philosoraptor42

are condemned to repeat it....

Some right-wing nutcase in the US has killed a Democrat and to be quite frank, the rhetoric from the right is sounding like a broken record.

Pamela Geller, who I've mentioned before, instantly decided to insist that this nutcase isn't right wing because he has "The Communist Manifesto" and "Mein Kampf". It seems that all these months of calling Barack Obama both a "communist" AND "Hitler" have taken their toll if Geller can't see the blatant contradiction involved.

Do we remember the nutcase who shot up a Church because he didn't agree with it's religious beliefs? Then do we remember the Mosque chemical attack (against children, no less) out of fears of home-grown terrorism? And then the knife attack? And then the arson? Do we remember the t-shirts saying "Islam Is Of The Devil"? Do we remember the murder of George Tiller (and the attempt to say that this was also two-way aggression)? Do we remember the connections between the Tea Party and British fascists? I mean seriously, what is the difference between Tea Party images and Stormfront posters?

A lot of focus has been on Sarah Palin's big target practice image, partly because it has Gabrielle Giffords' name on it clearly marked out as a target, but also because Sarah Palin has been so defensive. "You have my condolences" isn't much of an apology. Meanwhile Palin is desperately deleting twitter posts that she's clearly ashamed of while asserting that she would never ever advocate violence, as if no one's noticed. It's like Lady Macbeth deperately washing her hands. Heck, I was pretty critical of Helen Thomas (telling Israeli Jews to go back to Germany), but one thing I couldn't fault her for was her apology afterwards.




Lol at this random commenter who doesn't see the difference between using a crosshair symbol rather than an archery target:
"And I don't see a real difference between metaphorically aiming an arrow or a gun at someone"
I hear that there's been a rise in archery crime. It's a serious concern in the US... :P

Meanwhile here in the UK I am pleased to say that we don't have freedom to harass and intentionally target vulnerable people. While there are issues with tabloid nonsense and the way it stirs people up, there aren't any really political authorities who are keen to support the EDL. I think people are now finally recognising that the Tea Party aren't just harmless idiots who can't spell. Still a video of them protesting healthcare reform showed very clearly that they were frighteningly unbalanced.

         __________________________________________________________________________

Yes, this entire post has been almost entirely made up of links to or from previous posts on my blog, but there is a reason for that. I'm pointing out that none of this stuff is new. The ridiculous over-the-top extremist views from the right-wing in America are not news. They've been there all this time. By putting Glenn Beck on television and having politicians like Sarah Palin who encourage these people, it's allowing right-wing extremists to seem like reasonable voices for unstable people.

Just as the idea of government-funded healthcare seemed to viewed as an ultra-liberal stance, I suspect that my proposal of how to deal with random shooters will be seen as, if anything, even more ultra-liberal. My solution is this: Make guns illegal. If you really want a gun license to have a proper purpose, give it to people who can justify needing a rifle. There is absolutely no justification for owning a handgun, never mind a semi-automatic weapon. They have no useful function.

And I'm sorry, but your constitution is not a holy document. I don't care what interpretation you might have of "the right to bear arms". Carrying a dangerous weapon in public should be illegal. Perhaps if it was unusual to see someone carrying a gun around the place, it would be easier to arrest those who have malign intentions. If someone were carrying a gun, you could arrest them. If someone's fingerprints were on a gun that would be reason enough to hold them in police custody. In such a scenario, would you really have a serious problem with gun nuts? It would severely limit the extent of the damage such people could cause when they went off the rails.

But yeah, what was I thinking eh? Americans need their guns in case the government tries to take away their freedom... *groan*

In case anyone hasn't heard of "In Heaven" (The 'Lady In the Radiator' song from the David Lynch movie 'Eraserhead') you can see the original here, or you can see a rather disturbing combination of the Pixies cover with scenes from the movie here or you can listen to the Pixies cover in the fairly tame vid under the cut. Decisions decisions, eh?
( Pixies vid under the cut.. )
So anyway, I saw the following vid of Glenn Beck on cyranothe2nd 's blog (see original entry here) and unsurprisingly they haven't posted it on atheism because it's the same typical BS we'd normally expect from the guy (though someone else has decided to put it there anyway, along with an explanation of where the children singing about Obama came from). After all this is guy who said that Obama has "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture" and then claimed it was an unfair attack on him to ask what he meant by 'white culture'. However, when I went through the various things that bothered me a particular line at the end reminded me why I object to the concept of a God so strongly.


Towards the end he says the following (at 3:55 in the video):

"Maybe we need to stop looking for more social justice and start looking at eternal justice."

Essentially this boils down to "let's stop worrying about making life better and instead focus on hell". And for Glenn Beck this also most likely means thinking about how much more comfortable he is than the poor while he's alive, followed by thinking about how much more comfortable he is than the damned once he's dead. As I said in the title, why bother when everything in heaven will be fine?

There's a classic section from Nietzsche where he explains this religious sentiment:

In my view, Dante was grossly in error when, with an ingenuity inspiring terror, he set that inscription over the gateway into his hell: “Eternal love also created me. Over the gateway into the Christian paradise and its “eternal blessedness” it would, in any event, be more fitting to let the inscription stand “Eternal hate also created me”—provided it’s all right to set a truth over the gateway to a lie! For what is the bliss of that paradise? . . . Perhaps we might have guessed that already, but it is better for it to be expressly described for us by an authority we cannot underestimate in such matters, Thomas Aquinas, the great teacher and saint:

And, to quote from Aquinas' own text as it is translated today rather than giving you Nietzsche's own translation:

Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned.

( More of my typical rants about Nietzsche. )

Asides from Nietzsche's philosophy, which has a big influence on me, another thing which came to mind when hearing this phrase from Glenn Beck was the beat poem "Dope" by Amiri Baraka (you can find the words of the poem here, but it's important to hear how it is read). If you are not used to beat poems you may find the beginning a little weird, but give it a couple of minutes and I think you'll find you get the hang of it:


And another thing... If Glenn Beck is upset by the "battle hymn of the republic" tune being misused, he'll be especially upset by the first song I linked the tune with: "He jumped from 40,000 feet without a parachute." The version of the song I recognise has lines like "they scraped him off the runway like a lump of strawberry jam", but it looks like the following is possibly an earlier version.