[BartSimpson]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Comparing the killers young victims to Nazis--or defending such a comparison--is not lamenting.

Can we just say that Beck had an attack of verbal diarrhea and let it go? I'm sure if Beck had put an iota of thought into what he blurted out he would not have said it.

Forgive me in this, but conservatives are trying to wrap our heads around this event just as much as you folks are and we find ourselves trying to fathom the unfathomable.

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Comparing the killers young victims to Nazis--or defending such a comparison--is not lamenting.

Can we just say that Beck had an attack of verbal diarrhea and let it go? I'm sure if Beck had put an iota of thought into what he blurted out he would not have said it.

Forgive me in this, but conservatives are trying to wrap our heads around this event just as much as you folks are and we find ourselves trying to fathom the unfathomable.

Oh bullshit.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Isn't it ironic that the people who have spent the past century deconstructing morality and Western Civilization...leftists...are the very ones being victimized by what they have wrought?

See my tag line...

They wrought this? Unbefuckinglievable. You're as bad as Beck here, blaming the victim. I've always admired your ability to spin the bullshit, but this is going too far. As I asked before, did you nod your head sagely when people were coming out with "explanations" for 9/11. And all the other tighty righties on this forum are keeping curiously stumm. If a lefty had said something like Bart here, the howling would rise to the heavens.

[Canadian_Mind]

andyt andyt:

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Comparing the killers young victims to Nazis--or defending such a comparison--is not lamenting.

Can we just say that Beck had an attack of verbal diarrhea and let it go? I'm sure if Beck had put an iota of thought into what he blurted out he would not have said it.

Forgive me in this, but conservatives are trying to wrap our heads around this event just as much as you folks are and we find ourselves trying to fathom the unfathomable.

Oh bullshit.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Isn't it ironic that the people who have spent the past century deconstructing morality and Western Civilization...leftists...are the very ones being victimized by what they have wrought?

See my tag line...

They wrought this? Unbefuckinglievable. You're as bad as Beck here, blaming the victim. I've always admired your ability to spin the bullshit, but this is going too far. As I asked before, did you nod your head sagely when people were coming out with "explanations" for 9/11. And all the other tighty righties on this forum are keeping curiously stumm. If a lefty had said something like Bart here, the howling would rise to the heavens.

I don't think Bart is outright blaming the slain kids for the mistakes of the leftist governments of the past. I think what he is getting at is that left-leaning policies of western governments that are now leading to cultural integration/assimilation/gentrification problems. It's a bitter irony that the victims of this culture-based attack were at a left-leaning camp. I hope the man who killed all these kids rots.

[andyt]

Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:

I don't think Bart is outright blaming the slain kids for the mistakes of the leftist governments of the past. I think what he is getting at is that left-leaning policies of western governments that are now leading to cultural integration/assimilation/gentrification problems. It's a bitter irony that the victims of this culture-based attack were at a left-leaning camp. I hope the man who killed all these kids rots.

Just like the US's foreign policy led to 9/11 and they only have themselves to blame? You mean if those dirty Norwegian lefties weren't pursuing the policies they were elected to follow then this tighty righty wouldn't have to go around killing their kids? Nice one. Or if the policies of the Canadian government had been to not send our troops to Afghanistan, then the Taliban would not have had to kill any of them?

How is it ironic that the kids were in a left-leaning camp if it's a right winger that's doing the killing? Do you understand the meaning of the term ironic at all? (Hint: if he had inadvertently blown up a meeting of these "Knights Templars" that would be ironic.) Gotta love the wry humor of that Breivik alright.

[CommanderSock]

Proculation Proculation:

CommanderSock CommanderSock:

If you read many US, or rightwing forums you'll notice that "demonizing liberals as sub human destroyers of western civilization" is a common theme. The demonization of the left is a common thread on the blogospheres. Libs are no angels but I've seldom seen the left feel like it needs to take up arms for any cause.

The immigration acts adopted across western nations are considered genocide against whites by many wing nuts blogs/forums. This sort of silly thinking is what has allowed a crazy psycho every once in a while to try and take things into his own hands.

His manifesto speaks for itself.

You're kidding, right ?

1 Word: Vitriol.

Question: who's the angriest, left or right?

