[HoosierDaddy]

Jenisapt Rul, on 11 January 2011 - 02:00 PM, said:

Funny thing, I was reading yet another thread throwing criticism at the Republicans when somebody pulled out a long list of similar aggressive rhetoric coming from Democrats and their supporters. Both sides are a bunch of nutballs.

Both sides use warfare rhetoric, and have for a very long time. However, there is a new and distinct backing away from "rhetoric" and into more plain language that has taken place lately. And, it's mostly occurred on one side. To pretend otherwise is willful ignorance. How many lefties do you hear talking about using "second amendment remedies" if a vote doesn't go their way?

And, yeah, dude was crazy. But guess what? I think that Arizona is even fucking crazier for allowing non-permitted concealed carrying for gun owners, trying to legislate even looser gun restriction laws (students and teachers carrying weapons on campus), and selling guns to batshit insane people in the first place.

[Aptorian]

Found the link for you CF:

http://www.reddit.co..._and_im/c1c68ui

Further down in the comment chain more links are provided.

I certainly agree that the Republicans extremists seem to be leading the "Asshole" race in the media, I'm just saying that there is always two sides to a coin and it seems to be just as tarnished.

The tea baggers are just better attention whores.

This post has been edited by Jenisapt Rul: 11 January 2011 - 07:37 PM

[worry]

For the record, nobody listened to Air America and bazillions listen to conservative talk radio, and talk radio is SO MUCH more crazy than Fox News. Fox gets a lot of flack, and rightfully so, but it's got something of a filter compared to what goes out on the airwaves (at least, it has writers and linguistic experts who know how to euphemize)...even Glenn Beck is crazier on the radio than on his Fox show, if you can believe it.

So as far as I'm concerned, keeping it "in perspective" includes acknowledging the fact that the mainstream conservative media regularly, as par for the course, treat Dem politicians in general and Obama in particular as an existential threat to the country (and yes, that specific phrase is used plenty, even if more often it's done through implication). It's not about Palin's crosshairs (though she's particularly insidious about turning her hunting-fetishism into political language) or any one speech, it's about the deliberate fomentation of a violent overthrow if Republicans don't get their way. Pretending the conversation is about pinning the blame on individuals besides the shooter is either missing the point or evading it all together.

Besides, the OTHER debate we should be having is already over:

[HoosierDaddy]

But Worrywort, if everyone there had had a gun.... If in fact, that nine year old girl who was murdered had had a gun.... Nobody would have been shot! In fact, if they had all had extended ammunition clips for their concealed weaponry, MAD would have kept the insane person from going there in the first place!

Except, of course, MAD requires someone not be insane in the first place to be able to care about the fact that they lose as well.

This post has been edited by HoosierDaddy: 11 January 2011 - 08:10 PM

[Shinrei]

masan, on 11 January 2011 - 06:11 PM, said:

King Lear, on 11 January 2011 - 12:30 AM, said:

Is it just me, or is Glenn Beck being slightly more subtle than usual?. -http://www.glennbeck...ians-and-media/
Apparently, he thinks it's time to 'stop playing politics'. Which is all very well and nice, but hard to take seriously when he sets Jared Loughner firmly on the left side of the political spectrum: "He was an atheist, believed George W. Bush was responsible for 9/11, feared a global currency, cited the Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books and thought the Mars rover landing was staged." Not including, of course that another was Ayn Rand's "We Are the Living". Faaah. (From his Youtube account info apparently) Not playing politics, my foot.

Annnd apparently Palin's page is being edited pretty ruthlessly at the moment. http://obamalondon.b...rah-palins.html
I guess it doesn't add much to the discussion, but pretty interesting.

Gah, Illy beat me to it.

I just read/squirmed my way through that Glenn Beck page.

The man is so full of shit he squeaks.

The "pledge" thing at the end is hysterical with regards to what he has said in the past. He has no shame and is nothing more than a self-aggrandizing charlatan seeing another opportunity for more publicity, what a twat.

Sorry for stating the obvious but he really makes my skin crawl.

Just out of curiousity, have any of you ever watched more than one complete episode of Glenn Beck?

I've certainly seen a few over-the-top things on his show, but never something that called for violence or seemed particularily hateful. (2005 Michael Moore notwithstanding). He's definately guilty of being enormously sappy and overly dramatic, but I would say masan's saddle that you probably went to that website with a bias expecting/hoping to hate what he had to say. I read it too, and didn't think anything he said was worth inducing anger.

