United States to Invade Texas! Get Your Arms!

[Tiassa]

Part the First

Why do they "get to"? There's this thing called 'free speech' here in the United States. (At least for the time being...)

That is a change of subject, and I think you know it.

It's the same principle that allowed the left to ceaselessly denigrate the military and its members, from the Vietnam era through the G.W. Bush administration. 'Instruments of imperialism' and 'mass murderers', so the rhetoric went.

The problem with this sort of principled equivocation is that it ignores the details. It's like the Galanti trap from the 2004 election, when one of the Swift-Boaters functionally argued that truth itself is un-American.

Furthermore, consider what happened in Vietnam, when that kind of talk really flourished. And then consider what we did to Iraq, breaking the place and then standing down for several days because sending our troops to do their jobs would put them in danger. Our troops have participated in atrocities; it certainly didn't help to have them come home and brag about it to newspapers.

Look, you might not like the rhetoric, and in many cases it really is overblown, but it does pertain to a real thing.

Today the exact same thing is being done to the nation's police, as the left try to suggest that the nation's police forces and their officers are brutal racist killers. That line has been shamelessly pushed by the mass media as the nation's headline story for months now.

Again, details are your biggest challenge. I live in a state where the police have the right to murder you in cold blood. We do not charge them for bad shoots, there is no reason. And even when we don't charge them because there is no reason despite having caught the officer falsifying the incident report and manipulating the physical evidence, the functional reality is that he lied in good faith, so there's no reason to prosecute.

And, you know, the Evergreen state is hardly the worst.

It isn't just that bad seeds happen. It's also that the allegedly good officers participate in the wall of silence. They participate in the political resistance to actually achieving justice. Hell, in Seattle, the police guild tried suing on the grounds that they couldn't do their jobs properly without using excessive force. In Cleveland, the mayor has asked the federal government to step in; this is the second time in a decade. The thing is that we're not seeing a sudden flurry of bad shoots; this is going on all the time. It's just gotten to the point that people cannot fail to notice.

The detail disrupting your blithe equivocation is that whether or not you appreciate the harsh rhetoric, it is derived from something real happening in the world.

I don't believe that "conservatives" have any interest in "denigrating" the military services and their members. They are the ones with the history of supporting the military.

NRA: They're comin' for your guns! Okay, who's coming for the guns? The cops? Right. The National Guard? Don't make me laugh. The Army? At what point do I get to call bullshit? At least the Seventh-Day Adventists have the decency to imagine it will be some phantom U.N. army locking up all the Sabbatarians in tiger cages to await their executions in the electric chair.

I'm sorry, but how long have we been hearing this bit about how they're coming for your guns, and still, I would like to know just who is coming for your guns? Walmart?

First, there's the practical local aspect. If a massive counter-insurgency (or whatever it's supposed to be) training exercise is planned for their communities, how will that impact the lives of local residents? If the streets of their communities are filled with armored vehicles and special-forces operators bristling with automatic weapons, won't their activities put those communities under what amounts to de-facto martial law? I think that's a very real and entirely rational concern. If the military proposed holding massive exercises in my town, I'd have similar worries.

These sorts of exercises always draw their tinfoil flakes, but why this time? The fact of this president, the way overlapping oppositional interests talk about him, and the increasing chatter about insurrection and civil war all have their roles.

But when did these exercises become so problematic as to warrant attention from presidential candidates? And why?

End Part 1​

 

[Tiassa]

Part the Second

But I don't see anything wrong with the Governor of Texas ordering state monitors to observe the exercises to help ensure that the assurances are met and that local residents' civil liberties aren't infringed. That's the right thing to do and I applaud him for doing it. In fact, I don't know of any convincing argument against it.

So if someone brings you a newsletter conspiracy theory saying the U.S. government is about to invade and seize your state using secret tunnels in order to take all the guns away and hide them in Walmart in order to usher in an anti-Christian martial state, you, as governor, would say, "Yeah, sounds about reasonable. Let's send the State Guard to check it out."

The real things taking place that are the seeds of Jade Helm paranoia are Barack Obama's presidency, Texas itself, and a rising Christian identity movement that is actively searching for the End Times. After all the tantrums about wanting their America back, and showing their guns, these people want an insurrection. But at the same time, they're good, patriotic Americans. They'll only do that if evil tyranny forces them to. Hence James Dobson warning of Civil War over gay marriage, Pat Robertson going on about anal-bestial rape fantasies―they'll make you like it!―Ted Cruz campaigning about insurrection, Michele Bachmann preaching on End Times, and Louie Gohmert trying to make this about destroying Christians.

