Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

He'll survive it. He has many problems, but chief among them is thinking that because he is friends with many black celebrities and "prominent" black people,* that he gets to joke the way they do when he happens to be in the room smoking weed. Although no amount of head from Karrine Steffans grants you license to start using the word, "nigger" with impunity--even if you're an ally--he'll be fine.

TM

*Cornell West needs to fade into Bolivia.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'm not sure I'd put him in the racist category for this. I think his unconscious bias pops up a little too often (this tends to happen to white liberals who assume they've been accepted by blacks and get a little too comfortable). His comments about Obama not really being black ("He's more like Wayne Brady") is quite common with white people who think they've conquered their own racism. Black people can't be nerds or classical musicians or English professors, etc., because they lose that authentic "blackness" which white people have defined as "street." Shit, I've heard people from lawtalkers talk about how black professionals or black movie stars should focus on real black problems instead of whether or not they get paid the same as their white counterparts.

Sadly, this phenomenon also occurs in black communities, which is why Maher thinks it's okay to perpetuate.

TM

Re: Maga
 

I don't drink these days. Imagine how much fun that makes the Trump presidency.

Re: Maga
 

It's hard to be pro-Trump, so a lot of conservatives are choosing instead to be anti-anti-Trump.

Relatedly, the core of conservatism these days is pissing off liberals.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

He is being absolutely factual about Islam being the religion of most terrorists today. How can you even attempt to dispute that?

And he's not "ignorant" to argue that normal Muslims should police the fundamentalists. In that, he's simply wrong. He's unfairly leveling an obligation on people who have no such duty.

And none of his criticisms of Islam as a silly religion make him a "racist." Your comment above on that issue is just... dumb. First, he assails all religions as silly. And Islam is, yes, silly. The Koran is fictional nonsense. Like the Old and New Testament, the Book of Mormon, etc. Objectively, they are all silly. They are not sacred things we may not insult. If anything, to progress as a species, we ought to denigrate them more, to marginalize their influence as much as possible. Second, Islam and "brown people" are not synonyms. Islam's adherents are of a variety of backgrounds. Arguing Maher hates brown people, which he absolutely does not, based on his dislike of Islam makes no sense.

...Except in this one regard: It makes sense to people like you, who speak broadly and like to throw around blunt moral judgments. You should step back a bit and think before knee-jerking to "racist." One can perhaps argue Maher is bigoted toward religion. This criticism would stick. But that's not good enough for you, is it? You want to nail Maher for a crime much worse than that. You want to lump him in with the alt-right, with David Duke types. Sorry. It doesn't work. And what you attempt here, which is what you attempt every time these issues come up and you blurt a moral critique that crumbles under the slightest scrutiny, undercuts your aim. Sometimes, it's not a wolf, and on matters like this, you need to be more than a little boy with a keyboard.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

https://media1.giphy.com/media/TrDxCdtmdluP6/giphy.gif

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You're so fucking tedious. Leaving aside all the prudential, and non-discrimination, reasons not to frame terror the way the terrorists want you to, have you actually counted? Because there's other terror in the world. For example, just in the last few weeks white supremacists have killed at least three in the U.S.

He's also willfully ignoring that they very much do that. For example.

So he portrays "Islam" as the terrorists while ignoring the vast bulk of Muslims. That's "ignorant" in addition to wrong.

Tedious? Yes, tedious. You're like a freshman who read some Rand and now applies the same analysis to every question.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'm not interested in Bill Maher, or in piling on him, but this is stupid. When someone Islamic harms someone else, we call it terrorism and we notice. When someone white harms someone else, we tend not to call it terrorism, unless they have converted to Islam, and we look for other explanations -- they are a loner, or mentally ill, or disgruntled, and so on. When people are killed for political reasons by government actors, we don't call it terrorism, even if they are civilians who have been killed by bombs. So if you live in an Iraqi village and are killed by a bomb and it was delivered in an old car by a Islamic Saudi, that's terrorism, but if it was delivered via drone by an evangelical Missourian, that's not terrorism. When people are killed for political reasons by non-governmental actors, we are only interested if it sounds like Islamic terrorism. So fighting in the Philippines is not something we notice, unless it involves a group that has announced an affiliation with or adherence to ISIS in order to get attention and funding, in which case bingo, more Islamic terrorism.

