I've known for some time that there are two juries I should never sit on. One is for anybody accused of fraud or theft against seniors - the kinds of crimes that see loneliness or declining faculties exploited to rob people of life savings at a time of life when they are least able to recover from the monetary and psychological destruction. The voracious quality of my fury and disgust at this is such that it could easily overwhelm the rationality one needs to sit in fair judgment, and I know it. Similarly I shouldn't be involved in anything where a militant animal rights activist was either victim or perpetrator. The militant and obsessed version of your average committed, caring animal protection person has a particular blend of misanthropy, arrogant egocentrism and narrow illogic that literally short circuits something in my head. When I contemplate them or am confronted with their principles and policies and actions I can almost physically feel a fog rolling in and over the areas of my brain I use for empathy and finer thought. In its place is a white hot sheet of intellectual and moral disgust that I let settle over this legion of "swollen heads up vegan asses" such that they are in my head a unified blob of roiling stupidity. But even in the midst of these outbursts I am aware on some level that I am labouring under a negative stereotype that is so fixed that it probably rises to the level of a prejudice. I indulge it some circumstances just because, but I am aware. When it's important enough I either rein it in or decline to comment if there is not enough time or space in the conversation to do the deliberate work that is sometimes required to connect with the right mental and emotional circuits. But always, I am aware. I am aware.
Even a day and half after first reading them I remain breathless at the comments on the Boston attack earlier in this thread. Of all the bigoted presumption that has been tucked into costumes of reasoned and rational discussion this was surely the most coarse and unforgivable. A failure of empathy so complete that even a bridge of days and hours between an instinctive recoil felt at the sight of prayer in chaos and comments on it on a message board could not soften or edit out such self serving and arbitrary judgment. To have no internal filter that would have caught the utter inappropriateness of using this event in this way is difficult to comprehend. You know nothing about this woman. You don't know where she came from, or what she saw. You don't know if she had a child or a loved one somewhere in the crowd. You don't know if she has a loved one in the military who told her to initially stay put in these situations because IEDs are placed and timed so that they catch people either running away from or running to the initial blast. You don't know whether this was fight or if it was flight and in that ignorance you assume it's frozen and mindless and pointless slavery. You don't know where she was going next or what she needed to steel herself for or just how proactive those prayers were for her or anyone else observing. You know nothing except the fact that you would not pray, and don't flatter yourself for one second that you know a thing more than that about the patchwork of instinct and fear and judgment and strength in any individual in a situation of such thorough terror. And most of all don't flatter your beliefs. Terror is exactly about making people run. It's about making us run away and turn away, from each other and from these public spaces where we connect and feel a part of something bigger. It's a hell of a mindset when falling to your knees in an attempt to gather strength and mercy for yourself or others is always trumped by the 'proactiveness' of running away.
When that link to the 'Jesus Loves You but Not Me' video was posted my first instinct was "oh fuck her and bigot TV, I am not watching that'. My second one was "oh grow up and watch the video". I was glad I did. I already had an intellectual, emotional and limited experiential understanding that religious differences can divide families and isolate people, but seeing more of the humanity behind that and reading their faces and hearing their words was very moving. They so clearly needed to be there and to share in an experience that affirmed that they have every intellectual, moral and emotional right to their non religious beliefs. The ability to pull together with others who have shared experiences that pulled them apart from families and perhaps communities where religious expectations can be so oppressive in parts of the United States is surely deservedly cathartic. I winced at some things in the clip that drifted into the belittling of Christianity seemingly for its own sake, but I did so from afar and without judgment. There was a purpose and for these people perhaps nothing less than a need. But my parallel thought was that my fondest hope for the people in the clip was that they didn't linger there too long in that mental place. Lingering too long would almost certainly harden a quiet and moving and earned emancipation into patterns of rigid judgment and incurious antipathy. One glace at the blog of the self described Carol Burnett behind the production lights just that path. http://www.jesuslovesyoushow.com/blog/ A completely arbitrary and random exercise in associating Christianity with pedophilia. That is not a life turned around, it's a life inverted. Every failure of sensitivity and curiousity for the fear and needs of a child turned outward on religion and the religious in unbending hatred disguised as 'humour' or 'reason' or 'rationality'. It's none of that in a post like that or in many of the posts here. There's just hatred.
