News outlets breathlessly report that “America is on edge” that mailed bombs “cause fear” or that we are experiencing the “politics of the apocalypse” (not sure what that means exactly).
I have yet to see an expression of fear or edginess on the part of any of the recipients of these bombs, or their surrogates. Democrats are concerned about civilization, the future, our children, our planet, education, the environment. Attacks on these key elements of society cause concern, and Democrats fight those attacks. Democratic values don’t include being afraid. Nobody is afraid.
To be clear, over the last three years, Donald Trump has publicly compiled an enemies list, that includes President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Vice President Obama, George Soros, Maxine Waters, Director Brennan, AG Holden, and several others. This enemies list has been converted into a hit list, and a fake bomber, or an utterly incompetent bomber (not sure which is better), has taken on the obvious task of attempting to terrorize those individuals. For now, I’ll assume that the lack of a bomb in Elizabeth Warren’s mailbox is the slowness of the postal system around Boston this time of year.
There is an attack going on, but not one that will do anything but elevate paragraphs about Trump’s hatred and his enemies list to an earlier position in the eventual Wikipedia page on his regime.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Yes – nobody is afraid. In fact, soon it will be fashionable to have received a bomb.
Harris and Warren probably wish they had received one – as you are not really a Trump enemy if you don’t get one.
Just kidding. Well a little anyway.
The use of the word “enemy” shows your distinct lack of integrity: since when is disagreeing with a president make you an enemy?
Don’t bother answering — we’ve seen enough of your lies and stupidity on this issue already.
dean:
The word comes from the post “Trump’s hatred and his enemies list to an earlier position in the eventual Wikipedia page on his regime.”
You should read the post before you simply reflexively insult me.
Your hypocrisy about the way Trumpian hate rhetoric enables public haters disqualifies you from yet more whining about being insulted.
Actually, dean, since this ahole prez!! As far as I can tell from the twit tweets, & faux news, if you disagree with the trumpkin, and are powerful enough to be noticed, you are named an enemy (or some other just as bad word – like traitor) and anything you say is fake news. And now that the trumpkin has said things like they should be shot, the bombs don’t surprise me when your support base are really st00pid people.
Describing your characteristics based on your current and previous posts does not equal an insult. It is a statement of fact.
I agree perfectly that, according to Trump, if you disagree with him and have a public voice you are his enemy.
Rational people know that simply disagreeing with the president does not make you an enemy. My comment was directed at rickA’s use of “enemy” and his on-going attempts to represent himself as an intelligent, honest, fact-based person reaching conclusions and taking actions that can be logically defended, but then continuing to be the same science-denying, conspiracy embracing , racist/bigot/misogynist/ignorant of societal needs/no clue of economic reality scumbag he’s always been.
Stupid helps but it is not the only reason for being a fan/supporter of Don-the-Con. Some fundamentalist Christians seem to be supporting him in hopes he will desecularize the U. S. for them and others will aid anything that seems likely to bring on the Apocalypse. Then there are white supremacists and various other bigots who believe race, ethnicity, and/or sexual orientation are infallible guides to human worth, and people who are willing to promote degradation of the environment if there is profit in it. There is, of course, some overlap in these categories.
There may be other reasons but I’ve never heard any that seem compelling.
“Democrats are concerned about civilization, the future, our children, our planet, education, the environment.”
Get your hand off it Greg.
Democrats are concerned about civilization ( oops we love nukes), the future ( oops we love nukes), our children ( oops we love nukes), our planet( oops we love nukes ), education ( we ain’t very educated about nukes ) , the environment.( oops we love nukes).
When the donkeys stop loving nukes, nevermind other WMDs, let me know.
Until then, take your hand off it and stop spouting bollocks.
I just had to castigate the fuck out Gore on a climate forum because despite his( pretty weird) climate profile, he was in fact 2IC of a big fuck off pile of WMDs and the prick therefore has no ethics whatsoever. He shouldn’t be listened to on any subject unless he was perhaps speaking on what a cockhead he himself is. He’s certainly no fucking climate scientist.
Get it into your bloody head Greg.
The democrats fund and develop and maintain and ready for fire, WMDs. Not a couple. Not a few like say jeez I dunno Thailand might have or Nigeria. The biggest fucking pile of burn to death gear the world has ever seen.
Ooooo noooo the Democrats are concerned about civilization, the future, our children, our planet, education, the environment.
