Bad mgoblog Twitter post is bad
August 15th, 2017 at 4:19 PM ^
fight them with an army of bagpipes.
August 16th, 2017 at 9:40 AM ^
Playing Hava Nagila. They will not see that coming.
August 15th, 2017 at 2:26 PM ^
That's exactly what they want. If it's just a brouhaha between two sides, they can claim the ground is at least morally neutral and revel in the attention.
The worst scenario in the world for them is to be completely ignored.
August 15th, 2017 at 2:31 PM ^
couldn't agree more.
August 15th, 2017 at 2:35 PM ^
I think there is wisdom here, but the times may well have changed that. I had this conversation with two of my kids this w/e, and told them that optimally we would all just ignore them, but that takes an entire community to agree to do that. That's unrealistic these days.
If 500 Nazis/KKKers/Odinists (whatever TF that is) come to your town to stir up trouble, I think its naive to pretend there won't be some sort of counterprotest. And if there's gonna be a counterprotest, it might as well be a disciplined and forceful one. But not a violent one.
August 15th, 2017 at 2:49 PM ^
I understand the impulse to counter (though the number of people willing to actually associate themselves with that tripe is pretty low, with these well-publicized "nationwide rallies" getting a few hundred people--a lot of these things are just a gathering of a couple dozen people if nobody else bothers to show). Thing is, even when it's peaceful it gets more attention than the rally deserves, and it rarely stays peaceful.
Ann Arbor has some experience with this--some people here will remember the KKK rally in the 90s (94, I think). A counterprotest was led by a fringe-y type group and things turned violent. It took Keshia Thomas to expose the absurdity of it all; she was and is a hero.
August 15th, 2017 at 2:56 PM ^
That's why I note here and elsewhere that the protest needs to be disciplined. Disciplined, peaceful, and forceful counterprotests are possible, happen with reasonable frequency, and are beautiful things.
We need to stand for something sometimes.
August 15th, 2017 at 6:38 PM ^
Right, but as SJRking suggests, it's important to recognize that generating a conflict that can be portrayed as 'bad, violent people on both sides' is integral to the strategies of both the alt-right types themselves AND the (far) right media, which is willing to use even a KKK rally that got someone killed as an opportunity to provoke distrust and loathing of the left.
August 15th, 2017 at 7:25 PM ^
hitler started WWII and killed 50 million - Nazi = National Socialist Party for Germany.
stalin killed 50 million of his own folks.
mao killed at least 50 million of his own folks.
abortion, a left wing favorite, killing black children in a grossly out of proportion percentage and responsible for the deaths of conservatively 50 million american children.
khmer rouge, roughly 6 million
and the KKK is a creation of the democrat party down south, to terrorize blacks and the repubs that fought for their freedom. those idiots this weekend were lead by an 'occupy wall street' loser. there is no part of their political ideology that goes with any genuine principal of right wing thought.
virtually every riot you ever saw or heard of, every face-covered hooligan smashing windows and burning cars....the left.
every presidential shooter (lincoln, mckinley, TR, JFK, reagan) as well as RFK and gabby gifford....shot by a leftie.
you don't need any media for that, just accurate history books.
August 15th, 2017 at 7:55 PM ^
Sorry, this is political, and I know that is verbotten. But abortion, regardless of your views towards it, is not killing black children. Nor is it killing white children (or any other ethnicity). The mothers and fathers (absent, or not) are killing those kids. Abortion is the tool in the same manner as guns are a tool. Tools don't decide, people do.
Besides, Brian went political with his craptastic twitter post.
August 15th, 2017 at 7:59 PM ^
You need Xtra knowledge and brainpower and less brainwashing. WOW!!!!
August 15th, 2017 at 8:03 PM ^
This is history, not politics:
Yes, the founding members of the KKK were members of the Democratic party, because southern Democrats were reactionary (hard right). The Republican party was founded as a single-issue abolitionist party when the Whigs fell apart in the 1850s -- in other words, it was socially liberal at the time.
The parties gradually changed sides in terms of their positions. However, for years after the Civil War, few white politicians would run in the south as Republicans, because Republicans were blamed for abolition, Reconstruction, and the general ills of southern society. The label was more important than the positions were.