Hence, Jade Helm can only be something sinister. Because this time, it has nothing to do with all the ideological sewage they're swimming in, it can only be because ... it's a Democrat? ... Barack Obama? ... a Kenyan-Korean-Muslim-Jew-Atheist-Nazi-Communist fraud? ... in the White House? ... and that can only spell evil?

The point that I want to make is that your opposite numbers on the right, those you hate so passionately and feel such scorn for, don't think any more highly of the left. They are no more willing to treat the left's ideas seriously than the left is to heed them. Both sides' perception of the other are insulting caricatures. Both sides are convinced that they are are the good people and that their opposite numbers represent crazy evil. That chasm in American culture is deepening daily, it may already be unbridgeable, and it likely will doom the nation.

Again, your thoughtless equivocation falls apart under the burden of reality.

Obamacare as a socialist takeover of the health care industry? You mean the Republican alternative to actual socialized medicine? Now that, sir, is a caricature.

Jade Helm? Well, yes, there is a caricature in play here, too. But it's not being placed upon the conspiracy theorists; they're doing it to themselves.

I really do disdain this idea of "all things being equal" when all things, observably, are not.

Legalizing gay marriage means some sort of compulsory gay marriage, by which a gay person is not allowed to marry someone of the other sex? Where the fuck did they get that caricature?

Bigoted, Christian-supremacist discrimination? Hell, it's in Republican-controlled legislatures from Idaho to Louisiana to New Hampshire. There is some serious vice spilling out from those crowds.

And there will always be back and forth between the opponents, but sometimes reality itself is pretty clear about who is doing what. Your demand for insane equivocation is untenable.

Then again, perhaps therein lies another way of looking at it; for me, anyway. I think you might accurately describe some self-justification one of the right-wing tinfoil clowns might offer, and in this context, okay, fine, whatever, and thank you for making my point.

That's the context into which Jade Helm inserts itself. The fact that it seems geographically focused on parts of the United States most alienated from the ruling elites creates the suspicion in some quarters that it is a domestic counter-insurgency training exercise/show of force directed at the little people grasping tightly to their religion and to their guns, who the NY-Washington elites fear might someday mount a popular insurrection.

How is Texas among the most alienated from the ruling elites? They're a fucking powerhouse.

But that's the fear. It isn't totally unreasonable given the kind of hatred that's being directed at anyone who expresses any uneasiness at all about this thing. This has obviously become something much more than a mere military exercise, it's begun to symbolize larger issues to both sides.

Again, that only makes the point about the stupidity of this all, and yet, really? You, as governor, would send the State Guard because, well, all of this? What, are you afraid they'll actually start shooting, or something, if you allow some semblance of dignity to prevail within the context into which reality has insterted itself?

Maybe Obama has a point. Maybe the best way to address black America's alienation from the police is to listen seriously to black America's concerns about the police. And similarly, maybe the best way to address the growing alienation of half the US population from the Washington elites is to listen seriously to their concerns. Reducing them to caricatures and then trying to ridicule them into oblivion will only be counterproductive.

How do you listen seriously to supremacists?

No, really. Start paying attention to the Christian nationalism and identity movements. And maybe at first they might seem somewhat isolated, but they do find their ways into the halls of power.

Think of the Gay Fray for a moment, please. Consider what sounds like a caricature: I'm a bit worried about this conservative disregard for consent in sexual intercourse.

Pretty harsh?

Except what if it's a quarter-century later, and significant, influential blocs of social conservatism―enough to shape party and movement policy outlook―are still stuck on comparing two consenting homosexuals getting together to acts of rape? When it comes to the question of whether or not they can tell the difference, there are plenty of options for objecting. A gay partner compared to a dog? Some guy I met at the bar across town compared to my dad's corpse? My same-sex life partner compared to a child? And yet there is that common link: Neither dog nor corpse nor child can properly consent. Yet in their zeal, conservatives not only maintain this bestiality/necrophilia/pedophilia argument, they keep it close at hand. Still. A quarter-century later. Because it's all they've got.

So when it comes time for the Washington elites to listen seriously to these concerns, just how, exactly, is anyone supposed to take it seriously?

