barbtries a blog: January 2011

barbtries a blog

Sunday, January 30, 2011

godwin's law on the mudflats today

revolution
the discussion starts out being about Egypt. then in the comments,
a comparison is made between rightwingers and nazis. good discussion
ensues. one point made is that the loudest people on the right - you
know, limbaugh, beck, palin, etc - and the right in general, have a
tendency to accuse the opposition of doing the very thing that they in
fact are doing themselves. demonization anyone?
a person mentioned hyperbole, and that it can be destructive,
particularly upon constant repetition. i said,
how true. i am still offended by the poet i heard reading
recently who said something about the squirrel she had “murdered”
the night before, when she unavoidably had run the creature over.
she then went on to quote a statistic in which she stated that
by the end of their career, train engineers had on average
“murdered” three people, when the statistic certainly refers
to accidents and suicides by train. my daughter was murdered,
and the meaning of the word is devalued when used as she used it.
and this was a woman whose stock in trade is words.
by the same token i am really disturbed that people like
palin, beck, limbaugh, oreilly etc have these stages and
microphones and platforms to spread lies and hate and
division endlessly without ever reflecting on the
effect of their words. or being held to account for
their words and the power their words have on less
able minded and thinking people.
why sow hate? what is the goal? will they ever be satisfied,
or will they always need enemies to jeer at? is there a positive
end in their world view? i don’t think so. particularly those
like palin who apparently believes that the second coming
of jesus is imminent and will be accompanied by an apocalyse
as supposedly prophesied in revelations.
i don’t think these people are contemplating or would be
supportive of final solutions (though haven’t people like ann
coulter suggested death to all muslims?). they do however seem
very comfortable with an “us” vs “them” mentality to the extent
that for most of them, even when President Obama does something
that is otherwise almost universally praiseworthy, they twist
themselves up like pretzels to find something to carp about.
the “wtf” SOTU?? beck apparently compared Obama’s citing of the
building blocks of the USA’s future success to the seven pillars
of Islam, and why? to make his low-information, high-volume
hating listeners, who have also apparently long since bought
into the muslim = hateful false equation, believe that
Obama either is muslim himself, or pandering to jihadists!
it is outrageous and that must be countered.

- posted by barbara @ 1/30/2011 02:42:00 AM 0 comments