# I forget, do we have a general HurricaneDitka Pit thread? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 6, 2018, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952 "2018-01-06T00:15:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/21 "2018-01-11T16:17:35Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > Did you just call Andy4eyes a racist? I seriously doubt that is anywhere near the case. That’s not how I interpreted what he said. I took it as something like “quit making everything about race!” ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/22 "2018-01-11T16:28:31Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Sympathizing with/supporting a white supremacist mass murderer _is_ “looking at things through a racial lens”, whether one realizes it or not. He didn’t sign on to agree with McVeigh’s entire worldview. He was discussing McVeigh’s bombing, which AFAICT was primarily motivated by anti-government views and not white supremacism. Which is certainly what HD seemed to be assuming, at any rate, because the Waco incident had nothing to do with White supremacism. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/23 "2018-01-11T16:35:21Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > [Cite](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20716465&postcount=165) > > I’m speechless > > First, I don’t have much sympathy for the guys at Waco. Ruby Ridge was a disaster, but shit happens sometimes. Neither, under any circumstances or any view of the facts, justify OK City Federal Building bombing. Ya know, I’ve always been okay with HD, but, wow. That really shades my opinion quite a bit. ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/24 "2018-01-11T16:40:36Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > He didn’t sign on to agree with McVeigh’s entire worldview. He was discussing McVeigh’s bombing, which AFAICT was primarily motivated by anti-government views and not white supremacism. Which is certainly what HD seemed to be assuming, at any rate, because the Waco incident had nothing to do with White supremacism. Occam’s Razor says the answer is trolling. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/25 "2018-01-11T16:54:22Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > He didn’t sign on to agree with McVeigh’s entire worldview. He was discussing McVeigh’s bombing, which AFAICT was primarily motivated by anti-government views and not white supremacism. Which is certainly what HD seemed to be assuming, at any rate, because the Waco incident had nothing to do with White supremacism. IMO, ignoring or failing to see open white supremacism is just as much “looking at things through a racial lens” as pointing it out. But trolling seems just as likely to me, based on various other posts of his that strike me as probable trolling. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/26 "2018-01-11T16:56:14Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > He didn’t sign on to agree with McVeigh’s entire worldview. He was discussing McVeigh’s bombing, which AFAICT was primarily motivated by anti-government views and not white supremacism. Which is certainly what HD seemed to be assuming, at any rate, because the Waco incident had nothing to do with White supremacism. Aside from that Mrs Lincoln, how was the play? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/27 "2018-01-11T17:08:22Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I hope no one tries to get him to explain this. No good is going to come from that. Best to not feed. > [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > He didn’t sign on to agree with McVeigh’s entire worldview. He was discussing McVeigh’s bombing, which AFAICT was primarily motivated by anti-government views and not white supremacism. Which is certainly what HD seemed to be assuming, at any rate, because the Waco incident had nothing to do with White supremacism. Like I said-- no good is going to come from this. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/28 "2018-01-11T17:31:09Z")
I agree that any of our resident right-wingers who want to try defending Tim McVeigh aren’t going to have that work out so well for them. And limiting yourself to defending the defenders of Tim McVeigh? That isn’t going to work so well either. Playing defense attorney for admirers of Tim McVeigh is a fool’s errand. This isn’t a court of law, Tim McVeigh’s admirers aren’t your clients, you do not have a professional obligation to zealously defend them. Let the people who admire Tim McVeigh defend themselves. You don’t have to do it for them. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/29 "2018-01-11T17:53:20Z")
I don’t know that HD is an admirer of TM, having merely said that his actions were not an “entirely unreasonable reaction”. But leaving that aside, I’ve not defended HD - I’ve simply disputed a racial interpretation of his words. I realize this may be too nuanced for certain people here, and am not inclined to repeat this over and over again, so I’ll probably leave it at this. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/30 "2018-01-11T18:02:11Z")
