Random Politics & Religion #14

Parallels are parallels. They used propaganda against the press calling them liars and we have a current President-elect who likes to call the media dishonest.

Dishonesty, lying; horse by another name.

The path to hell is paved with the best of intentions. Students of history read the signs and the writing on the wall and are going yep we've seen this before and the destination is not fun.

You can draw "parallel" comparisons to Hitler with some of any party's views, or with practically any politician. That's why it's such a stupid argument. When we get someone who actually wants to be a dictator or commit genocide, then we can draw comparisons that are valid instead of this ridiculous fearmongering.

If I didn't laugh at this the terrorists would win.

I'm up for the cause boss just tell me where the Jews are !

Over here:

No way a Jew in Hollywood...well that would explain a lot...ponders kosher deli's...

If you look closely you can find Waldo...who is also a Jew !

Yeah, okay, but let's be realistic here.

You cannot call for the registration and public tracking/surveillance of people of a specific religion without immediately drawing a direct parallel. Even if you walk it back subsequently to people who originated outside the country. He did not say "everyone from Syria" or "everyone from Saudi Arabia" or anywhere else originally.

And now his advisors are citing some very ugly pieces of American history as precedent to do these things?

These are not things you can do and expect to not field comparisons to some very ugly historical figures. You can still say them. Even propose them with the absolute best intentions. But you had better god damn well have a strategy for explaining why it is in no way like the behaviors and activities of a certain Nationalistic regime of the early half of the twentieth century.

This is one thing I am actually sure of.

Apropos to this, an important message from the Pythons:

No! registering immigrants and shoving them into ovens aint the same *** ballpark...it aint the same league!...it aint even the same *** sport!....

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/21/alt-right-conference-richard-spencer-white-nationalists

Everyone from born agaain evangelicals to the reagan democrats are trying to claim that THEY ALONE were instramental to the Trump victory... and that they should threrefore get the choicest seat closest to the solid gold and marble "altar of sacrifice" we're replacing the fireplace in the whitehouse with....

but everyone knows the only real reason we won is the democrats didn't bother to show up... due to laziness, apathy and boredom.

1. It's the Guardian. I'm not saying the author is lying, but it's not exactly a bastion of unbiased reporting.
2. It doesn't refute Ramyrez's post. Nobody is arguing that there aren't some terrible people in the alt-right, but there are terrible people everywhere. Fringe groups naturally flock to anything mainstream that they can attach themselves to in order to spread their message.

It's been a busy weekend for me, trying to do some reading here and there.

There's a hell of a lot to digest in this alt right stuff.

There's a lot of really, really terrible ***here. But I will say a lot of it reminds me exactly of how hate groups tend to recruit people.

Skinheads rarely if ever find members but walking up to people and go "We hate blacks. Do you hate blacks too? Let's go kill some ***' n****s!"

They do it by providing a friendly community for their target recruit, bringing them in warmly, and then commiserating about problems. And then, once a friendship is formed, that's when they begin projecting their problems on a target race/class/whatever and all of a sudden what your new friend is saying makes a lot of sense, and suddenly you realize that, "Yeah. I do hate those motherfuckin' (insert your target here). They're messing up our country!"

But the thing is, that's not to say that the problems people face aren't real, and many times people recruited into shitty causes were as much victims of circumstance and a few bad decisions as many who go down the wrong paths in all kinds of ways.

I do find some of the ideas I'm seeing forwarded as having some validity though frequently lacking, as I noted before, practicality.

Tribalism is gone. It's done, it's over, it's not coming back. Like it or not we're a global community now without nuclear holocaust Fallout-style.

I would propose that the end of this article indicates that the author hasn't learn a damn thing -- due to fear, disgust for the subject matter, or whatever other reason -- from his experience. Because he ascribes the attendees' views to their racism, not the other way around.

The sentiments expressed are surely racist and pretty ignorant. But the thing is, in doing this the author has rejected an entire series of life events that has led these people to feel this way, and in doing so you're not going to get anywhere with anybody.

LOL!

wow I almost died laughing. thanks remo, first smile that's been put on my face all day.

You're welcome...?

Perhaps I was too vague in that statement. >.<

Something that starts as a fringe idea and moves to mainstream usage....is no longer fringe.

Whether it is the same idea or has morphed into something new is up for debate. But 'alt-right' was fringe and is now in mainstream usage.

