Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Russell Brown,
But the Tea Party is important here -- even though Loughner clearly isn't a Teabagger. They've mainstreamed the kind of ideas and language that until recently were very marginal. The US has had elected representatives talking about using bullets -- or in the case of Michelle Bachmann, hinting coyly about "Second Amendment solutions" to the Obama administration. Then there's all the loony gold standard and constitutional talk.
That's a core point. As per that link I posted up-thread, the number of threats against US senators has doubled in 2010.
There is an ugliness near the centre of the US political discourse (if it can now be called that) which I've never seen before - Nixon's rantings, which were not intentionally public, were nothing next to the words on the hustings and in the media of some of the now elected members of the layers of US government and their advocates. Witness the calls to hunt down and kill Julian Assange.
Henry Rollins thinks we need to give the pundits (mostly unelected) less air and treat them with the contempt they deserve.:
I saw Glenn Beck in action last summer at his Restore Honor Rally. His speech sucked and his audience looked ancient and out-of-shape. Rush Limbaugh makes money getting simpleminded people to feel good about their intellectually undernourished brain spasms. He’s very good at it, and I scarcely believe a fraction of what he says. Sarah Palin embarrasses herself almost immediately upon opening her mouth to speak or upon moving her fingers to send messages to her dull flock. I just don’t believe these people can really motivate anyone to do anything except misspell words on the signs they take to their corny rallies and vote for candidates who will immediately screw them upon entering office. Past that, I don’t think much gets done.
I could be completely wrong here, but I think there is a much harder-core element in American society that doesn’t listen to these pundits, doesn’t care who is president, and has nothing but contempt and hatred for government in general. I don’t believe it mattered to Timothy McVeigh who was president or who his congressional representative was when he blew up the Murrah Building in 1995.
I think his argument fails because there is a Fox news and because it does have a huge audience of the people he so despises who do listen to these buffoons. And in November 2010 they were seemingly motivated in some places by Palin and others to at least vote. There seems to be no evidence that they were directly motivated to do otherwise despite the big talk.
And mostly I think the likes of Beck and Limbaugh despise their audience more than anyone - they are, like Murdoch, using their viewers and listeners to enrich themselves and do so with contempt. O'Reilly I'm not so sure - he does think the tides are proof of an almighty.
That said, I mostly agree with that last paragraph. The McVeigh elements, the random nutters (who often form groups of like-minded nutters) exist beyond any discourse. However, stuff like:
November 9, 2010—U.S. Representative-Elect Allen West of Florida's 22nd Congressional District hires conservative radio talk show host Joyce Kaufman as his Chief of Staff. On July 3, Kaufman told a crowd of Tea Party supporters, “I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendments rights was they gave me a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will."
indicate to me that the lines are increasingly blurred.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Islander,
And, what Joe said- GST was the bane of my life, and it was *in addition* to income tax.
Just did my first 15% thingy today - the multiply by 157 and divide by 17.2, or whatever it is, rather did my head in - almost as much as the fact I couldn't work out how to reprogram the tax percentage on the Casio and the online instructions didn't make sense at all.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Now, please explain to me the equivalence between some far-left numpty at an anti-Bush rally six years ago who can’t even spell the vulgarisms on his placard and a PAC working on behalf of a woman who, two short years ago, Malkin considered fit to be Vice-President of the United States?
Have I ever told you I love yer work, Craig?
I do (most of the time).
Ok. Enough. On we go.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Keir Leslie,
If you look at page 6 alone of this thread prior to your comment you will see, in reverse chronological order,
However, in the late 12 months threats against upper house incumbents have almost doubled:
The office of the sergeant at arms of the Senate said that Saturday the number of cases of significant threats against senators rose to 49 in 2010, up from 29 the previous year.
Read into that what you will (and I sure many will).
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Neil Morrison,
someone
So you've moved from 'no-one' to 'someone'.
Thank you.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Neil Morrison,
if you could give some examples of people with a mental illness taking such symbols literally and acting out on that please do.
I don't have to, Neil - you made the unsupportable statement that not a single living or dead person would in the future, or has in the past, (that's 'no-one' BTW) taken such an image seriously. I didn't. You don't and can't know whether that is true.
I haven't heard of any outbreak of people shooting maps.
Good grief.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Angus Robertson,
They're both still associated with killing to me.
Among other things the military symbol holds some militaristic symbolism.
The airforce aircraft is indeed a military aircraft and the military do have a role in violent action.
However the roundel on a military aircraft is more correctly though of as a badge identifying the nation it belongs to, like the flag on a commercial liner. During WW2 BOAC aircraft carried these too at times despite being completely civilian.
That aircraft carries that badge whether it's dropping bombs or it's dropping supplies and food (which ours are more likely to do these days). Its role is closer to that of a national branding not a symbol that that says 'kill'.
Our PM arrives in a nation on a plane bearing one - I'm hoping he/she is not trying to say they are there to kill.
A crosshair on the other hand has but one purpose - to target to kill.
Perhaps this will help:
Noun
* S: (n) target, mark (a reference point to shoot at) "his arrow hit the mark"
* S: (n) prey, quarry, target, fair game (a person who is the aim of an attack (especially a victim of ridicule or exploitation) by some hostile person or influence) "he fell prey to muggers"; "everyone was fair game"; "the target of a manhunt"
* S: (n) target, target area (the location of the target that is to be hit)
* S: (n) target, butt (sports equipment consisting of an object set up for a marksman or archer to aim at)
* S: (n) aim, object, objective, target (the goal intended to be attained (and which is believed to be attainable)) "the sole object of her trip was to see her children"Unless of course you assume that she was wanting to cause terminal harm to her children, the last one doesn't fit your above association at all.
[As an aside I'm fairly protective of the kiwi roundel on the RNZAF aircraft - it was my father who had the red dot with a fern changed in the late 196os. The kiwi itself was copied from a handy florin).
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Neil Morrison,
so you have a counter example?
Neil - politely - what the hell are you on about?
I don't need a 'counter example'. You made the wide ranging statement that 'no-one' (which is all exclusive) 'takes these signs literally in this sort of context'.
It's a nonsense statement unless you can read the thought processes of every wacko looking at the imagery. Can you?
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Neil Morrison,
No, Neil, I'm referring to your particular wide ranging statement.
'No-one' is fairly concrete, no?
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
2) If that doesn't work, lie. Re-write history, no matter how recent or easily checked, until nobody (least of all Palin herself) can keep the lies straight any more.
Inexplicable Edits on Sarah Palin's Facebook Page
Sarah Palin has a reputation for being an agressive editor of comments on her Facebook page - a reputation that has always seemed likely accurate to me, given the tedious consistency with which all comments on the page are along the lines of "I love you SARAH!"But in the wake of the terrible events in Arizona, with many commentators pointing out the obvious fact that Gabrielle Giffords had been targetted by Palin in the November election on a map that used a chilling gun site graphic, I thought it would be worth watching her page for a little while to see if her team were indeed deleting negative comments routinely. But I had no idea how incredibly, almost comically, efficient her people would turn out to be in deleting comments that were even slightly critical of the former Governor. And then I came across... well, what I guess you'd have to politely call an appalling example of editorial misjudgement at best.