I thought this was interesting Let Your Skin Crawl

[masan's saddle]

Shinrei, on 11 January 2011 - 09:29 PM, said:

masan, on 11 January 2011 - 06:11 PM, said:

King Lear, on 11 January 2011 - 12:30 AM, said:

Is it just me, or is Glenn Beck being slightly more subtle than usual?. -http://www.glennbeck...ians-and-media/
Apparently, he thinks it's time to 'stop playing politics'. Which is all very well and nice, but hard to take seriously when he sets Jared Loughner firmly on the left side of the political spectrum: "He was an atheist, believed George W. Bush was responsible for 9/11, feared a global currency, cited the Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books and thought the Mars rover landing was staged." Not including, of course that another was Ayn Rand's "We Are the Living". Faaah. (From his Youtube account info apparently) Not playing politics, my foot.

Annnd apparently Palin's page is being edited pretty ruthlessly at the moment. http://obamalondon.b...rah-palins.html
I guess it doesn't add much to the discussion, but pretty interesting.

Gah, Illy beat me to it.

I just read/squirmed my way through that Glenn Beck page.

The man is so full of shit he squeaks.

The "pledge" thing at the end is hysterical with regards to what he has said in the past. He has no shame and is nothing more than a self-aggrandizing charlatan seeing another opportunity for more publicity, what a twat.

Sorry for stating the obvious but he really makes my skin crawl.

Just out of curiousity, have any of you ever watched more than one complete episode of Glenn Beck?

I've certainly seen a few over-the-top things on his show, but never something that called for violence or seemed particularily hateful. (2005 Michael Moore notwithstanding). He's definately guilty of being enormously sappy and overly dramatic, but I would say masan's saddle that you probably went to that website with a bias expecting/hoping to hate what he had to say. I read it too, and didn't think anything he said was worth inducing anger.

I thought this was interesting Let Your Skin Crawl

In answer to your first question Shin, yes I have seen more than one episode of his show. I have also read stuff from his blog, watched numerous fails on youtube and read a few half decent editorials about him, most recently the NY Times one that someone posted on here ( I think). As a non-American I can honestly say that any bias I do have against him is due to his sheer idiocy, poor "journalism" ( I use the term loosely), cornflake packet politics, conspiracy hokum and general demeanor ( sincere/crying/ranting/gibbering etc etc).

I opened the link expecting horseshit so in that respect you are correct. I was surprised to find a relatively moderate tone for the most part until I reached the "let's all hold hands and pledge" BS at the end. The reason the man angers me is that he conveniently forgets all the vitriolic rhetoric he has been spouting for the last few years and tries to portray himself as some sort of hands across America / Healer.

He is very clever, I will give him that. But I just get the impression that he is just covering his ass and waiting for things to die down a bit before carrying on business as usual.

As for your point about about him being non violent/ hateful and just a bit sappy, I stumbled upon this earlier today. It's a fascinating and scary read done in the style of an "insurrectionism timeline". Beck appears 5 or 6 times and whilst at no real point is he quoted as advocating outright violence, if you think he is some sort of harmless sappy teddy bear then you are deluding yourself.

http://www.csgv.org/...ection-timeline

I'm sure there are probably clips of Beck being really nasty somewhere but to be honest we are going a bit off topic. The most hardhitting thing about all of this for me personally was watching the father of a dead nine year old girl trying to explain her aspirations and plans for the future. Horrific.

[worry]

You're conflating the argument a) that deliberately creating a perpetual sense of existential threat (personally and for the country) with repeated allusions to violent-but-patriotic anti-government opposition (2nd amendment, watering the tree of liberty) over several years may contribute to the violent outbursts of already-unstable people, with the argument b} that the unstable person was directly influenced by a specific, recent bit of rhetoric like Palin's crosshairs -- the latter argument, virtually nobody is making. Nobody is suggesting that the first amendment should lie beholden to the whims of the insane; but you can't truly believe the rhetoric is politics as usual and live in the same world where this is true: http://pewforum.org/...s-a-Muslim.aspx ; or where people believe that Obamacare will institute death panels; or people believe this: http://www.afa.net/B...x?id=2147501360 .