Taking the fucking piss they are.
So are you saying that there is no other source of nuclear danger other than the U. S.? Or are you under the impression that if the U. S. unilaterally disarmed that no one else would maintain or develop nuclear capability?
There is a reason that those weapons were developed and stockpiled in the first place*, and it was the U. S. that took the initiative in making the agreements which made their actual use again less likely. It is our current Republican President who has recently made noises indicating that he would like to see us go back to a full-on arms race.
* Australia benefited from any effect the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan had in convincing the Japanese to surrender in 1945. Australia was an active participant in that war, jointly with the U. S. and the rest of the British Commonwealth, and Australia too would have sustained heavy casualties in any invasion of Japan, had that occurred.
I too, though, would like to live in a world where use of atomic weapons was neither possible nor even conceivable but I don’t see that happening while there is so much unchecked hatred and greed in the world.
Some fundamentalist Christians seem to be supporting him in hopes he will desecularize the U. S. for them and others will aid anything that seems likely to bring on the Apocalypse.
He certainly is a big hit with the Calvinists around Grand Rapids and Holland. Of course, they thought Obama was an extreme-left winger to Communist, so their collective intellect is somewhere south of igneous rock.
We get it that you don’t like nukes, Li D, but I don’t think it’s a terrific idea to get rid of all your weapons while the enemy keeps theirs. Your reproach of the Democrats in that regard seems to be a bit misguided.
Tyvor, I’m saying the democrats show no sign of doing fuck all about WMDs. Neither do the utter fuckwit republicans, or any other WMD owning mob of pricks.
The democrats should not be lauded for peace, love and brown rice, as Greg does.
????????
Ooops that’s me above who is named anonomous.
Li D.
Jp. I can cop being misguided.
I’m very very far from being an expert on international geopolitics.
When I see an attempt from the dems to resolve the issue I will congratulate them.
I see fuck all. The pricks could be organizing massive continuous dialogue and meetings al la Reykjavik with all parties, when they in power, and push hard as fuck when they not in power.
They don’t push at all. That’s my point. And that’s fucked.
It’s not like France or China push either. Whole lot of em are cunts.
Fuck me, I will pay the phone bills for the dems. Phone calls are cheap as.
I remember it used to be 5 bucks a minute to ring Canada. And five bucks was a lot of money then. Now it’s virtually free.
Here’s the bottom line.
WMDs are not seen as bad things.
Not by dems, and not by the yank public who votes em in every so often to the executive or to control the senate or whatever. Yanks in fact love the fucking things. And because they do, I can’t take talk of civilization, education, environment, seriously at all from them. It’s just fluffy words when you love WMDs.
It’s like Poms talking about civilization at the same time as commiting genocide ( virtually total too. ) in Tasmania. Just can’t take em seriously.
Notably, journos don’t give a rat’s arse about WMDs either.
But yeah, I will cop being misguided. There’s fuck all I can do whether I am or I ain’t.
“For now, I’ll assume that the lack of a bomb in Elizabeth Warren’s mailbox is the slowness of the postal system around Boston this time of year.”
i might say the same about Maddow, Colbert, Oliver, Meyers, and Alec Baldwin.
Or maybe the bomber ran out of duct tape,
or maybe his local hate radio only bangs on a select few (so as not to confuse clueless listeners),
or maybe he got lost in a parking lot while huffing glue,
or maybe he lost contact with his lizard overlord when the string between their tin cans snagged on a bush,
or maybe Moscow told him to lay low for a while…
The possibilities boggle the mind.
It looks like they just caught the bomber in Florida. Supposedly his van was covered with Trump stickers and a big picture of the prez. How will the right wingers spin this now? Must be Obama’s fault. Or HIllary’s?
Will Trump take responsibility for inciting a nut case to make and send bombs? No effing way! That is not how Republicans role, is it! Republicans took this former Democrat into their fold because they though he had “talent” I guess, or “talents”. What they got was an irresponsible baby man who is presiding over a “good ” economy in the short term. He may have just turned into a party wrecking albatross. We will see.
So it was a rightwing lunatic after all.
Just like it was a rightwing lunatic that shot and stabbed Labour MP Jo Cox to death.
Because he was all riled up by the populist hatemongers spewing anti-immigration bile and lefty-hating over Brexit.