I hesitate to elucidate the life of somebody else, particularly a person that I've been calling a bigot for a week or so, but the truth is I thoroughly believe you've lingered too long. By your own description you fled a half a life ago but are no farther from oppression than any oppressor ever gets. You're remain by choice behind high frosted walls where those on the other side blur into indistinguishable lumps of 'the faithful' who do not do or think outside your narrow experiences and beliefs. You are so thoroughly missing the intelligence and wisdom and experience in the diversity and the kinship and connection in the sameness. By your own description you've arrived at a place where you don't care and can't be reached by the past. In a different context Panchagni said you never would. A person with no religious interest read your words and words you explicitly or implicitly agreed with for pages upon pages and declared you a poisonous militant who would never care. I can't say I disagree with either of you. I've never felt anything more than a languid malevolence in your silence whenever I suggested you should care, about facts or fairness or people that have to absorb the blunt impact of your ideas. You lingered too long.
And in this conversation likely so have I.
GratefulFan · Member since
[QUOTE] [b]Donna13 wrote:[/b]
God doesn't make anyone do anything. We have free will. Only a few here are "falling out". Not "all" are "falling out". The same ones who are arguing here also argue with each other in other threads sometimes.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that and the fact that sometimes kumbuyah and the middle of the road doesn't quite reach the necessary moral fortitude in the face of blatant bigotry and injustice.
Donna13 · Member since
I was responding to Mooghead, who clearly has not read his own thread. There have been others who have entered the thread to discuss their personal beliefs but have not had a "falling out" as he termed it. If other lazy readers had just read Mooghead's post, they would be misled (which maybe was his intent).
thomasquinn 32989 · Member since
[QUOTE] [b]GratefulFan wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]GratefulFan wrote:[/b]
Funny that you should formulate these precise lame excuses. I previously mentioned a book called The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice. Thoughtful, balanced and well received [/QUOTE]
You don't even have to look much further than his Wikipedia page[/QUOTE]
And I'm sure you didn't. Nice ad hominem. Read the book.
[/QUOTE]
1) Look up what "ad hominem" means. Seriously, do that, please, because this is by no stretch of the imagination an ad hominem. In fact, your reply is closer to being an ad hominem than my original post.
2) I did. I read about two dozen reviews of his book, his employment history and a bibliography of his other publications. It was very enlightening, and illustrative of what you consider a good, neutral source.
thomasquinn 32989 · Member since
[QUOTE] [b]GratefulFan wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]GratefulFan wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]magicalfreddiemercury wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]The Real Wizard wrote:[/b]
This may be the best ever thread at this website.
And it led to the crowning of the three greatest posters in the history of Queenzone. Let us all rejoice.
Preferably in a non-theistic way. [/QUOTE]
Our crowning ceremony should include not just crowns but the entire ensemble.
[/QUOTE]
TQ! Are you going to take this crap? I think bigot #2 just called you a bigot! If you want to explain to her that a bigot cheerleader and enabler is not exactly the same as a fully pledged bigot I'll totally have your back.[/QUOTE]
About a page ago, I was a raving, drooling anti-Semite Catholic-hater, and now I'm not a bigot because it suddenly doesn't fit your agenda anymore? Seriously, the way you spin in this topic makes FOX News look, well...fair and balanced.[/QUOTE]
I never called you a bigot. I called you a bigot cheerleader and I believe you make careless, anti-Catholic statements out of a general intolerance, general intellectual sloppiness and a misguided idea of liberalism. There's never been a bigot #3 in my posts, has there. Another clean up in aisle four when Thomas starts to think.
[/QUOTE]
Either you are totally dishonest and willing to spin everything you (or anyone else) said simply to make it appear, superficially, that you are right, or you are breathtakingly stupid. I'm fairly sure you're not particularly stupid, so I suspect it's the former, not in the last place because of your previous track record.
You called me an anti-Semite who hates Catholics, and you suggested that the Anti-Catholicism - The Last Accepted Prejudice (the title is bullshit, because, for example, Islamophobia, anti-gay hate, hatred of the political left and hatred of atheism are perfectly acceptable forms of prejudice in much of the western world) book you mentioned was something I should read because I was supposedly guilty thereof. If that doesn't constitute bigotry, then you evidently haven't got a clue what bigotry means.
You are thoroughly dishonest in the way you 'argue' here. Anyone who reads your posts in this topic in sequence will quite swiftly be convinced of your willingness to twist, spin and manipulate your own and other people's words to support your views.