When these issues lose their prominence, so, too, will the caricatures lose their influence. But you set up an impossible equivocation. Some, even most, of what's behind this Jade Helm excrement is simply irreconcilable.

When you look at the basis of the distrust motivating the Jade Helm conspiracy theory, there really isn't much room for pointless equivocation.

―Fin―​

 

[Bells]

Today the exact same thing is being done to the nation's police, as the left try to suggest that the nation's police forces and their officers are brutal racist killers. That line has been shamelessly pushed by the mass media as the nation's headline story for months now.

You say this of course while ignoring the spate of killing unarmed black men by the police. One involved shooting a black man multiple times in the back and then planting evidence, another involved an unarmed black man, with his hands cuffed and in the back of a police car, apparently shooting himself in the head. Those and all the rest had the full weight of the police department fully supporting those officers and denying that they had done anything wrong, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Context, Yazata, is everything.

I don't believe that "conservatives" have any interest in "denigrating" the military services and their members. They are the ones with the history of supporting the military.

And yet, here they are openly declaring that the military is out to get them because they are "conservatives".

First, there's the practical local aspect. If a massive counter-insurgency (or whatever it's supposed to be) training exercise is planned for their communities, how will that impact the lives of local residents? If the streets of their communities are filled with armored vehicles and special-forces operators bristling with automatic weapons, won't their activities put those communities under what amounts to de-facto martial law? I think that's a very real and entirely rational concern. If the military proposed holding massive exercises in my town, I'd have similar worries.

These training exercises are conducted all the time, with no impact on local residents and their communities. Why do people assume this one is going to be so different?

But I don't see anything wrong with the Governor of Texas ordering state monitors to observe the exercises to help ensure that the assurances are met and that local residents' civil liberties aren't infringed. That's the right thing to do and I applaud him for doing it. In fact, I don't know of any convincing argument against it.

Once again, context.

He did not just order the Texas Guard to monitor them, he made that request and worded it in a way as to pander to the paranoid mouth breather's who think Obama is coming for their guns and their precious metals and apparently, to arrest them and chain them up in chains and take them away (and these are the lesser paranoid theories the conservatives have come up with about Jade Helm).

When the head of the State lowers himself to this sort of paranoia by addressing it and pandering to those who are that paranoid, then questions certainly need to be asked about his competency to lead the State. And this is a question that other Republicans in Texas have been asking as well. What in the hell was he thinking? What reality does he exist in?

The Texas Guard already knew about the exercise and had been co-ordinating with the military for months, since such exercises often require co-operation with local law enforcement (such as letting them know this is going to happen, where, when and how). The Governor has ignored this and now openly stated that he is asking them to monitor the military that conservatives are apparently so proud of, to make sure that the military do not impose marshal law, take over the state and infringe on people's rights to own guns. And why? Because OBAMA. Let's not beat around the bush, Yazata. If it had been a Republican in the White House, Texans would have been baking cookies and making lemonade to give to those "thank you for your service" military that they are now claiming are invading the State to take them over.

The other worry about Jade Helm is more philosophical. The point that I want to make is that your opposite numbers on the right, those you hate so passionately and feel such scorn for, don't think any more highly of the left. They are no more willing to treat the left's ideas seriously than the left is to heed them. Both sides' perception of the other are insulting caricatures. Both sides are convinced that they are are the good people and that their opposite numbers represent crazy evil. That chasm in American culture is deepening daily, it may already be unbridgeable, and it likely will doom the nation.

I'm sorry, you expect the left to take the rights ideas seriously when those ideals delve into the realms of Infowars and the paranoid people who build bunkers and are stockpiling food for the End Times? How exactly can you expect anyone to take them seriously when all the extremist right can come up with is absolute paranoid bullshit?

That's the context into which Jade Helm inserts itself. The fact that it seems geographically focused on parts of the United States most alienated from the ruling elites creates the suspicion in some quarters that it is a domestic counter-insurgency training exercise/show of force directed at the little people grasping tightly to their religion and to their guns, who the NY-Washington elites fear might someday mount a popular insurrection.

And yet, the previous President was a conservative Republican from Texas, as was his father before him, who was also President.

And when one considers that the Bush family has another running for President, your argument kind of falls flat on its face when it comes to complaints that Texas is far from "the ruling elites". When two of the last four Presidents come from the state and they have another one in the running for the next Presidential election, not to mention Cruz, from Texas, is also a candidate, it seems to me that the ruling elites are firmly entrenched in Texas.

