Ignore this unless you have a cast iron stomach.
Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that the teabaggers have ALREADY fired the first shot? The centrist/progressive/leftist/liberals are simply not responding with violence. But the first shot has already been fired in this culture war. And the second, and the third, and the fourth.
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Sorry. I guess my stomach’s not quite strong enough. I quit after “. . . if you’re talking about a sitting U.S. president whose administration provokes a civil war . . . you save his trial until after you win.”
They’re sitting around trying to figure out how to provoke the first shot without being provocateurs. The really sad thing is that I think will be real violence in the not too distant future as result of these crazy fuckers. Probably at a Starbucks.
You found some world class crazy there, Greg. Funny. There seems to a be a lot of that in the U.S. lately.
(Am I wrong for blaming John McCain for that, for having been so fucking stupid to give Palin and her own special lunacy a voice? If not for McCain no one south of the 50th parallel would have ever heard of her, and all those idiots would still be sitting in their survival shelters counting their cans of beans and cleaning their guns.)
The “culture war” dates to at least the 1960’s, and has gotten plenty violent at times. We’ve survived, and even, I believe, made a lot of progress. I’d like to think this is the last gasp of the unreconstructed confederates, but maybe that’s a little too optimistic.
I skipped the video.
“The south lost the high moral ground” in the civil war.
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Teabaggers=racists, bigots, haters, xexophobes = Fuckwads.
These people are completely insane. They should be hospitalized for being psychotic.
I am very comforted by the fact that they are all just a disconnected, loosely associated bunch of loons. That is not to say that they are completely impotent, terrorist acts are easiest to commit when no one knows about them. But this rhetoric is no different from that of the Clinton era. For that matter, it is not much different from their rhetoric when republicans are in power – they tend to be equal opportunity nuts.
But ultimately I think that people like these are a very good argument in favor of free speech. Because these sociopaths are allowed to express their hate and rage with words, they draw the attention of law enforcement. Germany, with it’s rather draconian restrictions on speech, has a correspondingly high rate of domestic terrorism.
Very disturbing bullshit, but not all that scary in it’s containment.
What keeps me from totally kneejerk response freaking by these people(Tea Bagger types) is that the turn of the 1900 century, the civil rights into the 60’s had many violent rebels on the left and the right. Amazingly the large median of the populace wants civility and the extremists will never fully tip that balance into either Nazi or full on Communistic regimes or dogmas. Like a huge swimming pool or bath tub some swimmers are trying to tip or over slosh. During the civil war times the diversity and networked spread of power was as wide or dispersed to dilute these spikes of human illogic and freakouts. The attempts to destroy the democratic constitution that has set up this balancing set of laws is what the rightwing has always and successfully worked at chipping away to gain momentum.
edit << During the civil war times the diversity and networked spread of power was *NOT* as wide or dispersed to dilute these spikes of human illogic and freakouts. >>
CORRECTED edit – [[ During the civil war times the diversity and networked spread of power was ** NOT ** as wide or dispersed to dilute these spikes of human illogic and freakouts. ]]
???
Greg,
These folks are a decent reason why I stay armed.
They force me to be a liberal gun nut, in effect.
Even though my collection is more of a memento from my grandfather.
These folks creep me out.
DuWayne,living in Germany,I was wondering what “high rate of domestic terrorism” you are speaking of? We’ve got a bunch of radical ultra-leftist committing the odd act of property-destruction now and then and we’ve got those embarrassing neo-nazi wankers who are out there hurting (sometimes killing)people whose heritage or politcal opinion doesn’t match their own.If you are refering to those and were to aply the same standards to the US,you’d find that your rate of domestic terrorismis actually higher.If you are refering to those pathetic muslim wannabe-jihadists of the “Sauerland group”,let me remind you that not only were they utterly incompetent,they were under so much police surveillance that the cops actually went ino their “hide-out” and switched the chemical in their (snigger)”bombs”.Germany has never had an Oklahoma City.
Germany has never had a DC Sniper.Germany has never had a Scott Roeder or Eric Rudolph.
And Germany doesn’t have “rather draconian restrictions on speech” either.We have a law against holocaust denial,since this constitutes a form of libel and hate speech (“lying Jews”,ya know?) and we have a law against “Volksverhetzung”(roughly equivalent to “hate speech”)both of which are frequently and easily circumvented by hate groups via teh internetz .We don’t ban books either,contrary to popular belief,if a book is “indiziert” (“indicated”),that merely means that it cannot be sold a)openly and b)to a minor and it cannot be advertised.The reason we don’t have a Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly is not that we draconianly (?) ban them but because people would be embarrassed to watch such vileness and stupidity.
