a little reminder... on differences...

[brainpanhandler]

Bullshit.

Especially the third paragraph, according to which I'm supposed to put "their" imagination on a par with reality. When did liberals ever call for the banning of churches, or make it illegal for Catholics and fundamentalists to marry?

The exercise of power, the physical abuse and state bias in each case is almost exclusively one-way: Against that perceived as left. Against that perceived as other. Against the have-nots.

I'm talking about the real state, not the stated ideals or the state as imagined by the right wing. Where do you see the billyclubs swinging, the tasers and tear-gas grenades firing, the LRAD trucks releasing sonic attacks, the stop-and-frisks en masse? Not at the Tea Party rally, even when they brandish automatic weapons. Not at the Chamber of Commerce. Not in rich white neighborhoods. Did you see what just happened to several hundred OWS occupations around the country? How can you sustain an equivalence argument after that?

And no, I'm not going to put hating some people because they ACT a certain way on the same plane as hating people because they ARE a certain way. The unconditional identity-based hate in this country has always come almost exclusively from people who identify politically to the right, and more from the top than the bottom.

Easy equivalence arguments are pernicious. Also a stock in trade of the right. They learned the lingo of revolution and tried to reverse every critique of them. The primary way they express their racism in discourse nowadays is to complain about "reverse racism."

.

I agree with every word.

Oh FFS. How could you not?

Agree, agree, agree....

[brainpanhandler]

Stop giving false promises you're going away - it never works out.

No shit. That's about the 3rd or 4th such tease in the last week. Bait. You're just a hater you know.

[brainpanhandler]

Hey, even Jesus knew when it was time to go nose-to-nose and kick over a few tables.

No shit sherlock.

What the hell is the matter with the appeasers here? Jesus fuckin' christ, get real. I'm gonna shake hands with the retardo fascists? Fuck that.

What is hate? Can we have that conversation?

Fear? Anger? Projection? I'm more concerned with our own sanity and not at all with turning the fascists around.

[IanEye]

"The Black Bloc spends more time attempting to destroy movements than they do attacking those in power. They hate the left more than they hate capitalists.”

He left in a huff and he is back even huffier.

[brainpanhandler]

Will you reverse the Overton Window leftwards so we end up reliving the Joy Of Stalinism?

Have you lost your mind? You conisder Stalin a leftist? C'mon man. You're smarter than that.

What do you propose to DO with these people you hate? Exterminate them? Put them in FEMA Camps? Bind them like demons, with ropes of Holy Law?

I keep waiting for them to die of natural causes myself but that doesn't seem to be working out.

In the real world, at the end of the day, it's like the IRA and the Loyalists. You either do an Israel and ignore / disenfranchise those you hate or you do a Northern Ireland and engage with them.
Engage doesn't mean agree or meet in some soggy middle. Engage can be the beginning of designing a solution.

I've spent decades trying to do that. Decades. At some point you gotta stop titling at windmills.

Frankly Eyeno is right about one thing... the impasse we find ourselves at now is different than we have ever encountered before. These are unique times. We all see the perfect storm approaching. Don't we?

Does anyone really think we'll all huddle together and sing kumbaya when it arrives?

I hold out some small hope that I am wrong, wrong, wrong, but I can't help but feel that is just denial. I desperately want to believe differently. How could I not?

[Simulist]

This bears repeating, because it is right.

I won't be shamed into hating my neighbors, even when they ARE evident racists. Maybe I should I have disowned my grandfather because he often said the 'N' word even though it was more of a conditioned reflex than an expression of his true feelings. Since he was too old to teach maybe I should have set him adrift on a raft in the Gulf of Mexico.

The people are not our enemies, it's the leaders who are driving them over a cliff and should be dealt with. I feel it is our duty to reach out and tell them it doesn't have to be this way, cut the leaders off where they really live, in the minds of people who are most susceptible to thought manipulation.

[NeonLX]

I don't know where to come down here...I "hate" what's happening in this country and most of the rest of the world, and I guess I "hate" those who are causing it (the uber-capitalists, the figureheads in various governments doing the bidding of the uber-capitalists, the war-mongers, etc...are the distinctions even meaningful?). But what should I (we) do in response? Vote for the lesser of two evils in a sham of an election? Sit it out and let the overton window (new term for me) slide ever further to the right?

I just dunno...

[brainpanhandler]

This bears repeating, because it is right.

I won't be shamed into hating my neighbors, even when they ARE evident racists. Maybe I should I have disowned my grandfather because he often said the 'N' word even though it was more of a conditioned reflex than an expression of his true feelings. Since he was too old to teach maybe I should have set him adrift on a raft in the Gulf of Mexico.

The people are not our enemies, it's the leaders who are driving them over a cliff and should be dealt with. I feel it is our duty to reach out and tell them it doesn't have to be this way, cut the leaders off where they really live, in the minds of people who are most susceptible to thought manipulation.

You're right. It does bear repeating.

I won't be shamed into hating my neighbors, even when they ARE evident racists.

I don't see how anyone could make you do that anyway sunny.

Maybe I should I have disowned my grandfather because he often said the 'N' word even though it was more of a conditioned reflex than an expression of his true feelings.