Which is to say, brainlessly repeating a tautology is different from stating a fact.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

This exchange explains why I'm investing in popcorn futures. Iowa corn farmers are going to be rich off this shit.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

One of my favorite debates on twitter was sparked over a tweet about what the best kind of Mexican food is: Tex-Mex, Californian-Mex, or American-Mex. The fun thing was watching the number of Americans who rose to the challenge to engage in the debate, not realizing that it was a joke about how little they know about Mexican food. Likewise, Maher is perfectly willing to debate whether Pam Geller or Steve Bannon has more insight into Islam. It's a farce.

He needs to pick up a basic book on Islam or on the Middle East. It doesn't need to be one written for adults, there are some decent grade-school primers out there.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I will point out that, as far as I know, no white supremacists or school shooters shout "This is for Jesus!" as they go about their rampage.

It's not really the same thing.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Because that's dispositive? The underlying belief that this country is for white Christians and everyone else should be killed is rendered meaningless because people don't shout some stupid shit before they start killing people? What the fuck is the matter with you?

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

FWIW, which is not much, radical Islamists who murder other people in the name of God believe that Jesus Christ was a prophet of that God.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You don't think "Stop selling baby parts!" is close enough?

Even if it isn't, yes, some terrorists are not motivated by religion. I don't know why that matters in this discussion. Someone who sits with a prayer group only to attempt to kill them all and successfully kill 9 because "blacks are taking over the world" is just as much a terrorist.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

A lot of white supremacist movements are rooted in (what they claim is) Christianity. So, serious question, why would it matter whether they yell their religious motivation or not? (I have no idea about where on the crazy-to-ideological spectrum the latest killers were, but in a more general sense.)

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

We really need a funk version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Is this close enough?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gZtmBZuNMc

Also, here is a hard bop version that I have always enjoyed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeYYokRHCq8

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Peekaboo!

Thank you for both of them.

His Truth is marching on!

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Or just a good Twitter thread.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Following up on this idea, lots of Christian institutions have histories (and currents) of being anti-gay:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/w...on%2Faustralia

If someone accepts Court's pronouncement that acceptance of transgender people is "all the Devil" and resorts to violence to fight this "Devil," does it matter whether the attacker shouts "this is for Jesus"? Does it even matter whether we call it terrorism or a hate crime or something else? All extremist religion (and frankly a lot of moderate religion) has elements of dangerous intolerance that inevitably lead to violence. If your answer is to demonize (NPI) the entirety of all religions, Sebastian and I are probably just fine with that. But if you want to parse which elements of extremist religious hatred and violence are better or worse than others, I am instantly suspicious of your motives.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

AON, my father reminds me that yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the crucial day of the Battle of Midway, something none of the media I follow pointed out. It's hard to find many points in military history where tactical luck or skill had a profound impact on the course of a war, but that June 4 was one of them. (Although maybe one can speculate that even had the battle gone very differently, the development of the Bomb would have brought the war to a similar end.)

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I'm reading a book right now (Apostles, by Tom Bissell -- recommended) with a prefatory Author's Note that concludes:

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Jumping off a bit, you raised this question in my head. Fake news, lies, spin... these things are all agreed to be bad. Because they are untrue. No one debates that Trump's bullshit is, well, bullshit, and bullshit is bad for people. Bad for society.

Organized religion is made up stuff. Archaic fake news, spin -- fantastic nonsense.

Why do we countenance it? Seriously. Why is the bullshit about Apostles or Mohammed acceptable nonsense, while much less powerful and less dangerous fictions of everyone else considered bad?

We'll jail you for lying in court after being sworn in on a book of what we all know to be fantastic lies.

Fuck em all. And let their non-existent deities leave them unsorted.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

No need to go so far afield- today someone killed 5 people in Florida. That's almost the total from London? The FLA killing were because the guy got fired. If my kin get killed, I'm not sure I care if it was because the shooter was Islam, or because he had Adder's job skills (is this still an acceptable slur?) .