By the end of WWII, both parties had aligned themselves mostly around economics and the military; there were liberal New England Republicans and conservative southern Democrats. Strom Thurmond was a Democrat / Dixiecrat.
During the 50s and 60s, as the national Democratic party came out in favor of social change, and became more socially liberal, many southern Democrats defected. LBJ's decision to sign the Civil Rights Act pushed many of those same people into the Republican camp for the same reason that their great-great-great-grandparents had become Democrats in the first place.
None of that means that the Republican party is racist, or that white supremecists are welcomed by the party. But it's disingenous to claim that today's neo-Nazis are anything but the reactionary right wing.
August 15th, 2017 at 8:15 PM ^
democrats. see al gore's dad. JFK's dad, joe (a racist, not necessarily KKK). william fulbright. bull connor the mayor of new york, hosing blacks down viciously....democrat. segregation is and was a democrat idea, see william mcgovern and george wallace for dem presidential candidates that supported. Ike, a repub, was the one who took that away with the national guard.
woodrow wilson, democrat president, fired all the black federal workers and said he was doing them a service. LBJ was a horrible racist...and a democrat.
dems filibustered or voted down all civil rights legislation until at least 1964 and only then changed when they realized they'd never win a national election again if they didn't. welfare has utterly destroyed minority families - what is it now, 85% of black children born into unwed homes? and single parenting is the most defining correlative trait in determining poverty, crimimnal behavior, drug addiction, suicide, being victims of crime and of course, divorce.
August 15th, 2017 at 10:37 PM ^
August 15th, 2017 at 10:46 PM ^
but if you mean violent, viscous mobs, well that is owned by a margin of about 1000 to 1 by the left. how many half-masked thugs, riots, vandals, car burnings, cop shootings, and beatings have you seen that were by the right? answer is probably none. so go ahead, redefine the word and make yourself feel better, it isn't changing what's really going on. and if choosing america first and trying to make our country more fiscally sound is all of that, well, okay, but that again is very emotional and subjective nonsense, not reality.
and i didn't see any POTUS comments other than condemning the violence and properly calling out the left for their violence which dwarfs the right. is it so painful to hear the truth? you are very smart john, i know that. please do the homework in a dispasstionate manner. you might be surprised. and again, if this one incident is so upsetting, then why the total silence to my posting the facts of 100 yrs of leftist genocide in the hundreds of millions, and violence? how can you skip past that and suddenly seize on a few dozen wingnuts?
August 15th, 2017 at 11:04 PM ^
August 16th, 2017 at 12:17 AM ^
August 16th, 2017 at 6:22 AM ^
August 16th, 2017 at 12:41 AM ^
August 16th, 2017 at 8:39 AM ^
Long story short, you can't fix ignorance. He's going to believe what he wants to believe, actual historical facts be damned. It's not surprising.
August 16th, 2017 at 9:44 AM ^
"hitler started WWII and killed 50 million - Nazi = National Socialist Party for Germany."
This is all you need to read to know that what follows will be Bad History™. It was kind of him to lead with that and not try to be sneaky with his willful historical ignorance.
August 16th, 2017 at 1:10 AM ^
Ok, XM, let's talk history.
In your original post, you talked about "leftists". Now you're talking about Democrats. Historically, Democrats were not ideologically "leftists" - that only started to become a consistent characteristic in the 1900's, and evolved throughout the 20th century.
Similarly, the partisan support of racists has also evolved.
Yep, there were a ton of racist Democrats, especially in the south. "Dixiecrats" did a lot of bad stuff and had some horrible ideas. However, progressive Democrats also accomplished a lot of important things. Many Democrats were not racist, and worked hard for civil rights.
FDR enacted a ton of progressive legislation that aimed to improve the lives of Americans in need and provide a safety net. Eleanor Roosevelt influenced FDR and his policy greatly, and she was a powerful civil rights champion.
Ike wasn't a big supporter of Brown vs. Board of Education, and dragged his feet for quite awhile before reluctantly sending in the guard.
Eisenhower, (Justice) Warren would later recall, told him that white southerners “are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.”
