You are criticizing me for living out in the mountains? The best I can do is help others when I know that they are in need, and teach my kids to do the same. It is like you expect me to patrol the streets of Gotham City in a batman costume. I at least have worked for humanitarian organizations in Africa, Haiti and Southeast Asia, delivering food and medical aid. I even had the super fun job of fishing human bodies out of the Indian Ocean after the tsunami. That was a real memorable experience. Good times. But I will never live up to your apparent standards of virtue unless I am protecting mosques in some urban hellhole.
It may shock you, but there are plenty of people in need of help in rural Appalachia. And back in Southern Colorado. In fact, everywhere.
If you read the ADL and SPLC accounts of all of 400 or so hate crimes reported as a result of the election, you will see that they mostly consist or online or vocal exchanges of dialog, where no person was seriously injured. Several of the hate messages have turned out to have been put up by the supposed targets of the messages, as satirical protests. There have been politically motivated assaults, but very few, and the worst assaults seem to have been committed against Trump supporters.
Honestly, I can guard the nearest mosque from my house, since nobody seems to be interested in doing anything to it. If that changes, I can get there pretty quickly. So far there have been two incidents in NC of mosque vandalism since 2005. One of those happened this year, and involved unwanted bacon, but no actual damage. The other was from 2006.
Minimize minimize minimize.
I shudder to think what you say when you take off your muzzle.
Terrifying, probably
No, not criticising you living out in the mountains. I think that that’s pretty gorgeous, actually.
What I am criticizing is you demonstrating another double standard.
Trump supporters being harassed is worth your time and effort to combat online, with fervor, and will assert that this is happening with greater frequency than their attacks on others.
Muslims being harassed and attacked is only worth your effort if you are actually physically present, and you will downplay those incidents when they do occur, as being either faked or not truly serious.
I would have more respect for you and your claims that you are a moderate if you actually spoke up in defense of those people who are being assaulted, regardless of their affiliation.
But you don’t.
EDIT:
As for the patrolling Gotham City in a Batman costume, no. I’d prefer you in a Superman costume. Because Batman is the epitome of the conservative political ideal superhero–a rich man acting as a vigilante against a criminal underclass made up of the mentally divergent and socially ostracized who commit crimes because that is what they do. Meanwhile, Superman is much closer to the liberal ideal–he helps the downtrodden and works to build a better world, regardless of who and what they are, but, as human beings, are deserving of a better life. [/random thought that occurred on the drive home from RPG night]
Important clarification. SPLC is at 701. Since they’re incidents that involved police reports being filed, their list doesn’t track online exchanges (if it were mere online harassment, Twitter alone would add hundreds of thousands of incidents to the count). >250 were incidents in schools.
There’s one death of an Arab muslim probably attacked by Trump supporters.
There’s also this (graphic):
There’ve been other physical attacks by Trump supporters against gays and minorities that were vicious and resulted in hospitalization. There were far more incidents of violence by Trump supporters through the election against minorities, some extremely violent, and it’s worth taking those into account. There have certainly been ugly attacks going both ways - pretending that Trump supporters are the bigger victims is troubling for many reasons.
I find it totally fitting that the upholder of Truth, Justice and The American Way is an undocumented alien. Unlike, say, Lex Luthor, a vain, power-crazed megalomaniac millionaire. slight_smile:
Pretending tRump supporters are victims is projection and cowardice.
As is pretending not to be a Trump supporter while repeating all the false talking points from that side, like a good little foot-soldier. Concern trolling is what you get when you take regular trollng and remove any last vestige of honor.
Okay I’ll remember that when my friends commit suicide in conversion therapy, I’m sure it’ll be fine, because in the grand scheme of things, the world just turns out okay for some reason.
