Posts by blindjackdog
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we react with a visceral, almost instinctual violence
Or with a head-in-the-sand acceptance of / blindness to such violence.
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The nearest I can get to putting it in a sentence is this:
Common identity - which we all, really, long for in some shape or form - is so fragile in this country that we react with a visceral, almost instinctual violence against agencies that lay claim to local identities that defy or belie or challenge the current myths.
That does seem like paranoia. Is it also racism? I don't think so; I think the racism, or selfism, thank you, comes later, finds expression, when the paranoia seeks to rationalise itself, moves to justify its anger.
So it's not really racism as such, because even as we speak it we don't actually believe it: but it sneaks out because it's the only way we can sustain our underlying belief that whatever we're feeling must be right. Selfism.
As I tried to suggest on another thread, on another day: the kind of racism we're talking about (subtle, institutional, consensual - not the hoods and lynchings, inveterate hatred kind - though we sure have that in NZ too) is not an experience of being racist; it's an experience of being on racism's receiving end (I think I was suggesting that maybe pakeha aren't the best judges of the existence, or not, of this). For the perpetrator it's something altogether different: merely the lonely manifestation of selfism's necessary identity crisis. Hence all the silly semantic disagreements.
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Well, yeah, Sara, you are alone sorry because I'm not sticking around.
But if you didn't see it and want to look, James George's (or George James's - can't remember) post in the first long discussion on this topic was quite worth reading re the conspiracy angle.
Sorry, can't be arsed trying to find it for you. It was a Hard News article called Te Qaeda and the post in question was around page, oh, I think somewhere between 7 and 12. Big long ramble, and he goes off topic sometimes, but it was pretty good. I think.
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Whole theme of Othello is how easily seemingly sane people can be misled if you know how to manipulate the signs that they believe in.
Looks like we've come full circle after all....
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No reason, no reason. Just, you know, people start talking casually about panty raids and, well, next thing you know they're constructing this whole underground undergarment mythology, and who knows where that could lead.... especially when you throw in lust that crosses racial boundaries, bare arses, savage rage, fluttering handkerchiefs - that whole fetishistic thing....
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Te hori's torture team
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The tourist roar meet.
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Te hut o mate ist error.
shep, are you ok?
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I love it Johnno: you're playing the I-know-something-you-don't-know-so-you-should-believe-me card, which has been played ad nauseum for the last month -- yet, despite all the leaks, my general view hasn't changed an iota (and, unlike most fools, blindjackdog is not incapable of self-correction).
Why don't you convince me Johnno? Come on out and leak something. Everyone's doing it.
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I agree Sara. About the sadness thing. Not sure about the push towards terrorism. Without being an expert, I think extreme deprivation, in one form or another, is needed for that. And I do actually think that copycatism can come into it too. Anyways, we have deprivation aplenty, but not in the extreme, and thus far there's nothing to copycat. (But you're right in that the halting of whatever was or was not going on was carried out in the manner most likely to result in ongoing bad feeling and in possible future violence.)
As for the sadness: yeah. I liked your post because it actually cuts through all the "what are the facts" bollocks to the "how the hell did this thing get conducted like this" much more pertinent question. And the "why are people so willing to default to a trust in this kind of piggish authority" question.
And why are they not willing to examine that whole dynamic?
A couple of conversations I've had recently have gone like this:
"Yeah, it's obviously ridiculous, oh well, ha ha."
"Yeah, but, it's pretty awful, right? That people get treated like this."
"Oh, yeah, I guess, yeah, sure...."
Living with their heads up their arses I'm afraid.