If I recall correctly, bin Laden never personally highjacked a plane or killed anyone on American soil.
But we declared him our enemy anyway because of his inflammatory speeches and recruitment videos. He created an army that carried out his deeds based on his ideology and we considered him the most dangerous terrorist in the world. We even went to war to root that ideology out.
White supremacy isn’t insanity. The people who practice it are quite aware of their surroundings and reality. They aren’t undergoing a first break. They don’t have psychosis. They have personality disorders. There’s a big difference between doing something because you can’t help yourself and doing it because you want to make the world not better but more to your liking.
The latter is what makes white supremacists so much like Al Qaeda. Their targets are necessarily casualties on the path to their world. The fact that the dead had lives of their own and were sentient beings is not important. It’s better to think of them as rapists or an infestation or infidels and treat them accordingly.
We have too many assault rifles in this country that makes it easy to take the infection out.
And one bin Laden wannabe who is actively recruiting at every rally.
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Here’s an oldie but goodie from Dominic Crossan on the dangers of fundamentalism. This is the moment when evangelicals for Trump need to ask themselves whose side they are on:
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One another note: There were a lot of crazy people in nazi Germany too but for some reason, they killed mostly Jews.
For insane murderers, they were very discriminating.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
Excellent post RD, as usual. I just heard Mehdi Assan (sp) on Joy’s show say this: why can’t trump be impeached for inciting hatred, racism, violence and white nationalism? Works for me! And i do believe that list can be lengthened quite a bit if there is time.
There is abundant readily available evidence that could be collected, assembled, quantified and disseminated in days. It wouldn’t put him in jail, but it should amp up his disapproval rating and just might get him out of the oval and then on to jail hopefully of the Gitmo persuasion.
Oops, forgot to ask are you feeling these days? Are you finished with the chemo or just on hiatus? Did you ever find a place to recharge for a few days?
Hey thanks for asking. I finished chemo. I turned out to be one of those super responders. My thing shrank to almost nothing. But I’m waiting for the results of all my scans to see what the next step is.
No, I haven’t found a place to recharge yet. But I think I will take a week in September to go to the beach even if I have to just take a tent with me. It looks like I will need to take a tent with me.
How about Cape May? Assuming they allow liqour now?
Cape May is a very nice place. I’ve been there a couple of times. But I live in PA now and I’d just as soon avoid NJ, if you know what I mean.
Plus, I have had the equivalent of a couple of beers spread out over the last 8 months. Who knows, the success of my chemo may be attributable partially to not overloading my liver or surrounding my misbehaving cells with alcohol.
I’m thinking outer banks or myrtle beach.
I just don’t want you to get stuck in a hurricane again.
Neither do I. But I don’t like crowded, over developed beaches with boardwalks and shops. Not my idea of a good beach. In fact, myrtle has that “too many buildings” feel to it as well. Delaware brings back bad memories. New Jersey is just too crowded.
You should check out Sunset Beach. It is north of Myrtle Beach and much nicer. Myrtle Beach is a major Trumper area. Outer Banks are nice but if you have to bring a tent, it will get blown over. Believe me. I know. I have been camping in the Outer Banks and the wind really is too strong there to camp unless you have one of those deluxe campers.
Kagami is pleased. https://i.imgur.com/05lct6i.gif
Thank you, thank you! {{taking bow}}
The jury is still out as to whether I’m completely out of the woods but the chemo was surprisingly effective for me. My results made the rounds with the nurses and technicians before even I knew about them and they’re all impressed. I am very lucky and I have a very insightful oncologist.
Keep your fingers crossed that this is almost over.
We’ve been keeping them crossed…
going to the beach is a must…
hurry up!
Congratulations. That is great news.
I hope your recovery is complete and your remission permanent.
Congratulations on the A+ chemo result but who among us is surprised that you are a “super responder?” Oh, and “My thing shrank to almost nothing,’ can be a terrifying sentence out of context!
My neighbor goes to Lewes, DE and she loves it. Ever been? I think it is near Cape May so nice area.
Last vacation with a total week at the beach was at Bethany beach Delaware in 2011. It was a complete disaster. Never take a crazy rabidly homophobic relative with you on vacation where there may be gay couples. You will never hear the end of it. 4.5 hours down and back in the car with her going on and on about it. {{shudder}}. I really mean it when I say north or South Carolina.
So there are beaches without gay couples? I have never been to Lewes but anyone i have met who has been was impressed with it, gay couples never being mentioned as an issue. I have never been. The Carolinas are lovely of course but too long a drive for me. Do you need a beach that permits tents? I hope your favorite republican will be with you…
The event that triggered the beach vacation was a yearly family reunion of a person who married my uncle. She wasn’t the crazy relative. She was the one who had gay relatives who were bringing their spouses and kids. The crazy relative was apoplectic because she was told to “zip it! Zip it good!” about their lifestyle. It was not pretty. The crazy relative had to channel her frustration and anger on innocent bystanders. It was a completely miserable experience.
RD, I am glad that you have done so well through treatment. You have even managed to maintain what I think is your basic optimism and good humor.
You must have at least a week off just listening to the sound of the waves, walking along the beach, drinking a glass or two of lemonade, and maybe reading a few novels.