This is what happens when mouthy populist scum turn up the hate speech. It encourages and enables the worst of their base to act.
At least this time nobody got killed by any of those ‘very fine’ people Donald likes to pander to.
” Brexit ”
Here the Beatles taking the piss out of Enoch.
https://vimeo.com/244335106
I reckon it’s very very good musically, but critics don’t rate it highly.
Well, we still don’t know all the details about this guy — or even if he is the guy, or if he is whether he acted alone.
If we find out he is solely responsible I will not be surprised to find he’s someone with a long history of minor run-ins with the law mixed with a bit of being mentally unstable for some reason, both of which combined to make him more willing to buy into Trump’s bullshit than even the ignorati who post here supporting him.
Coming up in the days ahead:
1)Ralph Lambarf aka Rush Limbaugh , and Alex Jones insist that this is a false flag operation. FOX implies that this is a false flag operation. Jeanine Pirro unleashes more of her projectile vomit on Democrats.
2) President takes no responsibility for inciting violence.
3) Republicans take no responsibility for inciting violence.
4) Republicans insist that the bombs were not deadly. They were just scary fakes. Therefore, this is all just fake news.
5) Trump is nice to the media for one day, and one day only. Enjoy it while it lasts.
6) Trump reverts to calling Democrats Dims and attacking the media within 3 to 5 days.
7) Trump supporters continue to wave “CNN Sucks” signs at Trump rallies.
8) Sarah Hindenburg Sanders and the president continue to talk about this incident as “terrorizing”. Actual reference to the perp as a “terrorist” will not be uttered by either of those two. Numerous Republicans also start referring to this as a “terrorizing” incident. Sounds nicer. Nicer way to reference a right wing terrorist.
9)The Democratic base will be highly energized by this, so the Trumpskiites will have to do something bigger to try to divert the blue wave. Stay tuned.
10) The tarp blowing off the perpetrator’s van becomes an internet meme.
Great list. You nail it.
I noticed this. Weasel bastards. Same reluctance by the right here in the UK to call the terrorist who murdered Jo Cox a terrorist or even to refer to the act as a terrorist act. Funny, that.
“Actual reference to the perp as a “terrorist” will not be uttered by either of those two”
Well duh! He’s white, so clearly he can’t be a terrorist. (Wish this weren’t the thought process by Fox and the White House, but you know it is.)
“5) Trump is nice to the media for one day, and one day only. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
Wrong … 🙂
“5) Trump is nice to the media for one day, and one day only. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
Dang. That was overly generous of me wasn’t it…..He didn’t even really make it through the first microphone op today. And he was back to Mr. Hyde at the pep rally today. So let’s add split personality to his other personality disorders. Narcissist, pathological liar, and split personality. How terrorizing.
We just had another horrific mass shooting. This time in a synagogue. I was wondering how long it would be after the poor demented right wing dildo bomber was caught before some lead poisoned right winger did something even more terrible. It wasn’t long.
The collective efforts of the MAGA crowd to inflict pain and punishment on the political opposition were severly inhibited by the dildo bomber’s own mental and technical incompetence. So another random right wing lunatic reached a breaking point and sprang up to fill the violence void with a sturdy, store bought, time tested piece of technology…. an AR-15 dehumanizer.
I am bothered that I am becoming more and more numb to the fact that the right is becoming ever more tolerant of stupidity, violence, criminality and pathologically sadistic and immature behavior by their side. We are in new and unfamiliar territory and we are being led there by a narcissistic pathological liar and a cult leader. Buckle up.
We don’t know anything yet (at least, I haven’t seen anything yet, but then I got out into the woods for a photo hike just after news broke, so…) about this shooter, so making a political attribution is iffy, at best.
It is concerning that the president gave supporters at his rallies a wink and a nod over the seriousness of the mail bombs: if you paid attention you saw him saying the sending of the bombs was no big deal and the people deserved it. Such is the bottom of the barrel quality of the modern right. (And its defenders, wherever they are.)
I,
Yup, what appears to be a rightwing terrorist has opened fire in a synagogue. Apparently after shouting anti-semitic abuse. Multiple fatalities reported.
Nice one Donald. More blood on your hands since Charlottesville.
BBD
Indeed, and Lord Norman Tebbit (a Thatcherite) tried to portray that terrorist as left wing because, you know, the German National Socialists were left wing, well they have to be, being socialists and all.