Have you seen… history? Any of it? We don’t win because “love trumps hate”. We win because we fight. Love is important and has a place in that and keeps the community together when everything is falling apart and love can be resistance but the whole reason we have to resist is that the world isn’t fair and love didn’t trump hate for so many people. And it still hasn’t. I can’t think of any liberation struggle in this country that’s ever been “finished”. I can see that love trumps hate when it comes to small things, sometimes, but it is precisely in the grand scheme of things that systemic forces come into play and love can be a negative force, like when millions of parents believe that they are doing the right thing for their children by telling them not to be trans.
You may not have intended those words to carry that kind of meaning but that idea is actually harmful - it gives people the impression that they can wait for justice.
It’s no co-incidence. Siegel and Shuster, the creators of Superman, were both the children of turn-of-the-last-century Jewish immigrants (or refugees, considering that some of the parents were fleeing the anti-Semitic tyranny of the Tsar).
“There’s one death of an Arab muslim probably attacked by Trump supporters” This one?
Regardless, any physical attack on another person is unacceptable. In every case, I do wish that I had been there to intervene.
And you are right that the count at SPLC is up to 701. But this is from the same report:
In a nation of 319 million people.
That does not excuse even one incident. I have never even come close to advocating leniency for hate crimes. My only position is that we keep the seriousness and quantity of these incidents in perspective. The reason that the SPLC calls the “incidents of hateful harassment”, is because the majority of them are not crimes. Rude and vulgar words, mostly. The solution to that is, in my opinion, that parents teach their kids some manners. That, and people who witness such incidents call out the hate for what it is, and intervene.
I chose batman because the only superpower I seem to have is the extraordinary ability to inspire wild animals to attack me. I am in the wilderness and the ocean a lot, but I have been attacked by an amazing range of animals, reptiles, and fish.
As for perspective, I think the perception of me as right wing is related to the politics of the site. I don’t spend much time on right wing sites, but when I do comment, they see me as left-leaning. I try to remain a centrist, but it is hard to do when some issues require a firm stand, one way or the other. For gun rights, I am pretty far right. For women’s bodily autonomy, I am way left. Conservation and pollution issues, probably left. Way left in some specifics. So in this election, there were going to be issues where I knew I was going to have to fight, depending on who won the election. But I am old enough to have experienced supporting a losing candidate or political issue more than once in the past. From my own observation, a large percentage of the people suffering serious emotional damage from this election are young enough that losing a political battle is not something they have experience dealing with. It seems like the end of the world. But they will probably get over it. And the racist types will learn that they are still not tolerated in society, and crawl back under their rocks.
They’re monotheistic enough to eventually get classified as dhimmi by Muslim rulers.
The fantasy world where that happens would be nice to live in.
And that asteroid is called Love. I’ve always interpreted “Love trumps hate” differently, but I accept the validity of your interpretation too.
Don’t worry, those sensible moderate Republicans will save us. http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/priebus-muslim-registry-not-going-rule-out-anything-n686391
Promoting conflict:
The whole statement:
I guess the question I have is, if it turns out that Trump does not actually do anything terrible, are you more committed to the disruption of his presidency than you are to the good of the country?
I am having trouble wording this clearly in English. I will rephrase it- Are you angry enough at Trump that you would be more upset by a successful Trump presidency than you would be at a disastrous one?
These people seem to be primarily interested in general disruption of society-
https://submedia.tv/stimulator/2016/11/11/disruptj20/
I’m wondering what that would entail.
I think there is probably zero chance of him going even a short period without saying something inappropriate or vulgar. But there is always the slim chance that he will hire smart people who are not evil, and take their advice. Or he could find that he can make few changes in the face of the giant Stalinesque bureaucracy of Washington. I don’t know, exactly.
I am just trying to be hopeful. If nothing else, that the checks and balances work.
He’s already working on his hiring, and the people he’s picking are all boorish bigoted thugs of the worst sort like Bannon, Gen. Flynn, Sessions, etc.
Hasn’t made a good start there. [quote=“Max_Blancke, post:181, topic:89687”]
checks and balances
[/quote]
GOP controls every branch. What checks and balances?
The best we can hope for is Ryan impeaching him sooner rather than later.