I personally doubt very much whether those planning the Jade Helm exercise had anything like that in mind.

But that's the fear. It isn't totally unreasonable given the kind of hatred that's being directed at anyone who expresses any uneasiness at all about this thing. This has obviously become something much more than a mere military exercise, it's begun to symbolize larger issues to both sides.

You are mistaking ridicule and pity for the inane paranoid beliefs for hatred.

Your complaint that you feel there is hatred being directed at the batshit crazy numbskulls in Texas for believing that their military is about to come and attack them, take away their guns and apparently use Wal-Mart as the base of operations, chain people who are Republicans in trains and take them to their deaths, says nothing of the absolute hatred these people have for the military they so distrust. The hypocrisy of their apparently looking out for the military and loving the military is a bit of a standout in this.

Maybe Obama has a point. Maybe the best way to address black America's alienation from the police is to listen seriously to black America's concerns about the police. And similarly, maybe the best way to address the growing alienation of half the US population from the Washington elites is to listen seriously to their concerns. Reducing them to caricatures and then trying to ridicule them into oblivion will only be counterproductive.

Your repeated attempts to compare the two is unfounded.

One because the police has a history and proven record of killing unarmed black people and targeting them unfairly for monetary gain.

Two, because there is no evidence that the military is coming to get Texans. And no, Alex Jones' Infowars reports dotted with commercials about his wonder drug to keep him virile, and his paranoia, does not count as evidence.

 

[wellwisher]

What liberals lack are critical thinking skills. Most of the black murders are black against black.

From the Huffington Post;
Nationwide, the black homicide victimization rate in 2011 was 17.51 per 100,000. The overall national homicide victimization rate was 4.44 per 100,000, and among white Americans, the homicide victimization rate was 2.64 per 100,000.

The Huffington Post article works a gun angle, but stops short of saying how most of the black statistics are due to black on black crime. The post is part to the propaganda wing of the democratic party so it avoids truth. I had to go to another source to complete the data.

Based on FBI statistics;

The 2013 FBI Uniform Crime Report, a compilation of annual crime statistics, also shows similar data: 83 percent of white victims were killed by white offenders; 90 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders; 14 percent of white victims were killed by black offenders; and 7.6 percent of black victims were ...Nov 25, 2014

The worse offenders, connected to black murders, are not the cops, unless it is mostly black cops are doing this. The data does not hold up to the conclusions of a racist white police force doing this. Lack of critical thinking skills in liberal education is done for this very reason; helps the propaganda machine. Liberals will not fact check like their conservative counterparts. They will use emotions and one liners to guide them.

Places like Texas look at the data and act in ways that maximize within that data. If you know pit bulls are more likely to bite you than poodles, you use more caution when around pit bulls. It is not about hurting the feelings of a pit bull but it is about preparing for this being a more likely source of danger.

If you do two searches, the first being 10 highest murder rate cities in US, then which large cities are controlled by Democratic and Republicans, then combine these data sets, democrats cities are the worse. The liberal media propaganda will not tell you this. It is all about guns and republicans not giving enough money. It has nothing to do with democratic policies. The democratic party was the party of slavery and segregation, with this still statistically in effect.

1. Detroit, MI - Mayor Mike Duggan - DEMOCRAT
2. Oakland, CA - Mayor Jean Quan - DEMOCRAT
3. Memphis, TN - Mayor A C Wharton - DEMOCRAT
4. St. Louis, MO - Mayor Francis G. Slay - DEMOCRAT
5. Cleveland, OH - Mayor Frank G. Jackson - DEMOCRAT
6. Baltimore, MD - Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake - DEMOCRAT
7. Milwaukee, WI - Mayor Tom Barrett - DEMOCRAT
8. Birmingham, AL - Mayor William A. Bell - DEMOCRAT
9. Newark, NJ - Mayor Ras Baraka - DEMOCRAT
10. Kansas City, MO - Mayor Sly James - Independent (but probably a DEMOCRAT)

 

[Kristoffer]

What wellwisher lacks is any thinking skill. We get it, wellwisher, you have a hate-boner for liberals.

 

[joepistole]

What liberals lack are critical thinking skills. Most of the black murders are black against black.

Actually, you can find people on both sides of the political spectrum who lack critical thinking skills and you don’t have to look far to find them. However, the complete lack of critical thinking skills hasn’t become main stream in the Democratic Party as it has within the Republican Party. That is the difference and it is a critical difference.

