Thank god for this Salon interview with Bill Ayers, which is quite possibly the only intelligent thing to come out of the disaster that was the McCain campaign pretending a) that Ayers is currently a terrorist b) that the Weather Underground is any kind of threat to us now c) that the Weather Underground has anything to do with Islamic terrorism d) that Ayers and Obama are best buddies and e) that modern politics should be about endlessly rehashing the 60s. It’s a good interview—-Walter Shapiro and Bill Ayers are able to talk about their differences of opinion on the effects of radical action in the 60s without getting upset, even though it’s obvious this wound is still open and probably won’t heal as long as the people who remember that time are still alive and kicking. Ayers is ambivalent about his participation in the Weather Underground—-obviously they were doing way too many drugs and hadn’t really thought about the ramifications of their behavior. It’s farcical to think that you can set out to destroy property without running the extremely high risk that you’ll kill someone, and I don’t know if he’s really grappled with that fact as much as he should. But he’s also right that their behavior was peaceful and moderate compared to the government’s behavior at the time.
The problem with that, though, is when you start comparing yourself to the people you hate and using them as a benchmark for your behavior, it’s really easy to slip into paranoia and start rationalizing all sorts of fucked up shit. To make it worse for people on the left, people on the right are pretty much in a perpetual projection and rationalization loop, as you have to be when your worldview is fundamentally based on oppression. They don’t really need an excuse to make up all sorts of vile accusations about how evil liberals are, because in order to get to sleep every night, they have to invent an evil that keeps them from looking inside. Homophobia is refashioned as “protecting the children/traditional marriage”. Racism is made a tolerable philosophy by projecting violence, subversion, and sexual perversion onto the targeted group. Sexism is justified by people who claim they’re “saving babies”, and once you have a rationalization like that, turning to violence to enforce your will becomes easier to rationalize as well.
If the Republicans don’t clean out the bigots, mouthbreathers, and domestic terrorists in their midst, patriots like this filth in Louisiana will be party leaders before long.
An Oklahoma woman invited to a rural Louisiana campsite for a Ku Klux Klan initiation ritual was shot and killed after she asked to be taken back to town, the sheriff of a New Orleans suburb said Tuesday. Eight people were arrested after authorities found the woman’s body hidden under some brush, on the side of a road several miles from the remote campsite where the initiation was planned.
...Investigators found weapons, several flags and six Klan robes at the campsite, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said in a news release.
Strain said the woman, whose identity was not released, was recruited over the Internet to participate in the ritual and then return to her home state to find other members for the white supremacist group.
...Authorities said the group’s members called themselves the “Dixie Brotherhood.The IQ level of this group is not impressive, to be kind,” Strain said, adding, “I can’t imagine anyone feeling endangered or at risk by any one of these kooks. This is not what I would call an established Klan group. The Klan has a pretty high association with violence. Some of these guys are just crooks, sociopaths.”
Maria Kotronakis of Sydney, Australia, whose two sisters were killed [in the Bali bombings], said she was angry that the men never showed remorse, but with the executions, “justice has been served.”
By executing them, the Indonesian government has said, ‘No terrorists allowed,’” she added…
Hundreds of members of hardline Muslim groups have arrived in the village. Some threaten revenge and say others will take the place of Amrozi and Mukhlas.
There’s regular stupid and then there’s 9/11 stupid.
James S. Robbins is making an argument that we need the constant threat of terrorism and/or attack to keep us hypervigilant in the face of yet more attacks that then shouldn’t happen, which would in turn make us less vigilant and therefore in need of further attacks. I always labored under the impression that the point of our foreign affairs, whether or not we agree with the manner and method in which they’re conducted, was to protect and improve our way of life.
We’ve already begun some of the post-9/11 romanticization of the 9/12 world, how everyone was together and frolicking through fields of daisies while giant videos of Rudy Giuliani assuring us played on standard-definition TVs and we had crazy end-of-the-world disease-free sex. What I remember, however, is a bunch of us standing around a bag that someone had left in a hallway at school and debating whether or not to call 911. I remember looking up at every airplane that seemed a little bit too close and wondering if this was the next one. I remember feeling powerless and clueless and having as my only guidepost a color-coded strip that told us we were either fucked, super fucked or Assbangers 9: Return To Glory Hole, depending on the day.