If McVeigh had been a large-scale vandal, or hacked into government systems and scrambled thousands of man-hours of work, or similar, then perhaps one could have a reasonable discussion about whether his actions were in any way reasonable. But he was a mass murderer of men, women, and children – and white supremacism (in particular the Turner Diaries, based on my reading) was fundamental to his ideology. It’s both unreasonable to feel that the bombing was in any way reasonable, and it’s unreasonable to believe that it didn’t have anything to do with white supremacism. IMO. But I’ll put the likelihood that he’s trolling as just as high as the likelihood he’s a tolerator or sympathizer of white supremacism. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/31 "2018-01-11T18:24:53Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > It’s both unreasonable to feel that the bombing was in any way reasonable, and it’s unreasonable to believe that it didn’t have anything to do with white supremacism. IMO. I don’t see where the latter follows, honestly. It’s possible to believe terrorism is an understandable response to Waco without believing in the racist ideologies of the particular terrorist who did it. The opinion is repugnant enough as stated without reading things into it. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/32 "2018-01-11T18:50:01Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > I don’t see where the latter follows, honestly. It’s possible to believe terrorism is an understandable response to Waco without believing in the racist ideologies of the particular terrorist who did it. The opinion is repugnant enough as stated without reading things into it. When I stack on various other positions of the poster in question, it seems less and less likely that sympathy or tolerance for white supremacism isn’t a part of it. Possible, but pretty unlikely, ISTM. Or trolling, which seems just as likely, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/33 "2018-01-11T19:15:18Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > If McVeigh had been a large-scale vandal, or hacked into government systems and scrambled thousands of man-hours of work, or similar, then perhaps one could have a reasonable discussion about whether his actions were in any way reasonable. But he was a mass murderer of men, women, and children – and white supremacism (in particular the Turner Diaries, based on my reading) was fundamental to his ideology. It’s both unreasonable to feel that the bombing was in any way reasonable, and it’s unreasonable to believe that it didn’t have anything to do with white supremacism. IMO. > > But I’ll put the likelihood that he’s trolling as just as high as the likelihood he’s a tolerator or sympathizer of white supremacism. I dunno. I see virtually no difference between that statement and “I think Osama Bin Laden’s actions were not an entirely unreasonable reaction to Iraq.” I disagree with both. While I can see how the events of one led to the other, it is only through irrationality and unreasonable “logic”, that one justifies murdering civilians in response to some perceived slight by a government power. At the same time, while I would disagree entirely with someone who opined in that fashion, I wouldn’t think that they agreed with the taliban’s goals of creating a caliphate. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/34 "2018-01-11T19:48:37Z")
the mc veigh argument reminds me of why a few people I knew opposed desert storm 1 because supposedly Kuwait owed Iraq a large amount of cash and they looked at the invasion like a car repossession… and wondered why we were getting involved in someone else’s financial dispute ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/35 "2018-01-11T21:33:06Z")
He also has a tremendous amount of [concern regarding Democrats.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=846754) ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/36 "2018-01-12T15:57:32Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Most people that I’ve spoken to who have expressed a belief that black people (or Jews, or Mexicans, or some other ethnic/racial/etc. group) are inferior in some way (this is just an example – I’m not aware of **HD** saying anything like this directly) don’t actually believe they are racist, and are aghast if/when anyone says that anything they’ve said or done is racist. Sympathizing with/supporting a white supremacist mass murderer _is_ “looking at things through a racial lens”, whether one realizes it or not. > > It’s possible that **HD** is just trolling, and it’s probably even possible that his sympathy for the motives and actions of a white supremacist mass murderer like McVeigh is unrelated to white supremacism, but the latter strikes me as unlikely enough to put into that little basket of things that are not really worth considering without really strong evidence. When people join the US military, which has murdered many millions of innocent non-“whites”, it is hard to take them seriusly when they lament white supremacy. The US military is basically a white supremacist organization with access to stolen money and deadlier weapons. This point has been made much clearer after 9/11 for the thinking citizenry of the world. Anyone who has joined the military after 9/11 is on average much worse than WWII era German soldiers because most of those guys were conscripted slaves. Today’s military is voluntarily murderous. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/37 "2018-01-12T16:02:47Z")
“I think people who joined the US military after 9/11 were not entirely unreasonable in their reaction to the events of 9/11.” Do you agree with this statement **Andy**? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/38 "2018-01-12T16:22:13Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > “I think people who joined the US military after 9/11 were not entirely unreasonable in their reaction to the events of 9/11.” > > Do you agree with this statement **Andy**? I agree that that and your post before are false dilemmas. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/39 "2018-01-12T16:33:47Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > I agree that that and your post before are false dilemmas. No the dilemma in Andy’s head is quite real. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952/40 "2018-01-12T16:35:13Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > He also has a tremendous amount of [concern regarding Democrats.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=846754) Nothing stains more conservative pillows with tears, other than maybe their deep, heartfelt concern over gang violence in the South Side of Chicago, triggered every time there’s a mass shooting somewhere else. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-forget-do-we-have-a-general-hurricaneditka-pit-thread/805952.md?page=3)