Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss. - Page 10

Hank Chinaski · 11-06-2014, 04:09 PM

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Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

And since almost everyone is too stupid and impatient to even try to understand why that's not true, they decided to stay home or switch their votes.

TM

1988- George Bush's campaign realized that our brains were mushy and video bites and short phrases worked better than content. To me that was where political advertising as an medium to convey ideas died. I have a campaign poster from 1972 than Nixon put out. It has content. On a political poster. But, outside of debates, we aren't getting any of that anymore. Obama's two biggest posters from 2008 had an image and 1 word. We are not headed for a more intelligent political discourse anytime in the forseeable future.

Greedy,Greedy,Greedy · 11-06-2014, 04:21 PM

When people refer to radical Lutheranism, is that meant to be a reference to the Oslo attacks? Or things like abortion doc shootings?

ThurgreedMarshall · 11-06-2014, 04:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

1988- George Bush's campaign realized that our brains were mushy and video bites and short phrases worked better than content. To me that was where political advertising as an medium to convey ideas died. I have a campaign poster from 1972 than Nixon put out. It has content. On a political poster. But, outside of debates, we aren't getting any of that anymore. Obama's two biggest posters from 2008 had an image and 1 word. We are not headed for a more intelligent political discourse anytime in the forseeable future.

And then there's this:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...nger-democracy

TM

Greedy,Greedy,Greedy · 11-06-2014, 04:50 PM

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Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Fair question. When I refer to "the Muslim world," I am loosely referring to those nations or regions that are predominantly Muslim. So, not China and not Oakland.

Sounds like not India either, but still Indonesia, Morocco, etc.

There is a tension here: painting the Muslim world with a broad brush is totally idiotic, as the differences between religious violence in Bosnia, where a bunch of Christians were committing genocide against Muslims, Nigeria, where religious violence is overlaid on tribal violence, and Afghanistan, where the growth of Islamic fundamentalism occurred in the course of a long occupation by a foreign power, is extreme and there are clearly very different root causes. On the other hand, there are specific things that have resulted in the spread of violent political Islam, such as the existence of the annual Hadj providing a place and an opportunity for radical Islamic groups to meet, swap war stories and bomb recipes, and talk religion and munitions, and that do unify the Islamic world. To understand the reasons for violence and the spread of it, it helps to look at specifics. But foreign occupation and intervention play a big role in many of the areas where violence is widespread, not just Islam. In Iran, where political Islam first emerged, a very clear major cause was the repression practiced by the Shah with very substantial and open help from us.

But, let's pause. If we're really focused on truly atrocious violence, let's think about where genocide has occurred over the last century. Europe, Christians against Jews. Europe, Christians against Muslims. Cambodia, Buddhists against Buddhists. Uganda, Christians against Christians. Armenia, Muslims against Christians. Am I missing something here? What religion shows up most on that list?

Tyrone Slothrop · 11-06-2014, 04:50 PM

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Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Isn't it possible that the shift was simply a correction for the R's finally running less nutty candidates than they have the last few cycles?

It's possible, but the media way overstates the importance of those kinds of tactics. I posted this yesterday:

Old people vote. When other people don't vote, the proportion of old people in the electorate goes way up. And that's the GOP's base.

Tyrone Slothrop · 11-06-2014, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

We are dangerously close to where you call me a racist, again, but what the hell.

(1) You say "culture" explains to much, and therefore you refuse to let it explain anything. The problem with this view is that it leads to statements like Wonk's -- "several men who happen to be priests raped children" -- and so the culture of the Catholic church is absolved from having supported and protected and fostered that conduct.

I don't think I refuse to let it explain anything, and I certainly don't think that our fates are determined by our DNA, the stars, or a bunch of immortals hanging out at the top of Mount Olympus. But pointing to "culture" as an explanation isn't an explanation -- it's a placeholder. I agree with your response to Wonk, but just correlating that priests are Catholic and that they abused children isn't really an explanation either, it's a black box with "Catholic" on the label.

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(2) Japanese soldiers viewed surrender as cowardly, and died by the hundreds of thousands as a result. Japanese pilots willingly lined up to fly suicide missions -- not hypothetical suicide missions, but genuine ones -- by the thousands. I call this "cultural." You seem to believe it is something else -- perhaps coincidence? Or fictional? But people were taught specific things, about obedience to authority and the divinity of the emperor and shame to the family or whatever else, and it contributed to them behaving in certain ways.

Race is a cultural construct, too. I wasn't calling you racist, and I certainly don't think that Japanese were choosing to be kamikazes because of some biological characteristics. If we disagree about this, we're not doing a very good job of identifying where the disagreement is.

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I realize that the above causes you to think I'm a racist. But it is nothing inherent in the Japanese "race", or Asian DNA, or anything else. It is cultural -- a product of how a particular society developed, that was particularly insulated and in a non-connected world.