That feeling we all had for the two or three years following 9/11 was only desirable from the perspective that Robbins is shilling for - the rise to power type of neoconservatism which only thrives in moments of great national crisis and soul-searching angst. There’s no actual benefit to a constant national freakout for any of the people freaking out…and why would there be? You don’t freak out if you have a plan, and if you have a plan that’s working you remove the need to freak out. If you’re not freaking out, you return to your normal way of life, perhaps a bit warier but still enjoying your morning coffee and hoping you don’t have to argue your way out of a late penalty for your cable bill.
I don’t know that there’s anyone outside of conservative intellectual circles who’s really wishing that we could all live as if the sky were falling. If there is, however, I would then ask what it is that we’re supposed to be fighting for as we take on Islamofascitarianistism? If our very way of life welcomes the things that destroy it, then we’re paradoxically better off not doing anything, welcoming attacks, and letting those who hate and kill us dictate to us the course and nature of our wants and needs.
If that’s the case, then, I have but one request: stop trying to govern us before you kill us, please. Go get a leftover replica of the set from Passenger 57 and relive Flight 93 to your heart’s content, if you must, but I’d rather keep my family safe than satisfy your sloppy warrior’s lust for a nation of paranoiacs ready to nuke anyone who looks at us funny.
McCain’s new ad accuses Barack Obama of sending his wolves to Alaska to savage Sarah Palin:
Now, I’m very much on the “associated uses of words and images” tip at this point, and the use of that imagery reminds me of nothing so much as George W. Bush’s famously effective “Wolves” ad from 2004:
The use of wolf imagery in the context of a Republican presidential campaign, particularly one so focused on national security acumen, can’t help but be intentional. Why is John McCain comparing Barack Obama, a man who has patriotically served his country in the U.S. Senate and who has run an honorable campaign for president, to Islamic terrorists who have slaughtered thousands of Americans?
First there was Islamism, which was defined as belief in Islam as a political system.
Then there was Islamofascism, which was defined as the belief in Islam as a violent system of repression which, despite having nothing to do with fascism, was a fun little concatenation.
Now, several years later, the people who keep renaming Islamic terrorism other things that are harder to understand have come up with the ultimate name for some jumbled idea of Islam being really bad.
Even if you can say it, you’re still only five percent of the way towards understanding what it actually means.
It’s Bernard-Henri Levy’s word for that segment of the Muslim world that defines itself through support for political violence and oppression. In his forthcoming book Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism, he has also unearthed a great quote from the journal of the writer Paul Claudel. From May 21, 1935: “Hitler’s speech: a kind of Islamism is being created at the center of Europe . . . “
The comparison is apt: There is a universal dynamic at work, whenever a fetishization of the collective is allowed to gather steam.
So, it’s actually the same word as Islamofascism, only more Hitlerized for public consumption. It’s an understandable impulse - after all, our attention spans are so corroded by television that by the time you get to the “o”, your audience’s attention is on the next episode of Shear Genius. Tossing in fascism up from lets everyone know you’re serious. May I also recommend the word “fascislamoslamism” should you be in front of an academic audience? No need to thank me.
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Illustration by August J. Pollack, originally appeared in Campus Progress.
So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that since I didn’t feel quite as bad as I was allegedly supposed to this weekend, that I really didn’t feel that bad at all. I’m that guy who goes to WebMD, sees I have three out of the four signs of a stroke, and as I don’t quite have problems seeing yet, I’m probably just tired. Anyway, after three days pushing myself way too hard, I’m finding that every time I try to post something longer than a paragraph, I start to feel exhausted and achy, then I realize that being in bed doesn’t necessarily constitute “rest”. It’s honest-to-goodness sleep and veg out time, even with a break from tv news.
I’m shocked, too.
Before I go, one last thing: I was wondering how long it would take for a conservative blogger to attempt to gloss over this weekend’s church shootings by culling a similar example from “liberalism”. Bingo.