Not the best of sources but I’ll take what is available.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-norman-tebbit-says-nazis-13397241
I was amazed to find out, recently, how many ignorant people truly believe the Nazis were a left-wing group.
Dear old Norman. How we miss him.
And our asshole-in-chief is now saying (as he stands outside waiting to get on his helicopter) that
> If they had had an armed guard inside the temple it would have been different
> We need to get the lawyers out of the way and move the death penalty up front more rapidly (“It’s a shame we have to get lawyers involved”)
The right wing scum will truly eat his stupidity up with huge smiles.
(Back to the lawyer thing: one of our Michigan Democratic state candidates is being attacked by outside Republican money because she worked as a defense lawyer “protecting killers, rapists, and child molesters”. They go on to cite two specific (and, in reality, truly horrible) events, linking her to defending the guilty parties. The only problem:
– she was still at the firm that handled one defense case, but she did not work on it
– she wasn’t at the firm at the time of the other case
So two blatant lies, repeatedly tossed out as facts. Looks like they take their lead from the president and Republican leadership in general.
Robert Bowers, the shooter, is a white nationalist who posted on Gab, an alt right site. While he is not a MAGA Hatter, he is far right wing. Just knowing that he shot up human beings in a synagogue tells you a lot. Left wingers, for example are or at least try to be inclusive of all peoples. Left wingers value human life, although Right Wingers have a strange belief that they don’t t because they are willing to abort a zygote or embryo the size of a grain of salt. Right wingers generally only like people similar to themselves genetically and politically. In the extreme cases, like Trump, they pretty much only like themselves. Left wingers are not commonly involved in the gun cult. James Hodgkinson, the shooter of Steve Scalise , is an exception. And that one exception has become a go to poster child for right wingers justifying their cult of cruelty and violence.
I think that there is little doubt that the whole right wing thing is some kind of regressive thought disorder that results in regressive behavior, like anal sadistic MAGA chanters, like reptilian extremists ready to go to war to keep non-anglo-non-whites out of the country. We are in sick times.
“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
Promises made. Promises kept.
“The only problem:
– she was still at the firm that handled one defense case, but she did not work on it
– she wasn’t at the firm at the time of the other case”
https://gregladen.com/blog/2018/10/25/we-are-not-on-edge-we-are-not-afraid-of-the-dildo-bomber/#comment-658164
There’s a far more fundamental problem that goes beyond any particular case. Central to a modern legal system is the presumption of innocence – even people accused of heinous crimes have the right to a defense. The logic behind Trump’s thinking is guilty if charged. But this logic only holds for others. Trump himself has certainly hired more than his share of lawyers, and his pardons have shown that political usefulness trumps guilt.
“The logic behind Trump’s thinking is guilty if charged.”
Yes, good summary.
Still, I don’t know about other locations, but here in West Michigan it is far too common to see people complaining about defense lawyers existing when articles about court cases are in the “paper”.
Bowers entered the synagogue yelling, “All Jews must die!” He had a history of virulent anti-Semitism, and the killings could have been triggered by fears whipped up by Trump and his political and media allies. I’m also wondering whether Republican attacks on George Soros played a role.
“Several weeks ago, Mr. Bowers’s account posted a link to the website of HIAS, a Jewish non-profit organization, which was planning a shabbat ceremony for refugees in locations around the country. The caption read: “Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us?””
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting.html
So the Bowers monster was anti-semite. He was definitely a closed border Nationalist.
I don’t see many Republicans condemning Trump for his constant scapegoating.
How is it that we have come to the point where adults acting like misbehaving children are running our country? Why do Republicans embrace an un-empathetic, cruel, taunting president?
Make America Civil Again. Vote Democrat.
The right has been working on setting up the current atmosphere since Reagan was in office and showed how efficiently racism, bigotry, and lies could be weaponized.
I haven’t seen the usual suspects defending Trump here. I think that they come here for the sadistic pleasure of hurting vulnerable people. The whole constellation of anal sadistic, regressive, fear driven behavior associated with Trumpism is completely compatible with cruelty. Perhaps they haven’t figure out how to poke fun at us over this and get away with it yet. Or maybe, the clarity of what their position stands for is starting to come clear to them. Perhaps they know that they will suffer a loss of testosterone if the try to snipe at us today.