While Ike did some positive things regarding civil rights, he was not exatly a champion of equality.
Truman, Kennedy and Johnson all openly supported Civil Rights legislation. It seems you've forgotten that Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. He was no angel and his motives may not have always been pure, but he put everything on the line to push things through.
"In signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964, President Johnson said he feared his party had lost the South for a generation."
The plain fact is that most Civil Rights legislation was passed by Democratic administrations.
For sure many, if not most Republicans in congress voted for civil rights legislation, but don't forget that Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee, was vehemently opposed.
During that same era, some "Dixiecrats" changed party affiliation, and conservative Republicans replaced retiring "Dixiecrats".
That trend continued as the last of the remaining Dixiecrats died off or switched parties (Byrd, Helms, Thurmond, etc.). Most overt white racists these days (if party affiliated) are Republican. That absolutely does NOT mean that most Republicans support those viewpoints, just as most Democrats didn't support racist views in 1960.
George Wallace, BTW, was never a Democratic nominee; the only time he was on a presidential ballot was 1968, when he ran as an independent.
History, and people, are complicated.
August 16th, 2017 at 5:37 AM ^
he was a huge proponent of minority rights. what he objected to was the federal govt involvement in private affairs, specifically housing. he hated the racism and stood up against it, but he also saw the abuse that was coming if/when the feds got involved in private contracts like that.
and 'racism' to me includes the crippling effects of the welfare state and the destruction of the family unit - and that is an objectively leftist thing. you subjectively say that repubs are more racist (and certainly there are some), but i see/hear the 'N' word from dems, and particularly other blacks. it is racism.
August 16th, 2017 at 6:28 AM ^
but concur that Goldwater was no racist.
He was, however, vehemently opposed to the Civil Rights Act.
I hope you're not asserting the CRA was a bad thing. Whatever Goldwater's motives, he was on the wrong side on that one.
August 16th, 2017 at 7:26 AM ^
August 16th, 2017 at 10:41 AM ^
August 16th, 2017 at 4:38 AM ^
Anyone who actually pays attention knows that the politics of the Democratic and Republican parties are RADICALLY different today than they were in the past. It's like today's Republicans trying to claim Lincoln when anyone with half a brain can see by the voting patterns of today's states/demographics/issues that Lincoln would clearly be a Democrat in today's world.
Get a grip. Your arguments are utter garbage, and pretty much put you in "never worth listening to again on pretty much any topic."
August 16th, 2017 at 5:00 AM ^
you don't have a substantive answer. and the violence from the left continues to this very day. mob rule, mob violence, hate capitalism and Christianity which is responsible for the rise of this country. you do realize that virtually every other part of the world it is considered bizarre that our founding document starts with: we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal'. that is completely alien thinking in places like india, asia and the middle east.
August 16th, 2017 at 11:29 AM ^
Yeah, I don't have a substantive answer on how the political parties have gone through radical position switches on social issues from 60-70 years ago except for like every damn political history book in print.
People like you are ridiculous. Go back to ranting about 6th grade nonsense like the Nazis must have been left-wing because they put 'Socialist" in their name. C'mon Man. The rest of us that actually know something (anything?) about history will be waiting if you ever care to educate yourself.
Your posts here makes it very clear that will never, ever happen, as you quite clearly revel in your either intentional ignorance or intentional misrepresentation of reality.
August 16th, 2017 at 1:08 AM ^
August 15th, 2017 at 8:11 PM ^
There are so many things wrong with this I don't know where to start and where to end. I guess the real answer is there's no point, because you're dug into your trench and that's that.
But just for the casual observer, let's just take the top of the list. The "National Socialist" moniker from which Nazi derives is understood by any historian with a pulse as one of the most famous misonomers in history, like, e.g., "Holy Roman Empire" (which was none of these) or "German Democratic Republic" (the old East Germany). There is zero controversy about this point except maybe in the depths of Reddit somewhere. Not only were they not socialists, they weren't even national at the time. The Nazi party was and remains the archetype of right-wing extremism/fascism. You know that.