We’ve got a bunch of radical ultra-leftist committing the odd act of property-destruction now and then and we’ve got those embarrassing neo-nazi wankers who are out there hurting (sometimes killing)people whose heritage or politcal opinion doesn’t match their own.
That would be exactly what I mean. And the incompetence of another terrorist group does not somehow make them benign, it makes them incompetent.
If you are refering to those and were to aply the same standards to the US,you’d find that your rate of domestic terrorismis actually higher.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.
Germany has never had an Oklahoma City. Germany has never had a DC Sniper.
Again, incompetent terrorists are still terrorists. And the DC Sniper was not a terrorist, he was a common fucking criminal.
Germany has never had a Scott Roeder or Eric Rudolph.
Again, Bullshit. There were different motivations to be sure, but Germany has had it’s politically motivated terrorists. Hell, you had a thirty year run with BM/RAF – are you honestly going to try to claim they never bombed anything, never shot anyone? You also have the neo-natzi loons, hurting and sometimes killing people.
And Germany doesn’t have “rather draconian restrictions on speech” either.We have a law against holocaust denial,since this constitutes a form of libel and hate speech (“lying Jews”,ya know?) and we have a law against “Volksverhetzung”(roughly equivalent to “hate speech”)both of which are frequently and easily circumvented by hate groups via teh internetz .
You have put people in fucking jail and given people huge fines for fucking words. Libel is an act you commit against another person or a business. Hate speech is just so much fucking bullshit.
Who gets to decide what is hate speech? Can you tell me what hate speech is? If I accuse someone of being a fucking waste of oxygen, would that be hate speech? What exactly is this hate speech you speak of?
We don’t ban books either,contrary to popular belief,if a book is “indiziert” (“indicated”),that merely means that it cannot be sold a)openly and b)to a minor and it cannot be advertised.
You know what is funny? I didn’t say anything about banning books. But I have to say, I am unimpressed with what you actually do with them. Not being allowed to advertise that you have something for sale, makes it rather a challenge to sell. While it may not equal an outright ban, it might as well.
And while I am all about keeping particularly graphic representations of sex and violence out of childrens hands, I do not believe in restricting political speech – bullshit or otherwise – away from children. Rather than just assume that they will be capable of dealing with dangerous or evil ideas when they come across them as an adult, I would like to be able to talk about them. If it is my responsibility as a parent, to prepare my child for the wide world, then part of that responsibility must include making sure they can pick the vileness out of what often is a very attractive presentation.
The reason we don’t have a Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly is not that we draconianly (?) ban them but because people would be embarrassed to watch such vileness and stupidity.
More hilarity, as I said absolutely nothing about this almost uniquely U.S. American phenom, wingnut talking heads. Remarkably, I am well aware of why most countries do not have this in common with the U.S. But please, don’t let that stop you from pretending I was making arguments I was most certainly not.
Oh, and to be quite fair, if we actually defined terrorism as I think it should be defined, the U.S. would actually come out on top. I think we should consider gang activity terrorism and if we did, we would probably come pretty close to outstripping all of western Europe.
And it occurs to me that the confusion might be in the metrics. I am not talking about terrorism in hard numbers, but rather rates per capita. I would have thought that was rater obvious, but maybe it isn’t…
@NewEnglandBob: The teabaggers aren’t doing anything which religion hasn’t done in the past. Hatred? Check. Bigotry? Check. Racists? Check. Xenophobes? Check – although recently that’s been dying down, unless “xeno” is taken to mean not members of the right cult. Yep, that’s alive and well in many existing religions. At least the teabaggers haven’t gone all jesusy or mohammedan on us yet and started their holy crusades. So there’s nothing at all unusual with the teabaggers – they’re just acting like yet another religion.
Well, there’s this:
http://www.suzieduke.com/TeapartywithJesus.html
Wow, those guys are nuts.
The radio broadcast voices were calm and deliberate. Sort of like talking about planting roses. Only in this case, insurrection was what they were plotting, but only if they can get Obama to fire first.
Sons of Liberty indeed. More like sons of insanity.
DuWayne: You said Germany “has a correspondingly high rate of domestic terrorism.”
The last attack credited to the RAF was in 1993, two years before the OKC bombing and three years before the Olympic bombing. I know of no violence associated with abortion in Germany. The current situation in the U.S. is far more frightening and far more volatile than that in Germany.
For the record, I’m against the restrictions that Germany places on speech here. Holocaust denial, while stupid, should not be punishable. But there are historical conditions here that do not obtain in the U.S., which, while maybe not justifying the position, go a long way towards explaining it.
On the other hand, I have wished there was a way to get certain people in the U.S. to just shut the fuck up.
not true