These are not fringe ideas, and this large (growing), malinformed, rhetorically violent portion of the right's base may MOSTLY be all bark no bite, but there's absolutely NO way that the loudest voices on the right aren't acutely aware that they're nudging some ticking time bombs in that midst. No individual but the attacker is culpable for this event, of course, but that doesn't make it inappropriate to make it a jump-off point for holding irresponsible (not illegal, not banned, not infringed-upon) rhetoric to account.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 11 January 2011 - 11:16 PM

[worry]

All in good fun and not at all meant to capture a certain zeitgeist, a certain something in the air, since that something doesn't exist, since every man is an island, individual will, liberty, the 2nd Amendment, etc.:
http://www.huffingto...e_n_807644.html

This post has been edited by worrywort: 12 January 2011 - 01:27 AM

[Shinrei]

masan, on 11 January 2011 - 10:45 PM, said:

I'm sure there are probably clips of Beck being really nasty somewhere but to be honest we are going a bit off topic. The most hardhitting thing about all of this for me personally was watching the father of a dead nine year old girl trying to explain her aspirations and plans for the future. Horrific.

Actually, I feel this is very on topic. I watched Keith Olberman's special comment on the shooting, and what I saw was him shamelessly using the opportunity to bash the people he always likes to bash. I'm seeing this from several people on this thread, most grieveously from Sombra, who are using this as further opportunity to get their "hate-on" for the tea party and fox news and specific commentators. Some may argue this is "putting the shooting into perspective". I wholeheartedly disagree, I think this is a loss of perspective. The guy was loony-toons.
There was just an incident in Japan just a month ago where a guy went into a bus full of school kids and started stabbing. There wasn't a lot of fingerpointing going on over that, like what I'm seeing in the US media now.

Full disclosure for evrahbody. I never watched Glenn Beck myself until about 3 months ago. Recently all of his stuff has been about self discovery and educating yourself. And more on topic, he's been using video clips and connecting the dots in order to make the claim that there is a movement to create civil unrest in the US by the Left. (His basic argument stems from pointing out certain people who were rioters, radicals and dissenters in the 60's who are now in places of power to affect policy, and bringing up more extreme characters like Van Jones and the connection George Soros (who self admittedly loves toppling banks and governments) has with all of these organizations like Media Matters.

So I'll admit, I have a very small window of experience with Glenn Beck, so I'm going to read your link masan with interest.

[Beezulbubba]

After watching this, I feel a lot better..... grab my gun ma, there's a bear on the porch! 'merica! yeehew!
http://vimeo.com/18698532

[Tsundoku]

Shinrei, on 12 January 2011 - 02:24 AM, said:

masan, on 11 January 2011 - 10:45 PM, said:

I'm sure there are probably clips of Beck being really nasty somewhere but to be honest we are going a bit off topic. The most hardhitting thing about all of this for me personally was watching the father of a dead nine year old girl trying to explain her aspirations and plans for the future. Horrific.

Actually, I feel this is very on topic. I watched Keith Olberman's special comment on the shooting, and what I saw was him shamelessly using the opportunity to bash the people he always likes to bash. I'm seeing this from several people on this thread, most grievously from Sombra, who are using this as further opportunity to get their "hate-on" for the tea party and fox news and specific commentators.

Thanks for the special mention. I can has warm fuzzies.

I won't waste my time with why I associate the Tea Party movement with neo-con fucktardity (I made a new word!), because it's pretty fucking obvious.

If you were offended by my comment (your phrase 'most grievously' has sympathetic undertones), is it because you identify with them? Or do you merely see it as an overly-subjective comment that stands out like a honeymooner's penis in a nice, dry, totally objective and impartial discussion?

[Shinrei]

Sombra, on 10 January 2011 - 01:49 PM, said:

I look at the pictures of the fuckwit NRA/Tea Party/Palin/Militia type peoples,

Because I think you are missing the fact that although fuckwits exist in the NRA and the Tea Party, the sizeable majority of people in those groups are simply normal people. Laying hate and blame on those people in response to a tragedy makes me feel you're buying into some sort of oppposition propaganda rather than fact.

If you really wonder about who tea party people are, read the wiki. Yeah, there are racists dicks to be found, but that's more to do with the fact they are attracted to the movement, not because they're the organizers or the primary voices of the groups.