From the Huffington Post;
Nationwide, the black homicide victimization rate in 2011 was 17.51 per 100,000. The overall national homicide victimization rate was 4.44 per 100,000, and among white Americans, the homicide victimization rate was 2.64 per 100,000.
The Huffington Post article works a gun angle, but stops short of saying how most of the black statistics are due to black on black crime. The post is part to the propaganda wing of the democratic party so it avoids truth. I had to go to another source to complete the data.
Based on FBI statistics;
The 2013 FBI Uniform Crime Report, a compilation of annual crime statistics, also shows similar data: 83 percent of white victims were killed by white offenders; 90 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders; 14 percent of white victims were killed by black offenders; and 7.6 percent of black victims were ...Nov 25, 2014
The worse offenders, connected to black murders, are not the cops, unless it is mostly black cops are doing this. The data does not hold up to the conclusions of a racist white police force doing this. Lack of critical thinking skills in liberal education is done for this very reason; helps the propaganda machine. Liberals will not fact check like their conservative counterparts. They will use emotions and one liners to guide them.
Places like Texas look at the data and act in ways that maximize within that data. If you know pit bulls are more likely to bite you than poodles, you use more caution when around pit bulls. It is not about hurting the feelings of a pit bull but it is about preparing for this being a more likely source of danger.
If you do two searches, the first being 10 highest murder rate cities in US, then which large cities are controlled by Democratic and Republicans, then combine these data sets, democrats cities are the worse. The liberal media propaganda will not tell you this. It is all about guns and republicans not giving enough money. It has nothing to do with democratic policies. The democratic party was the party of slavery and segregation, with this still statistically in effect.

1. Detroit, MI - Mayor Mike Duggan - DEMOCRAT
2. Oakland, CA - Mayor Jean Quan - DEMOCRAT
3. Memphis, TN - Mayor A C Wharton - DEMOCRAT
4. St. Louis, MO - Mayor Francis G. Slay - DEMOCRAT
5. Cleveland, OH - Mayor Frank G. Jackson - DEMOCRAT
6. Baltimore, MD - Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake - DEMOCRAT
7. Milwaukee, WI - Mayor Tom Barrett - DEMOCRAT
8. Birmingham, AL - Mayor William A. Bell - DEMOCRAT
9. Newark, NJ - Mayor Ras Baraka - DEMOCRAT
10. Kansas City, MO - Mayor Sly James - Independent (but probably a DEMOCRAT)

Your post is a good example of the complete lack of critical thinking skills which is so pervasive in Republican circles. For starters, black on black crime isn’t the issue here. It has nothing to do with Republican inspired conspiracy beliefs which are the basis for this thread. It has nothing to do with law enforcement or imagined police conspiracies and imagined police wrong doing. Most whites are killed by whites too. It is easy to make a list of cities governed by Democrats and leave out cities governed by Republicans as you have done. And even if all the major crime cities were governed by Democrats as you allege, it doesn’t mean Democrats are responsible for the crime rates in those cities. Current mayors of those cities were likely not in office when globalization began, and trade treaties were signed and ratified which exported jobs in those cities overseas. Unfortunately rational thinking has become a scarcity in Republican circles and replaced with ignorance, simplistic thinking and fear mongering...something you have repeatedly demonstrated in your posts.

The radicalism within the Republican has become a clear and present threat to the health and well-being of the nation. I mean who deliberately endangers the full faith and credit of the nation? Republicans have done it twice in recent years. Fear mongering has become standard operation procedure in Republican circles.

 

[Tiassa]

A Note for Yazata

To borrow a quote, sir:

Your post is a good example of the complete lack of critical thinking skills which is so pervasive in Republican circles.

If you take a look at the post from our neighbor Wellwisher (#84), you'll find an example of what you're promoting by such airy equivocation as you have offered.

And perhaps what's really bothersome about your approach is the one-for-you-more-for me aspect of the appeal. I would use Idaho as an example, where the Republican-controlled legislature recently underwent an embarrassing brouhaha that only reiterated the bigotry of Idaho Christian values.

Basically, what happened is that the legislature opens each morning with prayer, and one recent Tuesday a Hindu chaplain was selected to lead the invocation. Christian identity in Idaho went nuts; three Republicans boycotted the chamber floor, two more who were in committee meetings at the time announced they would have boycotted the floor if they weren't already busy, and a guy named Bob Nandini had the only real excuse―he overslept his alarm and didn't make it into work until later―except he then went out of his way to say he would have taken part in the boycott.

