I am waiting to hear from all the gun lunatics who comment here about how this relates in any way shape or form to either recreational use of firearms, or to defending themselves in their homes.
It seems, like the shooting up of the Obama image on the t-shirt to be just another instance of the right advocating gun violence.
It is a misnomer to call it gun culture. It's long on guns, but there is nothing that deserves the term 'culture' about it. It is simply hateful thuggery and intimidation.
But I'm sure our gun loons will try to defend this abuse of firearms, as they have others, rather than admit that someone was wrong, or that many of the same people who are pro-gun are quite willing to silence honest, loyal dissent.
The Brits have as one of the concepts for which I most respect them the one of appreciating and understanding loyal opposition rather than automatically categorizing all or nearly all dissent as disloyal, or foreign, or both.
A perfect example of that from the right is the piece I wrote yesterday about right wing blog media kingpin Andrew Breitbart, and his attempts to falsely demonize the occupy movement with outright lies.
Another example would be way that Congressman Issa tried to keep out women who disagreed with his position from Congressional hearings, or the Republican initiated arrest of the Gasland documentarian from attending and filming an open congressional hearing. The right wingers LOVE to over use the words freedom and librty and other patriotic bullshit; but they only talk the talk, they don't walk the walk, quite the oppressive opposite.
Sources like the silly freepers are hardly factbased or reliable. You might as well use the Daily Mail as a source here and be laughed off the page.
While there has been intemperate speech on both sides, and occasionally the left says something hateful, you have asses like the Rushed Limpbaugh or the now obscure Glenn Beck who made their entire careers out of factually inaccurate hate speech.
Not to mention any of the many other right wing media voices that thrive on disninformation, misinformation, and just plain crap they pull out of their asses to stir up hatred against others.
That would include Breitbart and the scum on his payroll, it would include fools like Pamela Geller and her followers - or did you miss my turkey roast of her hallal claims against butterball at Thanksgiving? And of course there are so many more, like Bryan Fischer of the American Family Haters Association, too many to name here. It is endemic, it is wrong, and dating back to the McCarthy era and before, it is more common on the right than on the left.
Are you really that dim, that you need us to explain it to you, to educate you?
An image which advocates for shooting a group of people is BAD. It is not the same as a shooting, it is differeing in degree but not in kind from the violent act of shooting someone. Or do you not see the relationship between wanting to shoot someone yourself, encouraging other people to join you in the sentiment of wanting to shoot someone, and shooting someone?
It is a continuum. It reflects the same common intent, only in differing stages of action on that intent.
Sorry Greg, I messed the humor in your comment too. This thing is like the time Palin had those scope sites over Democrat names or whatever that one was. It's not cool. And it belies the claim that gun owners and conservatives are good guys. Some of you, too many of you are not.
The humor is in the cartoon, not in my comment. As with Palin's crosshairs, that's a common symbol, and nearly everyone knows what it means, except, apparently, gun grabbers. By the way, as far as I recall, there's no evidence that Jared Loughner even saw Palin's website.
You may be right, Greg, at least to a point. These offensive images are meant to be funny. But the problem is they're not, they're incendiary and the less stable among you take them as seriously as we do on the gun control side.
I know that you don't eat meat, so perhaps you don't understand the term, but have you heard of throwing red meat to the faithful?
What this comes down to is whether or not you believe that we all must censor ourselves on the risk that some crazy person will misunderstand our points. It's probably impossible to do that entirely, since there are many different kinds of crazy, and the effort to do so would be a huge burden.
Well Greg, could you please explain the humor for us? It would be a very simple task for me to re edit your version of "funny" by changing the word liberal to conservative, but that would seem to my sense of "humor" as an extension of what I consider in my intellectual esthetic as rather dumb...I'll do it fot you if that is what you would like, no sweat off my balls, babe...either or, I just don't get the "ha ha" factor of the joke...in the words of Desi Arnez...."s'plain Luci!"
oh yeah, babe, greg, just fer you, I'm putting the image of an elephant in instead of the donkey...cause I can do it, babe, in my sleep....just because I want to make you laugh...I really care about you and your sense of humor....now, that's not only funny, it's kinda creepy! Right?
