly like Hitler, but …” comment is really priceless
That was a good one, but the one with the rape-analogy (short version: the left = rapist; the right = victim) is right out there as well. Possibly by a different Anonymous – it’s so hard to tell them apart.
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Andy Borowitz seems to have found a funnier take than Jon Stewart:
The Fox News Channel today attempted to bust what it called a “mainstream media myth” by reporting that there was no link between matches, gasoline and fire.
“Gasoline and matches don’t start fires,” said Fox host Glenn Beck. “People start fires.”
Mr. Beck went on to say that there was no link between “oxygen, hydrogen and water.”
And Palin tries to use the controversial term in a sentence:
"When you hunt a moose, blood libel to pour out of it," she told reporters.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
That was a good one, but the one with the rape-analogy (short version: the left = rapist; the right = victim) is right out there as well. Possibly by a different Anonymous – it’s so hard to tell them apart.
The rape analogy is brought up almost without thinking, by certain people; like this guy saying that he would have used the metaphor of gang-rape rather than "blood libel", but it was too obscure. Because there is no argument that cannot be reduced to an accusation of metaphorical rape, if you try hard enough.
Really, I'm way too young to be this depressed about humanity.
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This will be my last post on this particular discussion.
If we refer to the articles you cited earlier
I am going to link again to both of those articles, so that they can be read in full by those who are interested:
The Jessica Valenti article makes no reference, either specific or otherwise, to anything outside of the last 2-3 years, except to note that it is the first female political assassination in the US. The Gary Younge article makes one reference, in passing, to note that the 'tree of liberty' quote is the same as the Timothy McVeigh T-shirt quote. He des not explore the link in any detail.
In other words, even the very articles you are claiming as evidence for this historical amnesia admit and highlight previous American political violence.
Apart from that they don't (unless I've missed something), I used those two articles as examples of what appeared to me at the beginning of the week to be a overwhelming rush to judgement based on little to no concrete evidence.
The shootings took place 10.00AM Saturday morning local Arizona time (around 5.00PM GMT Saturday evening). Both of those articles were published just after 10.00PM GMT Sunday evening - around 30 hours after the shooting. We also have a local commentator
commenting on the tea-party blaming commentry, posting at just after 10.00PM Auckland time (i.e. around 20 hours after the shooting). He does not give examples, but it is clear from the context of his post that there must have been quite a bit of finger-pointing going on in that intervening 20 hours. Again, on little to no evidence.I don't know exactly how the timeline played out over the weekend in terms of what was known or relased to the press when, but I don't recall details of Jared Loughner's Youtube messages, etc being released or discussed before Monday.
You may think that 30 hours and the sketchiest of evidence is long enough to make those explicit links. I don't. I think it's no time at all.
I made a passing remark, musing on the continuum of violence in Americal politics back to 1850. Given the number of other commentators who have since made arguments about the recent mainstreaming of what was previously fringe Tea Party thought (Simon Grigg, Russell, etc), I'm prepared to withdraw that. It probably helps that they managed it without descending into snidely personal attacks, too.
By the way, do you really not get why allegations that people are just using this as an excuse to take their hobby horses out for a canter are pretty offensive?
Actually, no. But, genuinely, I do have trouble with what my wife would refer to as rude behaviour. If you can explain it to me without getting insulting, please do so.
And I stand by my hobby horse remark. 30 hours to me smacks of a point looking for an excuse so it can be made. And making that point in that timeframe if you can't absolutely back it up? Well, that's pretty offensive to me.
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