Maybe. But you see many other cultures where people sacrifice themselves in combat and are glorified for it, and so you then either have to focus on what was uniquely Japanese about kamikazes or you have to figure out what the cultures might share that leads to such behaviors, etc.

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By the same token, the US was born in a culture of racial oppression. Much of that culture continued even after many, many white Americans fought to end slavery. Looking at that racist culture --- having the ability and courage to look at ourselves critically -- is critical to making this a better nation.

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Tyrone Slothrop · 11-06-2014, 05:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Can't fault you for having this opinion. But I will restate my theory that the government has been and will be spying on its own people since the beginning of time using whatever possible technology they could and can get their hands on. That isn't going to change. They're just going to pull the curtain again and you'll walk around happy in your ignorance.

Technology is disrupting all sorts of things -- why not spying? I don't think Obama is personally committed to an escalation of the national security state, but I think it has happened on his watch due to where we are in history, and he isn't committed to fighting it. I don't think Clinton, Dole, W., Gore, Kerry or Romney would have made many different choices in this area.

Greedy,Greedy,Greedy · 11-06-2014, 05:16 PM

I think I know who will get the next S.Ct. appointment if a Republican is elected President.

Tyrone Slothrop · 11-06-2014, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

It is honestly very difficult to believe that this is a serious question.

It was a serious point, if a silly question. Look at the way that Israel is comfortable using military force against Palestinians, or the way that Protestants committed atrocities during the Thirty Years War. (Culturally, those are very different examples -- which just shows that a reductive focus on religion leaves out a lot of important culture.)

Tyrone Slothrop · 11-06-2014, 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

When people refer to radical Lutheranism, is that meant to be a reference to the Oslo attacks? Or things like abortion doc shootings?

I think I'm the one who keeps referring to Lutheranism. Out of his interest in the Civil War, Ta-Nahesi Coates read C.V. Wedgwood's history of The Thirty Years War, and his blogging about it made me read it too. Protestants and Catholics did a lot of really awful things to each other. Anyone who wants to talk about different religions and their propensity to violence needs to seriously grapple with that history.

Hank Chinaski · 11-06-2014, 05:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I think I know who will get the next S.Ct. appointment if a Republican is elected President.

Didn't the Court already throw out Cali's ban? or did Cali's court do that?

ThurgreedMarshall · 11-06-2014, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Technology is disrupting all sorts of things -- why not spying? I don't think Obama is personally committed to an escalation of the national security state, but I think it has happened on his watch due to where we are in history, and he isn't committed to fighting it. I don't think Clinton, Dole, W., Gore, Kerry or Romney would have made many different choices in this area.

No argument here.

TM

Greedy,Greedy,Greedy · 11-06-2014, 05:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

I think I'm the one who keeps referring to Lutheranism. Out of his interest in the Civil War, Ta-Nahesi Coates read C.V. Wedgwood's history of The Thirty Years War, and his blogging about it made me read it too. Protestants and Catholics did a lot of really awful things to each other. Anyone who wants to talk about different religions and their propensity to violence needs to seriously grapple with that history.

If you're more into terrorism than war, of course, the Christians who ran the KKK are probably the most prolific of American terrorists, and they are still active in many places.

ThurgreedMarshall · 11-06-2014, 05:57 PM

Tyrone Slothrop · 11-06-2014, 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

If you're more into terrorism than war, of course, the Christians who ran the KKK are probably the most prolific of American terrorists, and they are still active in many places.

Here is Wedgwood, as quoted by Coates:

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For the first two thirds of Wedgwood's 30 Years War, the utter misery of the peasantry is softened by the splendor of the titans of early modern Europe--Wallenstein, Adolphus, Ferdinand etc. But by the last third, these men are dead and the human price of their ambition laid bare.

An entire generation turns over during the War, so that toward the end of the book you have an entirely different, less fantastic, cast of characters. And then the misery intensifies. Germany is reeling under decades of constant war, and the result is a descent into almost total anarchy.

Here's Wedgwood, as always, wielding her demon pen:

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...Tales were told of the sack of Kempten by the imperialists, of Landsberg by the Swedes, of Calw by the Bavarians, which froze the blood, The imperialist had slaughtered children in the cellars thrown the women of the upper windows of the houses and boiled a housewife in her own cauldron, The Swedes had sprinkled gunpowder on their prisoners and set fire to their clothes, the Bavarians under Werth had shut the citizens into Calw, fired the walls, trained guns on the gates and shot at the people as they tried to escape the flames.