The KKK thing is one of the just plain siliiest canards you'll see in a conversation among mostly educated people, and I've seen you make it multiple times on this blog. Which party has sustained the spirit of the KKK (if not always the robes) over the last 50 years since Nixon's "Southern Strategy" flipped those southern Dems to the GOP? Which side has spent that time fighting for civil rights? Seriously, dude. That's a clown line, bro.
I'll leave the unbelievably selective nuggets in the rest of the post for posterity, because, again, trench. How sad. Or should I say... "Sad!"
August 15th, 2017 at 8:19 PM ^
only disappointed stalin wasn't more of a racist. read his book if you doubt. only twisting history in our day has lead you to disagree with this.
and do you care to address the hundreds of millions killed by the leftist, or the lefties who shoot our presidents? didn't think so. see the post just above this one. please tell me where any of those facts i cited are wrong. otherwise, you might want to rethink a few things.
August 16th, 2017 at 3:43 AM ^
this is pretty sad from a guy that seems reasonable sometimes. Your ignorance here is...astonishing, really. I'm not sure why I'm even getting into this with a guy so entrenched in ignorance (somehow the history books you've read are better/different than the ones everyone else has read and only you have the ultimate authority here?).
Hitler claimed to be a "National Socialist" which was merely the name of the party used to attract the working class. His politics and views were not at all socialist - he actually hated socialism (and capitalism and liberalism). His goal was to create a community of Aryans with German heritage, which he claimed would be one 'class', but that obviously has nothing to do with socialist ideas of a single class. There was no redistribution of wealth or land under Hitler.
As to your other points, there are really bad people on the extreme "right" and "left". It doesn't appear that you know what those ideologies are at their core, but below is the difference. If you think otherwise, that's probably the source of your confusion:
Ring-wing ideology: certain social orders and hierarchies are inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable.
Left-wing ideology: supports social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy and social inequality.
Have atrocities been committed by the supposed extreme "left"? Absolutely. Mao was certainly an extreme leftist and killed the landowning/ruling classes. Fidel, Che and others fall in this category. But the minute they were willing to kill certain classes they stopped being "leftist" because killing a certain class isn't treating them equally.
Have atrocities been committed by the "right"? Definitely. What about slavery? Slavery is by definition right-wing. If a group of people believe they're better than another such that their freedoms should allow them to enslave another group of people and create brutally tiered social classes, they're righties. Imperialists? Colonialists? Mostly righties believing their superiority grants them the right to take whatever they want, kill whomever they want.
Of course, there is no correct ideology here. A balance is probably best. Right wingers are correct that hierarchies will form naturally, but left wingers (especially Christians, of which I believe you are one) are correct that our morals as humans should compel us to not treat anyone as less of a human or less valuable than anyone else. Some people might be better at things than others and people are all different, but we're all equal in God's eyes, right?
Unfortunately, there are bad people that do bad things in the name of a lot of ideas and people do them for "left", "right", "up" and "down" reasons. But whichever direction they're pointing, they mostly they do them for power/tribalism (because our caveman lizard brains needed to be that way to survive before we were civilized.)
August 16th, 2017 at 4:46 AM ^
but other than leftist propaganda, they aren't real.
August 16th, 2017 at 11:07 AM ^
because your only argument for anything is that you're correct, and everything anyone else says is not real. Those are the definitions, bud. Those are the foundational worldviews of rightist or leftist politics, in the world in which we all live.
Everyone on here is probably curious as to your definitions of right and left because you're clearly living in a rightist propaganda bubble (hey, I can play that game too, great arguments, man!).
The only logical conclusion by your comments is that left is simply "all that which is bad and which I do not like."
August 16th, 2017 at 2:50 PM ^
I used to hold you in fairly high regard. No more.
August 16th, 2017 at 8:40 AM ^
I'm sorry, I can't take this anymore.
HAVE YOU EVER READ A BOOK?
August 15th, 2017 at 8:20 PM ^
so huge it had to be written twice!
August 16th, 2017 at 8:04 AM ^
Uh, actually Hitler hated Stalin passionately because he viewed his Slavic heritage as repugnant. He viewed Stalin as a political and genetic inferior and really had no interest in dealing with him whatsoever.