[Thanos]

Has anyone else ever noticed just how existentially stupid most of these terrorist "patriots" actually are? Whether it's Breivik, Tim McVeigh, the KKK, or whatever other supremacist assholes are out there, with their grotesque over-reaction that takes the form of unjustifiable violence against helpless civilian targets they almost always end up turning the vast, vast majority of their intended audience (with the notable exception of the shti-stains of the Glenn Beck and Pat Buchanan ilk) against them. Ironically, by shooting a bunch of mostly white kids in order to trigger an anti-immigrant uprising of European nativist sentiment, Breivik probably managed to kill any serious discussion about Muslim immigration to Europe for the next ten years. He actually ends up damaging (if not outright destroying the very issue that he claimed he wanted to be prioritize. By becoming a mass murderer he probably ensured that the flood of undesirable or outright dangerous immigrants preaching jihad and compulsory sharia law will increase and not decrease as liberal European governments fall all over themselves to prove that "see, everything's wonderful here, there's no danger to immigrants, you can do whatever you want whenever you want and we won't stop you or even make a small noise in protest against you".

Sigh. The middle of the road, and moderacy in all things under the sun, is the only usable surface. The extremes of left and right are in the gutters.

[andyt]

Thanos Thanos:

Ironically, by shooting a bunch of mostly white kids in order to trigger an anti-immigrant uprising of European nativist sentiment, Breivik probably managed to kill any serious discussion about Muslim immigration to Europe for the next ten years. He actually ends up damaging (if not outright destroying the very issue that he claimed he wanted to be prioritize. By becoming a mass murderer he probably ensured that the flood of undesirable or outright dangerous immigrants preaching jihad and compulsory sharia law will increase and not decrease as liberal European governments fall all over themselves to prove that "see, everything's wonderful here, there's no danger to immigrants, you can do whatever you want whenever you want and we won't stop you or even make a small noise in protest against you".

See, Bart, Canadian Mind, Thanos gets irony. I'm sure in any discussion about immigration the Breivik specter will be raised, or if some Muslims are trying to push thru sharia law or such.

[Canadian_Mind]

What do you think we were getting at Andy?

Thanos, thanks for spelling it out for him.

[andyt]

Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:

What do you think we were getting at Andy?

Thanos, thanks for spelling it out for him.

If you think this

Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:

I think what he is getting at is that left-leaning policies of western governments that are now leading to cultural integration/assimilation/gentrification problems. It's a bitter irony that the victims of this culture-based attack were at a left-leaning camp. I hope the man who killed all these kids rots.

has the same meaning as this:

Thanos Thanos:

Ironically, by shooting a bunch of mostly white kids in order to trigger an anti-immigrant uprising of European nativist sentiment, Breivik probably managed to kill any serious discussion about Muslim immigration to Europe for the next ten years. He actually ends up damaging (if not outright destroying the very issue that he claimed he wanted to be prioritize. By becoming a mass murderer he probably ensured that the flood of undesirable or outright dangerous immigrants preaching jihad and compulsory sharia law will increase and not decrease as liberal European governments fall all over themselves to prove that "see, everything's wonderful here, there's no danger to immigrants, you can do whatever you want whenever you want and we won't stop you or even make a small noise in protest against you".

Then you are one confused little man. But then someone who can in post one say the same thing that set Brock off on a rant at Proculation, and in the very next post say they agree with Brock would be confused. You're doing it again here with trying to claim that Bart and Thanos are saying the same thing.

[Proculation]

CommanderSock CommanderSock:

Proculation Proculation:

CommanderSock CommanderSock:

If you read many US, or rightwing forums you'll notice that "demonizing liberals as sub human destroyers of western civilization" is a common theme. The demonization of the left is a common thread on the blogospheres. Libs are no angels but I've seldom seen the left feel like it needs to take up arms for any cause.

The immigration acts adopted across western nations are considered genocide against whites by many wing nuts blogs/forums. This sort of silly thinking is what has allowed a crazy psycho every once in a while to try and take things into his own hands.

His manifesto speaks for itself.

You're kidding, right ?

1 Word: Vitriol.

Question: who's the angriest, left or right?

Both extremes are. But frankly, in Quebec, it's clear it's the left. While people on the right are working to pay the bills, students, unions, pressure groups, anarchists, etc are in the street breaking things.