See, the issue of contention was that the chaplin was Hindu. The compromise point, raised after the fact, was that the Hindu chaplain should have been chaperoned by a Christian, who would then lead another invocation in order to be equal, because having a Hindu perform the invocation without a Christian chaperone was unequal and therefore denigrating to Christians.

Any other day a Christian would be delivering a Christian invocation without chaperone or escort from another faith intended to deliver an offsetting invocation afterward. As I said, "one for you, more for me" is how it goes:

A major component of the spectacle is something we might otherwise describe as childish except for the fact of insulting children by doing so. The various modes of Christian identity, nationalism, and supremacism share a common aspect, an underlying dualism that, while present throughout our society―indeed, it is one of the most prominent contributions of our Christian heritage in these United States―stands out in sharp relief under certain circumstantial coincidences. And, to be certain, we have a demonstrative occasion. Consider what happens when this brand of Christianity invokes dualism, a word here meaning constriction to binary opposition:

• Multifaceted: To share equally, you count, “One for Christian, one for Jewish, one for Muslim, one for Hindu, one for atheist, &c.”

• Identity dualism: To share equally, you count “One for Christian, one for Jewish; one for Christian, one for Muslim; one for Christian, one for Hindu; one for Christian, one for atheist, &c.”​

Both Nonini and Nuxall have appealed specifically to the identity dualism; where most recognize diversity according to its many components, there are only two in the Christian supremacist paradigm―Christian and everybody else.

Think of it this way: If you insist that the Jew is different from the Muslim is different from the Wiccan is different from the atheist, you are violating a Christian’s constitutional rights.

If that proposition fails to make sense, you are just an anti-Christian bigot, a servant of the Devil.

See how this works?​

And that's all you're doing:

"But that's the fear. It isn't totally unreasonable given the kind of hatred that's being directed at anyone who expresses any uneasiness at all about this thing. This has obviously become something much more than a mere military exercise, it's begun to symbolize larger issues to both sides.

Maybe Obama has a point. Maybe the best way to address black America's alienation from the police is to listen seriously to black America's concerns about the police. And similarly, maybe the best way to address the growing alienation of half the US population from the Washington elites is to listen seriously to their concerns. Reducing them to caricatures and then trying to ridicule them into oblivion will only be counterproductive."​

What you propose is another example of rude supremacism. Let us take these two groups you juxtapose, racial minorities, to the one, and traditional supremacists to the other. For the whole of our nation's existence, our supremacist traditions have ignored the genuine concerns of racial minorities, resulting in periodic conflicts over these issues. After all this time, the traditional supremacists are running out of excuses. After all this time, they've managed to push so far and tromp so hard that it is impossible to not notice what they're trying to do. As a result, that long-overdue discussion about the effects and injustice of such traditional bigotries is knocking. And here comes Yazata posturing himself as some sort of voice of reason while essentially proposing that we cannot have this long-overdue discussion about traditional bigotry without simultaneously empowering traditional bigotry.

It's like so many things: It is unfair to do anything about inequality if it means the beneficiaries of inequality will no longer receive such unequal benefit.

We see its functional device in political arguments including education funding, birth control, gay marriage, censorship and suppression, criminal justice, and even geopolitics. The underlying demand that two can only be equal if one is superior ranges broadly in the conservative political outlook. And, yes, it is true that this is not arbitrary. Yes, it is true that these dangerous perspectives require rational consideration, but that's the thing about your equivocation: Why would you promote such arguments and behaviors? Why would you wish to advance them?

Take a look at Wellwisher's post. When society is finally allowed to sit down and have a serious discussion about these issues, just how are we supposed to take delusional bigotry (A) seriously (B) in a context that does not further disappoint the delusional bigots?

A matter of details, Yazata. Any given day if I asked why you would promote supremacism as equality, you would probably respond that you don't. Except on this occasion, given the circumstances and issues in play, that is exactly what you're doing. The general might sound nice if we delicately fashion some pretty equivocations intended to misrepresent what is generally true; the particular details, however, undermine those intentions and equivocations. What I don't get is why you would take this course, why you would promote this kind of irrationality.