The stories were exaggerations bust based on the increasing and now general barbarity of the war. In sober fact, civilian prisoners were led off in halters to die of exposure by the wayside, children kidnapped and held to ransom, priests tied under the wagons to crawl on all fours like dogs until they dropped, burghers and peasants imprisoned, starved and tortured for their concealed wealth to the uttermost of human endurance with uttermost of human ingenuity.,

The more rapid and widespread movements of the troops in the last six years had increased the ravages of plague and hunger beyond all bound and uprooted the population of Central Germany from the soil, turning them into a fluctuating mass of fugitives....The desertion was temporary, and those of those who fled, many drifted back again, but in the meantime economic life came to a standstill, and some who went as wealthy burghers returned to the charred ruins of their homes with nothing but the rags they wore...

The gentry, in the efforts to maintain their comforts, renounced their established dutiers and left their homes for the towns, or fell back on the olf profession of robbery and raided the passing traveler as in days of old. In Moravia, government officals and local landowners allied themselves with wandering marauders and shared the booty.
The fugitives who fled from the south after Nordlingen died of plague, hunger and exhaustion in the refugee camp at Frankfort or the overcrowded hospitals of Saxony; seven thousand were expelled from the cantons of Zurich because there was neither food no room for them, at Hanau the gates were closed against them, at Strasbourg they lay thick in the streets through the frosts of winter, so that by day the citizens stepped over their bodies, and by night lay awake listening to the groans of the sick and starving until the magistrates forcibly drove them out, thirty thousand of them.

The Jesuits here and there fought manfully against the overwhelming distress; after the burning and desertion of Eichstatt they sought out the children who were hiding in the cellars, killing and eating rats, and carried them off to care for and educate them; at Hagenau they managed feed the poor out of their stores until the French troops raided their granary and took charge of the grain for the Army.

By the irony of fate the wine harvest of 1634, which should have been excellent, was trampled down by fugitives, and invaders after Nordlingen; that of 635 suffered a like fate, and in the winter, from Wuttemberg to Lorraine, there raged the worst famine of many years.

At Calw the pastor saw a woman gnawing on the raw flesh of a dead horse on which a hungry dog and some ravens were also feeding. In Alsace the bodies of criminals were torn from the gallows and devoured; in the whole Rhineland they watched the graveyards against marauders who sold the flesh of the newly buried for food; at Zweibrucken a woman confessed to having eater her child. Acorns, goats' skins, grass, were all cooked in Alsace; cats, dogs, and rats were sold in the market at Worms.

In Fulda and Coburg and near Frankfort and the great refugee camp, men went in terror of being killed and eaten by those maddened by hunger...

On reading this, I was, as always, utterly thrilled by Wedgwood's writing. But as I was telling my Dad last night, I also took a moment to reflect on my own studies, and my own mission as a writer, and as an African-American.

First, it's really startling to read about the utter barbarism which Europe sank to during the War, and then contrast it with popular images of Africa as "the dark continent." I hope this doesn't sound cold, but immediately it occured to me that all the sins the proto-white racists put on Africa--cannibalism, slavery, wanton rape--were very much known to them. The very Germans who fled from Palantinate to a country that derided Africans as savages, were, themselves, the children of such savages.

From that perspective, racism is again revealed as not simply amoral but as phrenology, as Intelligent Design. Its mission is to evade, or conceal a painful past, and overlay with the legacy of the Greeks or the Romans. But the Moors and Muslims have as much claim to classical civilization as the Germans. Any exploration of Muslim scholarship reveals that not simply to be philosophically true, but tangibly true.

This is not schadenfreude. Much to the contrary, it's the continuous realization that humans are humans.

I don't know how to explain this, but it takes quite a bit of intellectual work, as black person--and probably as a white person--to feel that race really doesn't mean anything; that there really isn't anything wrong with you, and upon figuring that out, that there isn't anything wrong with them; that what feels so deeply like it must have some meaning--my brown skin, the shape of your eyes, their blonde hair--has none.

Do you know what it is, not to just to tell yourself that, not to just repeat it as mantra, not to just think it's true, not even to know it intellectually, but to actually believe it? To feel it? It takes awhile for the thing to set in.

When we talk about my work, my Dad always says "Represent us," by which he means represent black people, and in the greater sense, represent for all of us who've suffered under the boot. And I've always taken that on, and I still take that on, and I love taking that on. It defines a major part of me.

But once you get how stupid this race piece is--that demonstrable fact reveals it to be a grand illusion--you can't help but feel like you are fighting in a small war, instigated by small minds, who could not cope with a large truth. And you feel diminished for engaging in it, even if you believe your cause in that war, righteous.

Because there's always a part of you that is individual, that would much rather walk across Europe and float through old museums, or touch the great walls in Zimbabwe, or stand overawed in the Valley of the Kings, and all without the baggage of who did what, under which color.

There's always some part of me that really wants to see Calais.

He made me read it.