Re: Maga
 

I don't know what I'm "actively supporting" Hillary for. I like and respect her (after all, she's certainly a far more thoughtful and interesting person to listen to than Slave), and I really hope she goes back to devoting a lot of effort to the Clinton Foundation. Without the support that Foundation has given to fighting AIDS in Africa, in particular, many people will die. But I don't think there's anything to support her for at the moment, and there likely never will be again.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Because there is no right answer and those who insist there is have done unspeakable things in the name of it since the dawn of time.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

No right answer to what?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

That is a good thread. It's also terrifically depressing. Clearly, the author and those engaged are smart, analytical people. Their skills could be applied to myriad issues vexing mankind.

And what are they discussing? Nonsense. Twenty or so posts, well considered, well authored, all parsing the history of fictional nonsense, and how generations of other smart people have wasted their time, their lives perhaps, in the study and practice of something utterly made up, fantastic, and imbecilic.

Imagine men put these efforts to enforcing this logic upon each other:

This is all but assuredly the only consciousness you'll ever know. It is also the only consciousness those around you will ever know. Given the gravity of that, and that this consciousness is a rather short ride, the here and now should be treated as something more important than everything else. Do not inflict yourself on others in a manner that degrades the quality of their experience here.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

He does. I think Maher's a bit simplistic on Islam. He ought to explain how our foreign policy enabled and caused the extremist forms of Islam which radical Muslim terrorists use to justify their actions.

But criticizing Islam doesn't make him a racist.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

It's not all nonsense.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I hear ya.

"One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist." - Source Unrecalled

But right now, there is only one religion being cited by those who are committing atrocities in Europe and through the Middle East. Daesh's name starts out with a reference to one religion. The most lurid murders of the past decade, designed to attract media attention, have been performed by individuals claiming to have done so under a form of Islam. Those are... facts.

Maher is not without data to support his criticisms. The quality of those critiques may be debated, yes. And his view may be determined to be faulty. But he's not making it up of whole cloth. And it's not a rebuttal to assert that he's been bullshitted -- that there's loads of other terrorism out there that's being ignored, and that our focus on Islamic extremist terrorism is mere spin, or selective reporting. If we had a huge graph of all terrorism taking place in recent years throughout the world, terrorist acts committed in the name of Islamic extremism would have an enormously disproportionate piece of the pie relative to all others. Attempts to avoid that recognition are just dissembling.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

The Torah makes some sense. The rest of it? Loopy nonsense. Tribal shite.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

To the question of whether there's a god and if so, which one is real.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Right now? Because Anders Breivik was so long ago? And because you scour the newswire for crimes committed in Europe by non-Muslims?

No, he's just presenting it in a stupid and bigoted way.

Show me.

I mean, that's probably right, but I don't know that, because, among other things, I don't know what's going in the parts of the world that have non-Islamic extremism. And neither do you.

I'm pretty sure, though, that gun violence in America is taking a lot more lives.

Go, and do likewise.
 

I've always been partial to the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Oh, and the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

Re: Maga
 

It wasn't a criticism.

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

And you would define terrorism how? Do mass shootings count? Do random shootings count? Why the fuck are we more concerned with violence that relates to an ideology than all other violence? I sure as hell don't care. And given the amount of gun violence in this country, and the likelihood that you die from someone who isn't killing you in "furtherance" of a cause, you'd think that would be the priority.

People are fucking stupid.

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without it. - Hitchens' Razor

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You're more likely to die from having furniture fall on you in your own home than from terrorism.

You'll find no stronger ally in arguing that fear of terrorism is ginned up by our govt to suit its aims than me. This is why I noted, I don't agree with Maher's approach.

Yet his argument is not unfounded. If you look around the world at spectacular attacks of the past ten or so years, there's a clear winner: Murderers acting under the banner of Islamic extremism.

If you look around the world at spectacular attacks pre-2007, and you include the Iraq war as act act of unfounded aggression, that would be the clear winner.

Maher has touched a third rail issue, no doubt. But there's a difference between debating him on merits, which can be done, and reflexively calling him an ignorant racist, which is dumb.

Re: Go, and do likewise.
 

I find most "Good Christians" have little use for Francis of Assisi's charge to "Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you." The pious in the pews don't like being reminded of those directives. They're busy justifying selfishness under the doctrines of the "Prosperity Gospel."