Perhaps you find discussions of conservatives as racists caricaturizing. But you just pushed racism. And you can tell us that's not what you meant all you want, but it's still what you just did. And it really does start to bug other people after a while when nobody who takes part will explain why they're doing it. In this case, the difference is obvious; you generalize about potentials that do not match observable, particular circumstances.

Sometimes it seems like this is deliberate; over the years it has come up countless times that conservatives will point toward some idyllic general rhetoric only to find themselves hacked to pieces by the real details. For instance, even setting aside, say, my particular outlook on the conservative political argument about "judicial activism" and "legislating from the bench"―that is, that it occurs more often in a conservative form than the oft-accused liberal judicial activism―consider how much it denigrates the complaint about liberal judicial activism when the complaint is that people aren't allowed to use the public initiative process to create laws that specifically violate the U.S. Constitution. That is to say, whatever else I think of the general complaint, consider the prominence of this particular detail. We're over twenty years past Romer v. Evans, and certain influential blocs of conservative politics still aren't over the fact that you can't use the state initiative process to pass laws that contravene the U.S. Constitution. Oh, the horror! And perhaps my sarcasm is, in your opinion, somewhat caricaturizing, but what the hell? If I managed to convince Washington state voters to outlaw Catholicism on the grounds that it is dangerous to children, well, right, there are plenty who would agree for their own reasons but in the end I would expect the courts to stop us. How could I possibly complain of "judicial activism" when the courts inevitably said no? When the Supreme Court refused the appeals? But we didn't invent this caricature; it has grown, by conservative cultivation, over recent decades. (The Supreme Court upholds one of the most conservative state supreme courts in the country―Missouri―so conservatives complain of liberal judicial activism? That would be Roper v. Simmons. And did you read what conservatives brought to Windsor? Have you attended what they brought to Obergefell? If a real description sounds like a caricature, will you indict reality? Something about personal accountability goes here, but in truth it warrants its own thread.)

But after so many years, what's the deal? Are conservatives shitting us? Or are they just incapable of understanding these basic realities? Is this whole "one for you, more for me, that's how you spell equality" trip a psychiatric symptom?

 

[Tiassa]

An Obvious Point?

Sometimes I feel gratified when something I'm saying finds similar expression in the larger discourse. That said, it is worth noting Steve Benen of msnbc:

We've reached the amusing point of the conspiracy theory at which the proponents of the nutty ideas are openly mocked, not just in media, but also by public officials who are amazed by the inanity of it all. The Dallas Morning News reported late yesterday, for example, on Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) incredulity.

Sen. John McCain, the Senate Armed Services Chairman, today mocked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's order to have state militia monitor a federal military exercise – adding his voice to a chorus of GOP leaders who see unfounded paranoia in concerns of impending martial law.

"It's bizarre," said McCain, an Arizona Republican. "We have been having military exercises in the southwest for a couple of hundred years."​

It was probably an off-hand comment, but McCain's reaction alludes to a relevant detail: as a rule, even conspiracy theorists on the right respected the U.S. military enough to trust the armed forces as an institution. Now, with "Jade Helm 15," the right-wing fringe fears that even Americans in uniform may be out to get them.

(Boldface accent added)​

To the one, it's John McCain, and this kind of is his role among Senate Republicans. Or, at least, it's one of the parts he plays. And we can certainly let his timing slide; if we say he should have done this earlier, it is also well enough to remind that this is a nearly unbelievable situation. That such potsherds occur in our politics is one thing; that we should give them an exhibition including a major-party primary contest is another.

An obvious point of discussion would seem to have definitively arrived. Let us see whether it holds.
____________________

Notes:

Benen, Steve. "Even Republicans ridicule Jade Helm conspiracy theories". msnbc. 12 May 2015. msnbc.com. 12 May 2015. http://on.msnbc.com/1PEymQ1

 

[cosmictotem]

I hope Texas does cecede. Conservatives need their own country to go to.
Then maybe they'll all get in a rickety old pick up and get the &@$% out of the United States.

 

[Photizo]

Conservatives need their own country to go to...and get the &@$% out of the United States.

"...Jesus said to them,

"Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand?"

Jesus turning to them said, "...weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed."

 

[origin]

"...Jesus said to them,

"Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand?"

Jesus turning to them said, "...weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed."

Reported. If you want to preach go to church.

 

[Kittamaru]

"...Jesus said to them,

"Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand?"

Jesus turning to them said, "...weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed."

Preaching is not permitted... you have been warned about this numerous times.