I would just like to conclude by saying that any shred of respect I might have had for you evaporated when you so easily equated antisemitism with what you call 'anti-Catholicism'. Even if what you claim about anti-Catholicism was true (which it isn't), this is still miles removed from antisemitism. In fact, there is an analogous form of anti-Catholicism, namely anti-Judaism, which is disapproval or even hatred of Jewish THEOLOGY AND RELIGION, but NOT hatred of Jewish individuals. Antisemitism involves hatred of individuals for the reason that they are Jewish. Even someone as unscrupulous as yourself should be ashamed of abusing antisemitism to make yourself look persecuted and deserving of sympathy. You are, whether you intended to do so or not, downplaying the severity of antisemitism, and this is unforgivable.
magicalfreddiemercury · Member since
[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]
You are thoroughly dishonest in the way you 'argue' here. Anyone who reads your posts in this topic in sequence will quite swiftly be convinced of your willingness to twist, spin and manipulate your own and other people's words to support your views.
[/QUOTE]
This says it all.
GratefulFan · Member since
[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]GratefulFan wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]GratefulFan wrote:[/b]
Funny that you should formulate these precise lame excuses. I previously mentioned a book called The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice. Thoughtful, balanced and well received [/QUOTE]
You don't even have to look much further than his Wikipedia page[/QUOTE]
And I'm sure you didn't. Nice ad hominem. Read the book.
[/QUOTE]
1) Look up what "ad hominem" means. Seriously, do that, please, because this is by no stretch of the imagination an ad hominem. In fact, your reply is closer to being an ad hominem than my original post.
2) I did. I read about two dozen reviews of his book, his employment history and a bibliography of his other publications. It was very enlightening, and illustrative of what you consider a good, neutral source.[/QUOTE]
Again and again and again you do this. You can't even follow your own arguments, let alone anybody else's. You waste so much of the time of other people who either have to let your nonsense stand or toddle after you wiping up your completely unnecessary intellectual drool. Not only do you level an utterly self serving and unsupportable charge of bias against a completely qualified author and academic, you deny that that is ad hominem! Holy fuck YOU LOOK IT UP.
Jenkins is an historian with a focus on global Christianity and a preeminence in emerging religious trends. It beggars belief that somebody who produces his M.A. as proof of his intelligence would level a charge of bias because an academic writes in his area of expertise and is published in periodicals that cover those issues. Where would you expect to find his articles on global Christianity? Cosmo? You utter moron? He wasn't even at Baylor when he wrote the book, he was at Penn State, not that it would have mattered if he had been. And the American Conservative - anti war and anti neo-conservatism. Hell on glossy right there. No serious reviewer ever leveled a charge of bias at him over this book because its contents would have made that frankly absurd. Like you.
From the Baltimore Sun:
Anti-Catholicism in the U.S.: A hate much loved and lied about
May 11, 2003|By Michael Pakenham
Jenkins has taken on a topic that I thought on first blush would be annoying to the point of embarrassment, to either side, and hardly the stuff of a long and detailed book. To the contrary, he accomplishes a fascinating tale, exploring the depths of the consciousness of this country -- diverse forces that weave together the history of the civilization that we share.
His prose is energetic, assertive and blessed with a crystalline coherence. Packed with historic detail and intricate referential material, it is nonetheless crisp and easy to read. This is a book of powerfully convincing fairness, of impressive scholarship and of extraordinary courage -- Jenkins strips naked some of the most cherished hypocrisies of American ideologues from one extreme of the spectrum to the other.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2003-05-11/entertainment/0305120625_1_roman-catholic-church-catholicism-jenkins/2
GratefulFan · Member since
[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]
Either you are totally dishonest and willing to spin everything you (or anyone else) said simply to make it appear, superficially, that you are right, or you are breathtakingly stupid. I'm fairly sure you're not particularly stupid, so I suspect it's the former, not in the last place because of your previous track record.
You called me an anti-Semite who hates Catholics, and you suggested that the Anti-Catholicism - The Last Accepted Prejudice (the title is bullshit, because, for example, Islamophobia, anti-gay hate, hatred of the political left and hatred of atheism are perfectly acceptable forms of prejudice in much of the western world) book you mentioned was something I should read because I was supposedly guilty thereof. If that doesn't constitute bigotry, then you evidently haven't got a clue what bigotry means.
You are thoroughly dishonest in the way you 'argue' here. Anyone who reads your posts in this topic in sequence will quite swiftly be convinced of your willingness to twist, spin and manipulate your own and other people's words to support your views.