August 15th, 2017 at 8:23 PM ^
try again with your 'southern strategy' comment.
he also got us out of vietnam - war mongering democrats got us there including JFK and LBJ.
August 16th, 2017 at 12:32 AM ^
August 16th, 2017 at 4:47 AM ^
and got us into vietnam. his call, like the bay of pigs fiasco. he had a democrat congress. LBJ got us further into SE asia.
nixon got us out.
how is Ike implicated in this scenario?
August 16th, 2017 at 12:26 PM ^
Eisenhower sent economic aid and military advisors to South Vietnam. In fact, the very existence of South Vietnam was partly the responsibility of the Eisenhower administration. The United States pushed for the creation of a non-communist zone in Vietnam at the Geneva conference; once it existed the U.S. threw its support behind it as a bastion against communist expansion.
You make it sound like JFK came to office and just sort of decided, "Hmm, where would be a good place to get involved militarily? Oh, how about South Vietnam?" as if there were no preliminary steps.
Look, if you think Vietnam was a mistake and/or think America's tendency to use military force during the Cold War was misguided, don't for a second think that this was a "Democratic" or "Republican" position, or one limited to the left or the right. Both parties supported and executed the Cold War.
It's like your view of racist policies: Americans of all political stripes have been responsible for racist policies in the past. Sadly, it's a thread that runs through our entire history. To try to place the blame on one party--and especially think that it's been the same party for the past 170 years--is frankly ludicrous.
Look Xtra: you are a valued and respected member of this blog. You've contributed more to our discussions (quantity and quality) than I ever will. But your posts in this thread have been nakedly partisan.
August 15th, 2017 at 8:42 PM ^
If there's any truth in your rant it's that the left/right binary is too simplistic to be useful, and that the names of things are often very misleading (especially in politics).
Please don't reduce my earlier post to: LEFT GOOD, RIGHT BAD [caveman voice]. I'll rephrase:
There's no reason that Identifying with the contemporary US right should make anyone slow to denounce racism, and in these circumstances the tu quoque defense should be repugant to any decent American regardless of his/her politics.
August 15th, 2017 at 9:04 PM ^
i was not responding to your post and didn't read it, but i promise not to use any caveman voice if/when i see it. the facts asserted are not tu quoque, but facts. there are no comparable facts on the other side becauase the greatest brutalization of our species has been by the left, and its not even within 150 million dead people being a close comparison.
August 15th, 2017 at 9:06 PM ^
Sorry about "rant." But I do think your historical account mixes some superficial facts with a number of half-truths.
But I'll try one more time to come to some understanding. You're right if your point is that racism, political violence, or white supremacy have not been confined historically to one side of the political spectrum. I would say that the Nazis, the KKK, et al. can be accurately categorized as right-wing, but that point of taxonomy shouldn't matter very much to us today (unless your're a political scientist, maybe). Thus it find it very worrisome that some commentators today in the US seem to be reluctant to condemn violent racists just because they'd have to take a break from hitting their preferred punching bags on the other side, whatever they call them (the left, Dems, BLM, and so on).
August 16th, 2017 at 7:10 AM ^
August 15th, 2017 at 9:41 PM ^
This is a long post. Summary: XM, so wrong, on so many "points".
I'm sure by the time I've written this others have also corrected some of your falsehoods.
Your "no media needed" statement is telling; perhaps you should avail yourself of some trusted forms of media - I'm not sure where you got some of your ideas, but wow, you wrote some whoppers.
When half your talking points are patently false, it pretty much makes a mockery of your thesis.
First - Nazis. National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), more commonly known as Nazism (/ˈnɑːtsɪzəm, ˈnæ-/), is the ideology and set of practices associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party, Nazi Germany, and other far-right groups.
Nazi = Far-right. Geez, have a clue.
Abortion. You're entitled to your opinion about abortion, but it's pretty extreme to equate the legal termination of pregnacy to the atrocities of Hitler and friends. You're also mighty ignorant if you think only left-wingers get abortions. C'mon.