 

[iceaura]

It's the same principle that allowed the left to ceaselessly denigrate the military and its members, from the Vietnam era through the G.W. Bush administration. 'Instruments of imperialism' and 'mass murderers', so the rhetoric went.

Today the exact same thing is being done to the nation's police, as the left try to suggest that the nation's police forces and their officers are brutal racist killers. That line has been shamelessly pushed by the mass media as the nation's headline story for months now.

That's the thing about letting the bs slide, and hoping they'll get over it - these guys remember the bs as if it were the event.

What these people took away from the massive national effort to prevent, curb, and then end, the horrible travesty that was the Vietnam War, is that "the left" was "ceaselessly" out to "denigrate the military and its members".

Ten years from now, the clownass notion that "the left" is using its dominance of the media to "suggest that the nation's police forces and their officers are brutal racist killers" is how this guy is going to remember the current discussion.

Even the media itself, chock full of softball sensationalism and endless discussions of whether "the protesters" were vi0lent or whether their protests were "justified", bereft of standard approaches such as followup questions during interviews of officials, gullible as baby sunfish when offered a worm of "both sides did it", packing their punditry with "conservative" think tank thought product, are pictured as shamelessly pushing some headline agenda unfavorable to self-described conservatives and favorable to "the left" wherever they may be (hint: they aren't on TV).

To them, this stuff isn't their opinion or viewpoint - it's their reality. It's not accountable to reason, it's the basis of reason.

 

[joepistole]

Texas has requested assistance from the federal government in dealing with recent floods, the same federal government they think is about to invade their state. Doesn't that strike anyone as odd?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...floods-voted-against-hurricane-sandy-funding/

 

[Tiassa]

Tinfoil Helm

To revisit a point↑ from May:

The real things taking place that are the seeds of Jade Helm paranoia are Barack Obama's presidency, Texas itself, and a rising Christian identity movement that is actively searching for the End Times. After all the tantrums about wanting their America back, and showing their guns, these people want an insurrection. But at the same time, they're good, patriotic Americans. They'll only do that if evil tyranny forces them to. Hence James Dobson warning of Civil War over gay marriage, Pat Robertson going on about anal-bestial rape fantasies―they'll make you like it!―Ted Cruz campaigning about insurrection, Michele Bachmann preaching on End Times, and Louie Gohmert trying to make this about destroying Christians.​

Anyway, that was then.

North Carolina is not one of the states where the U.S. military training exercise dubbed "Jade Helm 15" is taking place this summer. Nevertheless, three men from Gaston County were charged with conspiring to arm themselves with illegal explosive devices to combat what they saw as a potential military takeover, according to court documents unsealed Monday in U.S. District Court in Charlotte.​

(Thompson↱)​

‡​

A sheriff in Mississippi says authorities are searching for two men who fired gunshots from a vehicle at soldiers at a military facility. No injuries were reported.​

Perry County Sheriff Jimmy Dale Smith tells WDAM-TV that the shots were fired just after noon Tuesday. The soldiers were training at Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center in Hattiesburg.​

(Associated Press↱)​

There is nothing surprising about this. These (ahem!) "patriots" really, really want a revolution.

Update: Yeah, I rushed and missed one. Shots fired near Camp Shelby a second day: Therese Apel, Reuters, 5 August 2015↱.​

Update 2: The XenForo editor's need to rewrite the entire markup of a post is really, really annoying.​

____________________

Notes:

Thompson, Catherine. "Feds Bust Wingnuts Who Plotted To Lure Jade Helm Troops Into Ambush". Talking Points Memo. 5 August 2015. TalkingPointsMemo.com. 7 August 2015. [/URL]http://bit.ly/1MWGnSo

Associated Press. "2 Men Open Fire On Soldiers At Jade Helm Training Site In Mississippi". Talking Points Memo. 4 August 2015. TalkingPointsMemo.com. 7 August 2015. http://bit.ly/1eYp0CU
http://huff.to/1IU4Hmr

 

[joepistole]

Well if Jade Helm is a cover for Obama to invade Texas as many Republicans believe time is running out.

 

[joepistole]

Well, it's over and there has been no federal invasion or violent overthrow of Texas state government by federal authorities. One has to wonder what the next cockamamie conspiracy will be, and I think we know this won't be the last nutty right wing conspiracy. This is just one of many wacky right wing conspiracies. Frankly, I don't think the American right wing as it is now constructed can survive without these crazy conspiracies.