I would just like to conclude by saying that any shred of respect I might have had for you evaporated when you so easily equated antisemitism with what you call 'anti-Catholicism'. Even if what you claim about anti-Catholicism was true (which it isn't), this is still miles removed from antisemitism. In fact, there is an analogous form of anti-Catholicism, namely anti-Judaism, which is disapproval or even hatred of Jewish THEOLOGY AND RELIGION, but NOT hatred of Jewish individuals. Antisemitism involves hatred of individuals for the reason that they are Jewish. Even someone as unscrupulous as yourself should be ashamed of abusing antisemitism to make yourself look persecuted and deserving of sympathy. You are, whether you intended to do so or not, downplaying the severity of antisemitism, and this is unforgivable. [/QUOTE]
Your inability to follow the thread of a conversation/post/sentence is not me 'spinning' or 'twisting' anything. I'm not wasting another second re-re-re stating stuff that's in black and white on this thread or bothering to correct your shit perception like I'm your third grade teacher. That ship has sailed for the evening.
In the book Jenkins takes great pains to note that "Obviously, I am drawing no comparison between modern American cultural phenomena and the exterminationist anti-Semitism of Europe in the 1930's and 1940's. Still, quite a proper analogy can be drawn between the history of anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism in the United States itself. Let us compare like with like."
Cultural prejudices don't have to be exterminationist to be severe. Anti-Catholicism is real and it's serious precisely because people are so utterly blind to it. Wild, unjust, ignorant nonsense just comes flying out of peoples mouths with all the consideration of ordering ham on rye. Too many examples in the larger world and right on these threads to mention. It exhausts me. It's real, it matters to many people, and you're part of the problem. I don't expect that to change. Whatever. It's tangential to much of this thread anyway.
In case it wasn't clear, when one finally arrives at the place where one is calling people bigots and bigot cheerleaders one doesn't give the first shit if such people respect them. In fact, if I'm doing my job right, a few of you pretty much despise me by now. Good. It's worth it to me ten times over just to take a stand on principle against your bottomless, mechanized swill.
GratefulFan · Member since
[QUOTE] [b]magicalfreddiemercury wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]
You are thoroughly dishonest in the way you 'argue' here. Anyone who reads your posts in this topic in sequence will quite swiftly be convinced of your willingness to twist, spin and manipulate your own and other people's words to support your views.
[/QUOTE]
This says it all.
[/QUOTE]
It says nothing real. You huddle in intellectual knots with bigots and morons and have lost the ability to reach the dehumanizing reality of your own positions. Your judgment is compromised and your compassion on this front utterly dulled. I drag your positions out of the mud and hold them up to your face in full sunlight and you don't like that. I get it. I just don't care. Bigotry on any front deserves the attention.
The Real Wizard · Member since
The bottom line:
You find yourself at war with a group of individuals here.
Nobody is at war with you.
thomasquinn 32989 · Member since
GF's thoroughly extremist position: if you don't like Catholic institutions or Catholic potentates, you hate all Catholic people. That's a frankly fascist interpretation of collectivism. It's also frankly pathetic to see GF wallow in a sordid persecution-fantasy.
What's so disturbing about these two stories - beyond the obvious - is how people continue to look up to these leaders (and those like them) and blindly follow them, believing their words and deeds to be of some higher value.
GratefulFan · Member since
[QUOTE] [b]The Real Wizard wrote:[/b]
The bottom line:
You find yourself at war with a group of individuals here.
Nobody is at war with you.[/QUOTE]
It's precisely this pretense of floating above it all on a cloud of objective reason that makes you and the other bigot bigots and Thomas merely your waterboy. There is little efficacy in his artifice; convenient explosions of ad hominem, denial and illogic are easy to parse for anybody with a fair and open mind. You on the other hand are coward enough to feign a distance from the emotional power of the blunt viciousness of your pages and pages and pages of sweeping diminishment of a legion of people and institutions you know little or nothing about.
I'm not at war with you nor do I think you're at war with me. That's far too personal a characterization. I don't feel meaningfully connected to you or the other bigot at this point in 'war' or any other way. As I said earlier you make me sick, as all committed and methodical bigots do. You're not dumb, or lacking the means to acquire experience, you've just made a conscious life choice to be a peddler of gutless bigoted bullshit in some bizarre brand of self affirmation. Fuck you both.