This is sad. But first let’s be clear. This is ot a “Church” under the New Testament definitions as no place that celebrates sin could possibly be a member of the body of Christ. Just because someone names Christ or calls themselves a “Church” doesn’t mean they are the real thing.
Nevertheless NO fellowhip or organization deserves to have some nutbag come in and shoot the place up and kill people. Like it or not they are free to practice what they believe in America so long as they obey the law.
God will sort out the false prophets and adherants on the final day, he doesn’t need our help.
This man is very definitely disturbed and it’s not a “conservative” vs. “liberal thing”, although the usual idiots will gloat through the blood to make their point.
I’m sure the Unitarian community appreciates the small solace in Macsmind’s begrudging admission that despite their burning-in-hellosity, they possess some modicum of not-deserving-to-die-immediatelyness. It’s a tender, caring gift, like a lavender-scented subpoena.
The interesting thing about the case that’s linked to as evidence of “liberals” shooting up churches is that it’s the Colorado church shooter, the one that wanted to be a Christian missionary and lashed out in anger at his failure to do so. The reason that the belief exists that the shooter from this weekend was a conservative is his love of conservativism and hatred of liberalism. The reason that the belief exists that the shooter from Colorado was a liberal is because the karmic balance of the universe dictates that Jesus owes conservatives that solid; pray hard enough and one of the non-fatal bullets he was shot with was stopped by A People’s History of the United States.
The reason that liberals are in any way focused on this as an ideological object lesson isn’t because of a desire to tar the right with the actions of a murderer, but precisely because of the right’s efforts to determine that any acts of violence committed against a claimed-conservative audience (churchgoers, children, pretty white women) must be the work of some liberal and/or ethnic group out to destroy the very Hanes whose comfort-fit elastic waist houses the fleshy future of their imperiled race.
That, and the eliminationist streak that runs a mile wide and a mile deep through the conservative movement. But it’s all in service to the Hanes.
According to the lead officer in the investigation (airing on CNN right now), yesterday’s church shooting was the act of a man lashing out against gays and liberals.
I predict those declaring that Christianity is under assault from evil and violent sectors of our society will find virtually any way to overlook this they can. Looking around at major conservative blogs, I’m just amazed at how utterly silent they are concerning a church being assaulted by a domestic terrorist during a children’s play.
The Muslims have said either we kneel or they’re going to kill us… I don’t intend to kneel and I don’t advocate to anybody that we kneel, and John doesn’t advocate to anybody that we kneel.
May I recommend kneepads? I’m sure you’ll find some on the Straight Talk Express.
I thought that we’d understood several years back that the War on Terror is not, in fact, a War on Islam, particularly prescient in light of the fact that unofficial counts of Muslims in the world put their numbers somewhere north of eleventy bajillion and the numbers of the strong-kneed Americans at decidedly less than that. If at some point the two groups do decide to go to full out war with each other, I do not hesitate to say that the collected might of Islam will fuck the Bud Day Brigade’s shit up.
I’m also not particularly sure why Bud Day wants to go to war with the entire faith - does he envision himself as Paul Redeker from World War Z, with a binder full of plans of how to address the Islamic menace, leaving pockets of well-stocked sacrificial lambs to head them off while he rebuilds on the Western frontier?
From St. Cloud, Florida—isn’t this the kind of shameless, tasteless shilling you expect from Republicans as their fortunes are in the dumpster? After milking the tragedy of 9/11 for years now, here it comes again when the party has zero to run on. (Raw Story):
Businessman Mike Meehan, who paid for the ad, says he’s “only trying to help Republicans.” The billboard also carries a link for Meehan’s website, TheRepublicanSong.com, at which he says, “I claim to be a man of God” and promotes his political song and video.
Meehan’s song, which appears to have racist overtones, begins, “The Democrat secular progressive move, political correctness is killing us too. They want to take the money from the hard working man, and give it to the lazy folks that don’t give a damn.”
Even Republicans have found the billboard “inappropriate,” and many residents want it to come down. “I’m thinking about the Twin Towers, all the families that were killed there,” one woman told local TV affliate WFTV.