Actually, what you propose would be just as funny. But do you want to know why leftists in this country often lose political fights? It's because they bring an olive branch to a gun fight.
I have a brother in law who lives in Yorba Linda, CA. A year and a half ago, he and my sister paid us a visit. The night he arrived, he had to check his emails, so he went to his home page and saw the news that Sarah Palin had just resigned as Governor of Alaska...he blinked and said, well what a great decision, now she can run for senator...or something...actually, he's a pretty smart guy but a generationally genetically mutated Orange County Conservative. He loves baiting me with the most ridiculous extreme racist comments he can think of...but in his heart, I know he's not that that stupid, very few humans can be as stupid as many conservatives present themselves to be and survive without being taken out behind the barn by their relatives and being put out of their misery. So after a week of nonstop birther comments, eye gouging jokes and his really unpleasant attempts to ruin every meal by turning it into a political confrontation...I could see that I was beginning to break the jerk just by not taking the bait....until one night, I did a big scene by pretending to lose my temper...I ranted, I raged, then I dramatically threw his car keys down the well. (I live in the middle of fucking nowhere somewhere in the extreme outback in France) He freaked, started to apologize... I looked at him, smiled and said...."Acting!" and pulled his car keys out of my pocket. Then I said, "Kurt, if I had thrown your keys down the well, then you would have had to stay for another week while we sorted out the mess." He was mad at first, but then we got kinda drunk...he never spoke politics to me again and we had another very pleasant 3 days here in the Dordogne... as I said, I really like the guy.
Despite all the talk of liberty and such in the US constitution, the US is a pretty repressive place.
ReplyDeleteIt started even before the beginning when the tories were pretty much silenced by harassment.
I am thinking about writing about how Charlie Chaplin was deported over alleged communist connections in the 1950s.
So, what do you expect to change?
I am waiting to hear from all the gun lunatics who comment here about how this relates in any way shape or form to either recreational use of firearms, or to defending themselves in their homes.
DeleteIt seems, like the shooting up of the Obama image on the t-shirt to be just another instance of the right advocating gun violence.
It is a misnomer to call it gun culture. It's long on guns, but there is nothing that deserves the term 'culture' about it. It is simply hateful thuggery and intimidation.
But I'm sure our gun loons will try to defend this abuse of firearms, as they have others, rather than admit that someone was wrong, or that many of the same people who are pro-gun are quite willing to silence honest, loyal dissent.
The Brits have as one of the concepts for which I most respect them the one of appreciating and understanding loyal opposition rather than automatically categorizing all or nearly all dissent as disloyal, or foreign, or both.
A perfect example of that from the right is the piece I wrote yesterday about right wing blog media kingpin Andrew Breitbart, and his attempts to falsely demonize the occupy movement with outright lies.
http://penigma.blogspot.com/2012/02/breitbart-is-anything-but-bright-or.html
Another example would be way that Congressman Issa tried to keep out women who disagreed with his position from Congressional hearings, or the Republican initiated arrest of the Gasland documentarian from attending and filming an open congressional hearing. The right wingers LOVE to over use the words freedom and librty and other patriotic bullshit; but they only talk the talk, they don't walk the walk, quite the oppressive opposite.
Demonizing your opponents in vogue since forever.....
ReplyDeletehttp://riffenberg.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/leftist-haters-hate-speech/
http://lewwaters.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/brian-baird-hiding-out-from-death-threats-you-say/
http://gratewire.com/topic/lib-radio-talker-when-will-the-seals-kill-george-w-bush
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2479643/posts
Sources like the silly freepers are hardly factbased or reliable. You might as well use the Daily Mail as a source here and be laughed off the page.
DeleteWhile there has been intemperate speech on both sides, and occasionally the left says something hateful, you have asses like the Rushed Limpbaugh or the now obscure Glenn Beck who made their entire careers out of factually inaccurate hate speech.
Not to mention any of the many other right wing media voices that thrive on disninformation, misinformation, and just plain crap they pull out of their asses to stir up hatred against others.