Of course not. He's your grandfather. The vast majority of good party volk in nazi germany were probably very nice people. People are people. We're complex. We don't get to choose our families. But that's something very different, isn't it?

Since he was too old to teach maybe I should have set him adrift on a raft in the Gulf of Mexico.

Did you ever try?

The people are not our enemies, it's the leaders who are driving them over a cliff and should be dealt with.

I think it is safe to say the people get the leaders they want and deserve and the leaders attempt to prey on the people and get them to want their kind of "leadership". The two are symbiotic.

I feel it is our duty to reach out and tell them it doesn't have to be this way

Sure. But forever? Like when your behind barbed wire should you still be reaching out? I'm not that saintly. Not even close.

cut the leaders off where they really live, in the minds of people who are most susceptible to thought manipulation

No one's asked you about this, but what do you mean by the "most susceptible to thought manipulation"?

[Sounder]

BPH wrote....

What is hate? Can we have that conversation?

Sure we can BPH; hate is insisting on maintaining the delusion that if the only people that were allowed to live were the ones that think like you do, then the world would be a better place. While the right is generally more recognized as carrying this trait it might also be remembered that both China and the USSR killed many of their own countrymen while following putatively leftist codes.

In any case the recipe that hatred seeks to follow is illogical because growth in consciousness is greatly aided with the contrast, and learning experiences provided by natural variations of approach found in any community.

And no, you don't gather round and sing kumb-ba-ya, but you do reassess strategy that has progressives focused on the puppies of the racist big dogs who don't care one whit whether or not they may have to throw some pup under the bus if that will keep the leftists distracted.

BPH wrote..

Have you lost your mind? You conisder Stalin a leftist? C'mon man. You're smarter than that.

Try me with some condescension like that BPH.

[Nordic]

I'm still looking for where in this thread ANYONE has called for "appeasement" or "sitting around singing Kumbaya".

Those strawmen have a strange way of popping up.

Listen, I'm the first person who thinks that the Lloyd Blackfiends of the world should be hanging from ropes. Or at the very least locked away for the rest of their lives.

But that should be a practical matter, not one so filled with emotion. Seriously, these people who destroy our society are simply unable to live in society in a responsible fashion and should therefore be removed from it, either by death or by incarceration. I wouldn't mind death as a practical matter, because that would send a very strong signal to the other fucks that it could happen to them.

However, if you think I'm gonna fall for a piece of agitprop telling me to HATE HATE HATE because so many people HATE HATE HATE me, then I'm gonna sit back and go "whoa".

You know, like this guy:

[Jeff]

I felt very uncomfortable reading your response to eyeno.
A longstanding forum member has expressed that they don't feel safe and feel threatened - and you approach is to belittle and mock???? Sure this place gets feisty, and I include myself in that, but IMHO there is a red line around intimidation. You have no idea what colour eyeno is; you have no idea whether he/she has been affected by racism and your assertions that you do have no basis in sensory reality.

Since you have chosen to put legs on a baseless and clearly opportunistic allegation by a longstanding nuisance to this forum, I hereby alert on myself to the moderation team. Certainly if I am making threats to longstanding members I need to be disciplined, and if not, someone else should be for defaming me.

.

There's no justification to characterize Jack's remarks as a threat.

Also: let's take this discussion to a less personal level.

[brainpanhandler]

What is hate? Can we have that conversation?

Fear? Anger? Projection?

[Simulist]

I feel it is our duty to reach out and tell them it doesn't have to be this way

Sure. But forever? Like when your behind barbed wire should you still be reaching out? I'm not that saintly. Not even close.

Is there really a move afoot to put us all behind barbed wire? (Seriously? Because that specter is invoked with suspicious frequency — and on both sides. The hype-meisters on the "right" suggest that the liberals are wanting to do this to them, and the hype-meisters on the "left" suggest that the conservatives want to do this to them.) Or is that just another tactic to create a siege mentality on both the right and the left?

I used to think the former to be true, that there really is such a move afoot; now I consider the latter to be more worthy of consideration. Why?

Because with such a siege mentality in place — on both sides — the "sheep" are more easily separated one from the other, and divided — those on the right hand, from those on the left.

[brainpanhandler]

I feel it is our duty to reach out and tell them it doesn't have to be this way

Sure. But forever? Like when your behind barbed wire should you still be reaching out? I'm not that saintly. Not even close.

Is there really a move afoot to put us all behind barbed wire? (Seriously? Because that specter is invoked with suspicious frequency — and on both sides. The hype-meisters on the "right" suggest that the liberals are wanting to do this to them, and the hype-meisters on the "left" suggest that the conservatives want to do this to them.) Or is that just another tactic to create a siege mentality on both the right and the left?

I used to think the former to be true, that there really is such a move afoot; now I consider the latter to be more worthy of consideration. Why?

Because with such a siege mentality in place — on both sides — the "sheep" are more easily separated one from the other, and divided — those on the right hand, from those on the left.

Look man, I took the logical extreme to prove a point. You gotta draw the line somewhere.

Which side do you think is more likely to start rounding people up? I mean really? C'mon.

And you think it won't come to that?

At first they came for....

[Simulist]

Oh for God's sake. Please respond to my point.

I made it clearly.