You would think.
Your assertion that “bin Laden never personally hijacked a plane” detracts from your usual high standard of credibility. It’s been a pretty well established fact that bin Laden masterminded the 9/11 attacks. So to say that bin Laden didn’t personally hijack a plane is a misleading statement to say the least. Of course all the actual hijackers were killed when the four hijacked airliners crashed. But they didn’t come up with this idea or find their logistical support by themselves.
See for example, https://www.britannica.com/topic/9-11-Commission.
So of course the United States was exactly right to go after bin Laden and al Qaeda. But Cheney and W went horribly, horribly, wrong, in attacking Iraq and in fostering an atmosphere that engendered anti Islamic hatred. As you say,all of this played directly into the hands of Arab extremists. And many informed people knew at the time that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 — and had no motive to attack the US in such a fashion.
Cheney should have conducted himself as if al Qaeda was a criminal gang that happened to target the United States, which in my view is all it ever was. By making al Qaeda into an “enemy” that was portrayed as America’s worthy adversary, or very nearly as a state level actor, the US elevated al Qeda’s status in the eyes of the extremists and yes, foolishly helped Qaeda’s recruiting, big time.
Even more galling to me is the fact that were it not for Cheney’s bungling, US and British forces could have caught bin Laden in Afghanistan after forcing bin Laden out of its mountain base in Tora Bora early in the Afghan War. The military was on the point of surrounding al Qaeda and Cheney told Bush and the Pentagon not to allow the necessary reinforcements to move into position. Just maybe, if Cheney had let the military do its job then, there would have been a great rationale to leave Afghanistan when the job was done — and NO reason to attack Iraq.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-14190032
Um, I don’t think we are in disagreement about anything. 🤔
Ironically, we were unlucky to win the 1991 war with Iraq so easily.
Our easy victory caused a certain faction among our elites to decide that the Iraqis were pushovers; all we needed was an excuse that would stand up in the eyes of the world, and we could invade and occupy Iraq, install a puppet government, and take all that lovely petroleum, dirt cheap.
That was the primary purpose of the torture–what it’s always for; to produce false confessions, to produce the excuse to invade Iraq.
So, we waltzed in, and got our heads handed to us, because lo and behold, when Iraqis are fighting for their country, their families, their faith, and other things they ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT, rather than for a dictator’s ambitions, they fight one hell of a lot harder and more effectively.
Experienced soldiers could have told them that people fight harder in defense of other people and things which they actually love, but, of course, most of the Baby Bush gang were chickenhawks.
If our country had a sizable number of murderous left-wing extremists slaughtering Rethugs and their wealthy backers–stochastically inspired by hate sites, and hate videos on Facebook and YouTube and their ilk–our country would soon have the strongest gun restrictions and hate speech restrictions on this planet.
Upps posted this tweet from Gloria S, works for me.
It’s a trenchant thought, but intended more for irony than any solution. There are now hundreds of millions of guns in our country, and millions of sick people who own them. Why any halfway normal person would buy an assault weapon is incomprehensible to me. Why anyone would sell assault weapons is also unfathomable. That so many people want all these assault weapons to be sold, is a reflection of American insanity. This was not the way it was here until the NRA came along. And then of course we have the President goading people into this killing, giving them a perverted identity and cause. If the Founders had any ccnception of what their Amendment on well-regulated militias would lead to, it would never have been written. They were just afraid of a government which would have all the guns. Now the madmen have them all, and they are not single-shot muskets which have to be reloaded for a minute before firing again. Assault weapons must be banned, and then rounded up, confiscated and melted down. But the latter itwo are never going to happen. It’s more likely that no one is going to want to be in law enforcement any longer., and then we have 18th Century England before the police were formed, but with assault weapons in everybody;s hands. The only possible step we have, is to defeat Republicans en masse in every precinct.
With regard to England, there was a very unfortunately short-lived series called “City of Vice,” just superb, with incredible sets. The aristocrats did not like the idea of a police force, so there were none; and London was a place where you literally could not walk down the street without being coshed and robbed or worse. The great novelist Henry Fielding and his brother somehow managed to use their influence to sway a few members of Parliament to allocate the funds for what was England’s first police force, but it was no easy task to start and maintain it.
Two things to add: First, nothing whatsoever that Trump says about this (or anything) has any value. He will never sign any legislation which limits gun sales. He will toss in his word salad about it is mental illness which pulls the trigger, when it just means that he will never do anything about the actual guns, will never do anything which the NRA, which he is joined with, does not want. Second, the media keeps talking about “motives,” “police have not yet found that race was a motive in the Dayton shooting.” And? Does this really matter? Some psychotic person with access to assault weapons decides to kill as many people as he can. Was it because of his frustration with life? His hatred of “others”? His insane need to make some kind of a statement before he is inevitably killed? Maybe all of those. Parsing through the motives has never gotten us anywhere, as long as the ability to purchase and own assault weapons is out there. It is a misdirection, some kind of misplaced feeling that if we can only find the “cause” of a mass shooting, we can prevent more of them. The cause is the guns. There have always been psychotic people, but most of them did not have assault weapons.
NRA = Nefarious Russian Auxiliaries 😈