That would include Breitbart and the scum on his payroll, it would include fools like Pamela Geller and her followers - or did you miss my turkey roast of her hallal claims against butterball at Thanksgiving? And of course there are so many more, like Bryan Fischer of the American Family Haters Association, too many to name here. It is endemic, it is wrong, and dating back to the McCarthy era and before, it is more common on the right than on the left.
You seem to be of the opinion that a drawing is the same as an actual shooting. How does that work?
ReplyDeleteAre you really that dim, that you need us to explain it to you, to educate you?
ReplyDeleteAn image which advocates for shooting a group of people is BAD. It is not the same as a shooting, it is differeing in degree but not in kind from the violent act of shooting someone. Or do you not see the relationship between wanting to shoot someone yourself, encouraging other people to join you in the sentiment of wanting to shoot someone, and shooting someone?
It is a continuum. It reflects the same common intent, only in differing stages of action on that intent.
And you think you can engage in critical reason?
Are you really so dim that you can't understand humor?
DeleteSorry Greg, I messed the humor in your comment too. This thing is like the time Palin had those scope sites over Democrat names or whatever that one was. It's not cool. And it belies the claim that gun owners and conservatives are good guys. Some of you, too many of you are not.
DeleteThe humor is in the cartoon, not in my comment. As with Palin's crosshairs, that's a common symbol, and nearly everyone knows what it means, except, apparently, gun grabbers. By the way, as far as I recall, there's no evidence that Jared Loughner even saw Palin's website.
DeleteYou may be right, Greg, at least to a point. These offensive images are meant to be funny. But the problem is they're not, they're incendiary and the less stable among you take them as seriously as we do on the gun control side.
DeleteI know that you don't eat meat, so perhaps you don't understand the term, but have you heard of throwing red meat to the faithful?
DeleteWhat this comes down to is whether or not you believe that we all must censor ourselves on the risk that some crazy person will misunderstand our points. It's probably impossible to do that entirely, since there are many different kinds of crazy, and the effort to do so would be a huge burden.
Well Greg, could you please explain the humor for us? It would be a very simple task for me to re edit your version of "funny" by changing the word liberal to conservative, but that would seem to my sense of "humor" as an extension of what I consider in my intellectual esthetic as rather dumb...I'll do it fot you if that is what you would like, no sweat off my balls, babe...either or, I just don't get the "ha ha" factor of the joke...in the words of Desi Arnez...."s'plain Luci!"
ReplyDeleteoh yeah, babe, greg, just fer you, I'm putting the image of an elephant in instead of the donkey...cause I can do it, babe, in my sleep....just because I want to make you laugh...I really care about you and your sense of humor....now, that's not only funny, it's kinda creepy! Right?
ReplyDeleteActually, what you propose would be just as funny. But do you want to know why leftists in this country often lose political fights? It's because they bring an olive branch to a gun fight.
Delete"olive branch to a gunfight," bwhahahahaha
DeleteI have a brother in law who lives in Yorba Linda, CA. A year and a half ago, he and my sister paid us a visit. The night he arrived, he had to check his emails, so he went to his home page and saw the news that Sarah Palin had just resigned as Governor of Alaska...he blinked and said, well what a great decision, now she can run for senator...or something...actually, he's a pretty smart guy but a generationally genetically mutated Orange County Conservative. He loves baiting me with the most ridiculous extreme racist comments he can think of...but in his heart, I know he's not that that stupid, very few humans can be as stupid as many conservatives present themselves to be and survive without being taken out behind the barn by their relatives and being put out of their misery.
ReplyDeleteSo after a week of nonstop birther comments, eye gouging jokes and his really unpleasant attempts to ruin every meal by turning it into a political confrontation...I could see that I was beginning to break the jerk just by not taking the bait....until one night, I did a big scene by pretending to lose my temper...I ranted, I raged, then I dramatically threw his car keys down the well. (I live in the middle of fucking nowhere somewhere in the extreme outback in France) He freaked, started to apologize...
I looked at him, smiled and said...."Acting!" and pulled his car keys out of my pocket.
Then I said, "Kurt, if I had thrown your keys down the well, then you would have had to stay for another week while we sorted out the mess." He was mad at first, but then we got kinda drunk...he never spoke politics to me again and we had another very pleasant 3 days here in the Dordogne...
as I said, I really like the guy.