Trump has tapped in to the underbelly of what I would call primitive, regressive, reptilian emotions that poorly educated, unlearned, short sighted people are riddled with. The blunting of finer human emotions, through disease, deficiency, or training, and the celebration of the cruder ones is, to me, what characterizes the modern right wing person.
The right wing is clearly off the rails. If we can’t get them back on track, it spells disaster for all of us.
I really struggled to make sense of this.
There’s whole categories of emotions people with too much time on their hands have come up with as I found here
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrasting_and_categorization_of_emotions
yet I’m not really wiser. I don’t know what finer and cruder emotions are.
What I get from the comment is sense of caste. A whiff of that stench. It makes me, with my lack of education, my short term goals, my physical attributes due to early diet, and a real lack of formal training on how to conduct myself in society ( No etiquette classes in the bush, no piano, no gin and tonics, no formal dancing, no bridge ) want to um, hmmmm, well I feel like retorting but I can’t because I’m so confused and unsure what exactly is ment. I’m not going to retort if it’s unwarranted.
So I smell something but can’t react to it due to uncertainty.
It’s an awkward feeling.
I wish I knew exactly what the fuck you are on about. I normally understand everything written here ,being fluent in English.
I don’t understand and yet my nose dosnt lie. There’s an odour.
Could you restate in a different way perhaps? Or at least expressly say yes or no to having feelings of superiority.
Then I can either retort or relate or even empathise.
I apologize to you LiD and to the right wingers whom I have offended time and time again. But I too am a mammal with reptilian antecedents to my behavior and I too revert to the primitive instead of the finer emotions. Here is what I meant. Overall, I want to understand why people are liberal or conservative. When I was talking about blunting of finer human emotions I was thinking about diseases like brain disorders, toxins in the environment, or simply infection. By deficiency I meant that not being in a healthy environment that nurtures thinking and positive emotions will most likely blunt finer emotions. I meant that being in an environment that thwarts instead of nurtures healthy development is a deficient environment. By training I meant that when you are undergoing things like basic military training, you learn to blunt your sensitivities in order to survive. Also, if your peers are racists, you are liable to be trained to be one too. Also, if you are trained to be aware of your own emotions instead of denying or blocking them, you are probably going to be a lot healthier.
Your critique of my angry rant was painful to read but completely appropriate. I will think for a while before I write next time. Thank you for your insight.
Thank you for taking my request to respond seriously and attempting to alleviate my confusion. You have mostly done so, as well as prompted a certain amount of introspection into my own attitude towards others.
“Overall, I want to understand why people are liberal or conservative.”
I found this on the internet whilst looking for things to assist your goal. I hope it’s of some value. Some of the studies mentioned don’t seem very um, sciency, ( i think theres some massive bias potential on the part of researchers due to culture, when assessing data and coming up with conclusions) but that’s up to the peer reviewers I spose.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-wars/
Myself politicaly, I’m likely only a few missed meals and some light duress to be inclined to any position at all. What I feel or think is on very precarious foundations. In two weeks time I could be spitting on people with certain markings on their clothing, or standing in front of those that wish to spit, defending the marked. Indeed, I could be the subjugated 3rd party with a brand but no voice.
( It’s just occurred to me that there’s great value in anonymity, (that may only be realised when its removed), and to be forced to display a mark, on door, clothing, or body, is a terribly cruel psychological impost. There’s something fucking awful about letters and numbers and symbols in old photographs and arseholes that would impliment such a system are highly culpable. )
I suppose what I wish to say is that political affiliation and action, for me, for you, isn’t particularly deep rooted, as much as it might feel like it is and as much as things in the link make out it is.
Things can change externally and internally shockingly fast, and with great force. The line between callousness and empathy is so terribly fragile I don’t dare to define my own position and strongly hesitate to define others, despite my sense of smell.
Thank you again for reply.
I think that what you wrote made a bunch of sense. But, think on this, what iff you adrded a little information? I am not saying your content isn’t good.,
but what if yoou added a title to posxsibly get people’s attention? I mean We are not on edge.
We are not afraid, off the dildo bomber – Greg Laden's Blog is kinda boring.
You could peek at Yahoo’s front page and see how they create news headlines to get viewers
interested. You might add a related vijdeo or a
related pic or two to grab people interested about
everything’ve got to say. Just my opinion, it mignt
bring your blog a little bit more interesting.