[BartSimpson]

This is not a response to anyone, just a post:

Forty years ago the left was on the fringes of society and they were effectively censored in many places. Some of those folks found themselves committing acts of terror and they wrote of needing to kill millions of people...Obama's mentor William Ayres is a fine example of this.

Forty years later and the impacts of the left now dominate in our culture. William Ayres, for example, went from being on the FBI's ten most wanted list to being on the White House guest list.

And the shoe is on the other foot. It's the conservatives who've been shunted aside in the culture. Shit, I lost a job offer recently because of my posts that support a point of view on gun rights that's unpopular with liberals. This kid Breivik in his manifesto rails at political correctness and that's the same thing that has come to the point that people in Canada get sent to jail for voicing unpopular ideas. Granted, this Breivik is a mass murderer, but I'm not dismissing him as entirely insane.

Call it my life experience, but I've found that everyone has a threshold at which they break. Some people break far easier than others and Breivik, frankly, shares that with William Ayres.

Thanos speaks of moderation and moderation is a two way street. Right now I hear a lot of folks calling on conservatives to 'compromise' on their principles yet where's the compromise coming from the other side? See, when you essentially control the debate you don't have to compromise. And the prevailing leftist atmosphere in the culture that encompasses even supposedly conservative political parties assumes that it is the correct point of view and that any compromise has to come from the opposition.

The debt ceiling debate in the USA is a good example. One side wants the spending to stop and they're being denounced even by members of their own party as extremists who need to embrace compromise. So far, the best 'compromise' I've seen offered (The Reid plan) is one that effects a sincere cut in spending twenty-three years from now.

I recall a comment on compromise once upon a time:

A man is beating on another man with a baseball bat. The victim who wants him to stop is denounced as an extremist because the assailant did, after all, offer to slow down on the beating in the spirit of compromise.

Amy Winehouse also comes to mind as a timely example. Her uncompromising friends and family wanted her to completely quit drugs and she said, "No, no, no" and managed to make it all look like a joke...until she died.

In any case, we don't see leftism as an extreme any more because so much of it has become endemic. Norway is extremely leftist compared to even Canada and think about what that means to people who don't share the love of leftism that most Norwegians accept and tolerate. They're shoved off onto the sidelines of society and many of them are unable to find employment...something I find myself appreciating.

What do you do?

So I am not 'blaming the victims' as some folks would like to say in order to shame me into silence. I am, however, noting that in turning the tables on the right it is the left who are now The Establishment and there's people on the right who have no place in the Utopia that well-meaning liberals would force on them.

With Breivik I am also pointing out that there is an irony in that he is devoid of the morality that is the very underpinning of the traditional European culture he pines away for. Here he is writing a 1500 page manifesto on the ills of the amoral liberal society and he makes of himself an example of amorality because he is ultimately a creature of the society he attacked.

I don't think he understands that his actions simultaneously illustrate his points about his society and that his actions also make him a penultimate hypocrite.

You simply cannot defend morality with an immoral act. Yet the absence of morality in Breivik's psyche also bears out a premise of his on the absence of morality.

Going forward we need to ask how we can give kids an example of moral people when it seems our collective culture anymore revels in deconstructing moral examples? How do we tell kids that Breivik was absolutely wrong when we as a society have denounced absolutes as the dominion of bigots and the narrow minded?

With that last question I'm left to wonder how many kids these days are not horrified by what Breivik did?

[Thanos]

It's the same thing on the conservative side where supporters decry immorality in the personal lives of others, or go on endlessly about the evils of Hollywood/rock 'n' roll'/TV/video games/etc.. And then they go out of teh way to have things like books banned and thus remove the right of others to examine and make up their own minds. Yet, when something like corporate crime occurs, they fall completely silent. Or they enthusiastically elect pre-bought politicians, like the current crop of GOP Congressmen, or Rick Scott, or Scott Walker, or John Kasich, whose main goal despite all the financial fraud and criminality and wanton business-related environmental destruction that keeps occurring, is to get rid of as many regulations and public safeguards as possible.