Dems weren’t exactly at the helm when this occurred, and, as I recall, isn’t Osama still enjoying his freedom? Raw Story notes that over at Lucianne.com, one of the knuckledraggers there declared: “People who refer to the terrorist attack as a tragedy are morons.”
It’s understandable why right-wingers run to bullshit like this every time it happens, but it sort of undercuts the whole steely warrior of truth mentality to incredulously run to any statement by a dictator or terrorist group and point at it like the goddamn gospel of reverse foreign policy just slipped out. Of course, if they didn’t leap like bunnies at the nearest picture of a carrot, we wouldn’t get golden nuggets like this:
Finally, as with Ron Paul’s refusal to return contributions from white supremacists, it’s reasonable to demand that a candidate unambiguously disavow the endorsement and denounce the endorser.
Taking a donation requires two active parties - one to donate, and one to accept. Someone endorsing someone else doesn’t require two active parties, because it’s not the same fucking thing. Personally, I’d prefer a Steely Warrior Man (And Woman) Guide To Interpreting Evil. For instance, when Iran calls Obama the “great whore of Israel” in 2009, is it a secret mating call? When North Korea calls America the “great tyrant of our sovereignty” in late 2011, is it because Obama beat Kim Jong Il at the game of online Risk they’ve been playing since last fall? When Hezbollah says that Obama is the tool of Zionist aggression, is it because he sent them an autographed copy of You Don’t Mess With The Zohan three weeks after their birthday passed?
We need to know these things.
Image: totally accurate portrayal of the Soviet Union circa 1988.
I will accept Obama’s cave-in on FISA if, the next time I commit several major felonies all in a row towards no discernible productive result, I can just say he asked me to do it and get off scott free. Deal?
The main reason I like poking at Andy McCarthy so much is because it’s like the only thing he knows about terrorism is that whatever Democrats do won’t work. If Obama threatened a year of crotch stompings to all people convicted of terrorist activities, McCarthy would have 750 words penned almost instantaneously about how the terrorist crotch is actually a secret signaling panel to other cells, the foot its most direct activator.
This is June 2008. That means it marks the ten-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s indictment.
He was first charged by my old office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, in June 1998. That was before the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (hundreds killed), before the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole (17 U.S. members of the U.S. Navy killed), and before 9/11 (nearly 3000 Americans killed). So it’s fair to ask: How is that strategy of prosecuting him in the criminal-justice system working out?
That’s a question Sen. John McCain ought to be putting to Sen. Barack Obama every day.
Exactly right. Especially since we have bin Laden in cust…oh, wait.
The central problem with the conservative argument about criminal vs. military pursuit of terrorists (and there’s no reason we can’t do both, but for the ACLU’s insistence that all terrorists get mandatory spa treatment and access to Starz!) is that terrorists are really, really hard to track down. Even when you get your hands on one, they have an odd tendency to be okay with killing themselves. Or lying. Or not actually being terrorists, but instead regional soda distributors whose last name begins with B instead of P, but in the wrong place at the wrong time and conveniently brown.
In doing so, the Court struck down a 2006 law passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, which specified the procedures by which captured terrorists held in military prisons could receive due process. The 2006 law, the Military Commissions Act, was only written, passed, and enacted because the Supreme Court in 2004 demanded that Congress do so. Put another way, as of last week, the Supreme Court – and more specifically, Justice Kennedy – has declared itself the final authority on making war, incarcerating enemy combatants, and, indeed, on the American people’s right to self-government.
Wait…you mean that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress?
First there was Islamism, which was defined as belief in Islam as a political system.
I’m shocked, too.
Colonel Bud Day, who you may remember from 
From St. Cloud, Florida—isn’t this the kind of shameless, tasteless shilling you expect from Republicans as their fortunes are in the dumpster? After milking the tragedy of 9/11 for years now, here it comes again when the party has zero to run on. (
Maybe I missed something spending three years toiling away in the salt mines of Ohio (I was miner of the month in September 2007!), but 
The main reason I like poking at 