KKK - yes, KKK grew from anti-reconstruction backlash mostly associated with racist southern Democrats. However, you know as well as I do that those southern Democrats were hardly "leftists", and Nixon's "southern strategy" turned the tables on party affiliation. Republican is now the preferred party of most white supremicists, including the KKK, and their philosophy is alt-right.
Charlottesville - The entire rally was called "Unite the Right" - don't try to pretend. The madman Fields who murdered an innocent woman was part of the rally, and espoused deeply far-right ideology.
"The 'Unite the Right' rally in Charlottesville was ostensibly about protecting a statue of Robert E. Lee. It was about asserting the legitimacy of “white culture” and white supremacy, and defending the legacy of the Confederacy."
Assassinations - your assertion that all these crazies were/are "leftists" is simply false.
TR - John Schrank. If anything other than crazy, he supported the more conservative Republicans over TR's progressive "Bull Moose".
"According to documents found on Schrank after the attempted assassination, Schrank had written that he was advised by the ghost of William McKinley in a dream to avenge his death, pointing to a picture of Theodore Roosevelt. Different accounts claim that in the dream he instead saw McKinley rise from a coffin and point at Roosevelt, who was wearing a monk's robe."
"It is known that Schrank opposed a sitting President's ability to seek a third term in office."
RFK - Sirhan Sirhan. "He objected to Senator Robert Kennedy's support for Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War."
"A fervent Christian, Sirhan explored several denominations as an adult. He identified as a Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist before joining the occult Rosicrucians."
He was a Palestinian opposed to US support for Israel. He was not a "Leftist".
Reagan - John Hinckley. He was just crazy, and obsessed with Jodie Foster. He apparently first considered assassinating Jimmy Carter.
"There is no evidence that John Hinckley, Jr. was a Democrat. He was clearly mentally ill, and fixated on the movie, Taxi Driver, where Robert DeNiro was a psychotic taxi driver, who contemplated political assassination, as well as rescued a young prostitute played by Jodi Foster. He became obsessed with Foster, even enrolling in Yale to stalk her. Initially, he began following President Carter (a Democrat) around, but never went through with an assassination attempt. His mental health deteriorated at the same time Reagan became president, and Hinckley finally went through with his plan. Before the attempt, he wrote a letter to Foster explaining how he was doing it for her."
Gabby Giffords (that's Giffords, not "Gifford") - Jared Lee Loughner. This guy is just a nut, and his ideology is all over the map. Here's the best description I could find:
"Loughner's paranoia is its own ideology: "Forget right or left," says Kathryn Olmsted in Foreign Policy. "Loughner's particular brand of government paranoia" fits in its own, "purely all-American" category. He reportedly thinks the U.S. faked the moon landing, the Federal Reserve is a Jewish plot, and 9/11 was a U.S. job. This "toxic jumble of left- and right-wing conspiracy theories" doesn't fit comfortably in either party"
If you're gonna bring in politics, at least make an effort to be honest and correct. I can't say I'm impressed by your "accurate history books".
August 15th, 2017 at 11:09 PM ^
especially on significant hot button issues.
sirhan was a palestinain extremist angry with kennedy for his support of israel: a decidedly right wing thing for bobby kennedy to do since all the israel protest/palestinain rights types are....lefties. and the fact that he was unstable and alledgely explored other faiths doesn't make him a repub.
nixon's southern strategy was to integrate the schools his first term in office - something JFK and LBJ had failed to do despite the mandates. nixon started affirmative action. he beat segregationists mcgovern and then wallace in '72, in a landslide. nixon enacted the philly plan in response to aggressive racial discrimination by construction unions, imposing quotas and timelines. so tell me again about the fallacy of the 'southern strategy'.
giffords shooter was a democrat who liked smoking dope. and i left pres garfield off the list. shot by charles guiteau and a commune living communist. lynette squeaky fromme shot at michigan grad gerald ford - she was a manson commune leftist. sara jane moore also tried to shoot ford about 2 weeks later....because she said he 'had declared war on the left'. there's more, lots more, but i'm going to bed.
do the research, not in wikipedia. the reality is contained in the congressional records and journals of the time, not necessarily the nice books or blogs written decades later and made to turn things upside down.
August 16th, 2017 at 1:14 AM ^