As to theguardian, every news organization and journalist has a bias. If you want to views the actual speeches from the conference rather than interviews of attendents you can visit the National policy Institute website, they are available for free.

Yeah. Some of the actual quotes from these guys are painful.

Anything for "The Cause". The men must be put in their place and "The Patriarchy" smashed! That's the kind of ***that makes people roll their eyes at "Feminism".

Are there homo sapiens involved? If so then tribalism is alive and in full effect. People identify themselves with a particular color / team / group / clique / tribe and then afterward are extremely biased towards any offending color / team / group / clique / tribe.

Which is a good point.

I'm not sure explaining to JP that living in a tropical environment would also require people to think "how to do this..." if that would change his mind on the races brain evolution. That maybe it is a bad theory all around.

It would be nice if someone did it without resorting to dismissing his ideas/questions. However, the likelyhood of a) him actually listening to the explanation and b) someone calmly explaining it, is not likely to happen.

Yeah. I said that extremely poorly within context of the word's use.

What I meant was there's no going back to small group, small society living on a large scale across the board. Great as it'd be in some ways.

I don't agree with you about the degree of fringeness™ of the alt-right, but let's assume you're right. Who is giving them media coverage beyond what is warranted, all in an attempt to make them appear like a larger problem than they actually are? If the alt-right is now mainstream, it was forced there to push a narrative.

And yet "One World Government" type approaches don't work either. Every single centralization of power results in that power attempting to perpetuate and insulate itself. This is why every single "Single Party Government", aka Communism, has failed and resulted in a brutal authoritarian regime.

What I find truly fascinating is the ability of liberals to blind themselves in order to support a cause they were told is "Good". Take immigration, liberals want mass amnesty and citizenship status granted to the millions of illegal aliens in the USA. Don't attempt to deflect, that is exactly the goal of the Democrat party and for pretty obvious political reasons. Now the same people who demand this, also like to point at the "European Socialist Countries" as examples, yet those same countries also have very strong protections against illegal aliens. Notably they deport any and all illegal residents they can get find. Their own citizens will tip off their immigration where they show up, arrest, detain and then deport.

I've asked my Swedish friends "what would you do if 100,000 Pakistanis had jumped across your border and were living in your cities and on your glorious social system". And the answer is always to deport them. See most countries take their immigration and citizenship status very seriously, yet somehow the USA is expected to ignore that and just accept all Hispanics with open arms regardless of immigration status, because they would make great Democrat voters. Every illegal alien has broken a federal law because it's illegal to bypass the border agents and enter the country without inspection (that's the actual term for it). The only people who can claim amnesty are the ones brought in as juveniles because they were not responsible for that action.

That being said, your immigration system is broken as *** right now because decades of band-aids and ill-conceived ventures. Right now immigration involves several different federal agencies all not-working together and thus the process takes forever. USCIS, NVC, DHS and various consuls all have to file paperwork with each other to get a single approved application. So yeah we need a new immigration system that's faster at determining Yes / No on giving Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) status, aka green card.

We need major immigration reform. I don't think total Amnesty is a good decision but we shouldn't just deport every illegal. I agree with Trumps approach of deporting Criminals, but this is something that has been done for quite awhile now.

The Wall also isn't that bad of an idea, the biggest problem is building it. If anything the Wall will help Mexico by making them deal with their problems but that is nothing but baseless speculation on my part.

In general though, we do need immigration reform. I have been through the process with my wife (twice) and we our application was denied one time because we missed a meeting. We had written the date down wrong and called that very day to apologize and attempt to reschedule. They immediately cancelled. The second time we hired a lawyer (who gave us a huge discount) and the process was easy but still took about 6 months (First time it took about a year). The process needs to be streamlined and turn around times need to take a matter of a days not months or in some case years. Technology has advanced really far, so I see no reason why a background check, psyche eval and other things couldn't happen quickly.

The limits and statutes on immigration reform won't change as long as congress is red. They benefit from immigrants not being able to vote.

I think an complete open door policy takes a bit away from America though but that is simply just my nationalistic feels. But America has always been about accepting immigrants and making them our citizens, I mean we are an immigrant nation.

Fukushima is about to get hit with another tsunami...7.3 magnitude and the tsunami warnings are out

7.3 magnitude earthquake off the shore is what I meant