They tried, and failed, to put Roger Clemens in jail for using steroids and lying about it to a Congressional committee, because they're law-n-order tough guys and Clemens like, y'know, sort of hurt America's feelings by juicing up. But not a single banker or financial whiz-kid who were all directly responsible for a world-wide economic disaster that nearly collapsed into a second Great Depression, and then clearly lied about to Congress, was ever in danger of being prosecuted or imprisoned. The next time that someone says that it's the free-for-all attitude of the 1960's that ruining everything, just gently remind them next time they bring up the "collapse of society is all the liberal's fault" that the exact same destructive recklessness runs rampant throughout the ranks of the conservatives too these days. And that it can cause just as much damage, or even moreso, than any of the nonsense the hippies ever dreamed up did.

BTW, did anyone else also notice that the same sort of rightwingers who got on side with Beck and Pat Buchanan on what Breivik did also come from the identical political strain that cheered when the Kent State/National Guard shootings happened about forty years ago? In that the response still got boiled down to "they're just a bunch of fucking Commies, so they deserved it"? Kind of a really old and grouchy monster that we're dealing with on this one, folks.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

But not a single banker or financial whiz-kid who were all directly responsible for a world-wide economic disaster that nearly collapsed into a second Great Depression, and then clearly lied about to Congress, was ever in danger of being prosecuted or imprisoned.

Obama's been President since noon on January 20th, 2009 and at any time in the past 2 1/2 years he could've appointed a special prosecutor to go after the criminals on Wall Street. And in the first two years of his term he had a Democrat majority in both houses of Congress to back him up on that. Which reminds me, those hearings at which the Wall Street guys lied? Yeah, those were chaired by Democrats.

So you were saying?

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

the Kent State/National Guard shootings

The universal lesson there was not to throw rocks at people who have guns.

[Dragon-Dancer]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

This is not a response to anyone, just a post:
And the shoe is on the other foot. It's the conservatives who've been shunted aside in the culture. Shit, I lost a job offer recently because of my posts that support a point of view on gun rights that's unpopular with liberals. This kid Breivik in his manifesto rails at political correctness and that's the same thing that has come to the point that people in Canada get sent to jail for voicing unpopular ideas. Granted, this Breivik is a mass murderer, but I'm not dismissing him as entirely insane.

Fined for hate speech when applicable perhaps but jailed? I've not heard of such a thing happening.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Thanos speaks of moderation and moderation is a two way street. Right now I hear a lot of folks calling on conservatives to 'compromise' on their principles yet where's the compromise coming from the other side? See, when you essentially control the debate you don't have to compromise. And the prevailing leftist atmosphere in the culture that encompasses even supposedly conservative political parties assumes that it is the correct point of view and that any compromise has to come from the opposition.

Compromise /is/ a two way street but with the level of polarization in politics these days it's becoming very difficult to get anything done when neither side will even be remotely civil with one another.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

In any case, we don't see leftism as an extreme any more because so much of it has become endemic. Norway is extremely leftist compared to even Canada and think about what that means to people who don't share the love of leftism that most Norwegians accept and tolerate. They're shoved off onto the sidelines of society and many of them are unable to find employment...something I find myself appreciating.

Thinking changes, the predominant view of the world around us does in response. Some people can't accept that the world of today is no longer the world of 30 years ago and they alienate themselves far more than any real distinction of left vs right. Some of these people also let their actions be dictated by fear. I can't take his manifesto seriously because it's clearly motivated by fear.

I've been in the position of refusing to hire a few people because of what I found they had posted online. If they had been a bit more careful maybe it would not have come to that but when you're facing a large stack of applications you use whatever you can to narrow the field.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

So I am not 'blaming the victims' as some folks would like to say in order to shame me into silence. I am, however, noting that in turning the tables on the right it is the left who are now The Establishment and there's people on the right who have no place in the Utopia that well-meaning liberals would force on them.

That may not have been what you meant but it certainly seemed to came across that way. The timing and the tone of the post was such that this was the impression it left on some of us.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Going forward we need to ask how we can give kids an example of moral people when it seems our collective culture anymore revels in deconstructing moral examples? How do we tell kids that Breivik was absolutely wrong when we as a society have denounced absolutes as the dominion of bigots and the narrow minded?

People can live more or less moral lives without needing to be bogged down by absolutes. The world is a patchwork of grey not black or white as some would have us believe. The whole concept of morality suffers from the fact that there isn't just one interpretation of what is and isn't moral.