(Oh, and for full disclosure, since I consider myself a libertarian as well as a supporter of the right to bear arms, yes, I do identify with elements of those groups)

This post has been edited by Shinrei: 13 January 2011 - 01:08 PM

[Tapper]

Well Shin, you must admit that 'normal' people can be pretty stupid about stuff as well. I think most of us here on the forum have above average education and intelligence and (Mac aside ), we can all type gramatically correct sentences. That is more than 90% of the population of any western country can.

Furthermore, you must admit that Sarah Tea Party Palin did herself no good at all by asking people to not use the shooting for name-and-blame games while she had been using gun comparisons in her rhetorics herself and is the first to go into attack mode herself.

Had she manned up and not said that the shooting should not have been used for politicking, it would have attracted far less attention towards her and her previous statements regarding Gifford and the other 16 on her 'hitlist' - for example, attention to the crazy 'assessor' vs 'gunsight' explanation on what the crosshairs exactly meant.

I mean, on that topic, it was not like she was going to mine the representatives she wants out of office for minerals, now was she?

Finally, her use of the term 'blood libel' in her reaction to that was bordering on insanity. I doubt the term is a standard in her vocabulary to begin with, so why pick it now?

This post has been edited by Tapper: 13 January 2011 - 02:07 PM

[Shinrei]

Oh, don't get me wrong, if Palin became president I'd become a Japanese citizen. I probably dislike her as much as anyone else on here.

But I don't for a second believe that her gunsights had anything to do with this shooting. In fact I saw video today of a friend (he had a friend>!>!) of the shooter who said that the nutball didn't watch TV or listen to political radio.

[Tapper]

Shinrei, on 13 January 2011 - 02:17 PM, said:

Oh, don't get me wrong, if Palin became president I'd become a Japanese citizen. I probably dislike her as much as anyone else on here.

But I don't for a second believe that her gunsights had anything to do with this shooting. In fact I saw video today of a friend (he had a friend>!>!) of the shooter who said that the nutball didn't watch TV or listen to political radio.

I don't believe the crosshairs had anything to do with the shooting either - but crosshairs are gun related. As were her rhetorics regarding her hitlist at its presentation, iirc the articles on the whole issue correctly... she said something about aiming and reloading. Of course she didn't mean it literally. Of course she and everyone but true nutters would never take it literally. Of course she is not to blame directly or indirectly for Gifford getting shot (although Gifford herself was uncomfortable with the presentation). Of course campaigning language borrows heavily from military and street speak.

We all understand that. I'm not saying Palin or the Tea Party are murderers because of it.

BUT it is that exactly what makes it complete hypocracy of the highest order to now (let it be)claim(ed) that these particular crosshairs were assessor/surveyor symbols.

This post has been edited by Tapper: 13 January 2011 - 02:26 PM

[MTS]

I thought Colbert's piece on this hit the nail on the head:

http://www.colbertna...it-of-angriness

[cerveza_fiesta]

I'm coming to the realization that maybe the rhetoric *does* have something to do with it after all. Words spoken from the mouth of a recognized leader have historically motivated people all over the world to do tremendous and heinous things both. Not being a history buff, but knowing enough of the basics: Napoleon, Gahndi, Catholic popes, Washington, Kim Jong Il, and of course Mr. Goodwin Himself (hitler) - these leaders all motivated large groups of people to do significant things, largely through the things they said.

Palin, Beck, and other American media personalities aren't leaders of countries or armies as such, but they are recognized leaders of their respective social groups, and their voices are listened to no matter what they say. If they are spewing love, peace and happiness it's going to inspire less violence than "Obama is a Communist" or "Obama is a Muslim" or "Obamacare will institute death panels" or "second amendment remedies".

I know that isn't the complete picture, but it's apparent that this is the stuff sticking in peoples' minds, since you hear it repeated over and over and over by the leaders and followers alike. The negative comments in American media play on deep seated fears and utilize violent imagery. A common reaction to being scared is to lash out at the threat, be it real or conceived.

Political rhetoric is not a direct link to violent behaviour, and no single piece of imagery invokes violence more than any other, but the overall atmosphere or mindset instilled by a leader has a lot to do with the actions of the followers.

[Beezulbubba]

MTS, on 13 January 2011 - 02:55 PM, said:

I thought Colbert's piece on this hit the nail on the head:

http://www.colbertna...it-of-angriness

So awesome! Colbert rules!

[Illuyankas]

Quote

Sorry, videos are not available in your country because we are massive dickbitches

FUCKSHIT

[cerveza_fiesta]

nonconstructive one-line comments are nonconstructive.