I got curious so I pulled up stats. There have been roughly 40 terrorist attacks on us soil committed against planned parenthood clinics in the name of Christ. Clearly, according to your metrics, Christians are WAY more dangerous. Look at how often they have attacked American in the name of their God. Almost 10 times as often as those crazy Islamists!
You get that this sounds insane. I know you do. You were about to start typing telling me that I’m being irrational. Because that sort of reaction to the planned parenthood terror attacks (so named by the DOJ, who do consider the attackers to be terrorists so let’s not quibble here) is FUCKING IDIOTIC.
I’m a progressive. I support Israel. I have Israeli family, lots of them. I value freedom. I actually know quite a few Muslims. My own family was once persecuted by people who held beliefs like yours DM. First Cossacks, then Hitler. People are complicated. You can’t judge them based on their group. You have to judge them based on who they are as an individual. You are a dangerous motherfucker, as an individual.
So, we have the murderer’s words? Someone ran alongside the careening truck, writing down a transcript? Or was he live-streaming the whole thing? Derek Double Zero, who told you about his shouting “Allahu Akbar”? Many of the rest of us don’t have your sources, and remain woefully ignorant. Point of fact, I had not heard this from any other source!
So, come on, share a little! Was it Facebook? Breitbart? Some other unimpeachable source of truth and fact? We should at least have the opportunity to heap praise on whoever it was, that in the midst of carnage and horror, they had the presence of mind to transcribe a quote. Most people, myself included, would be dashing about madly trying to get as far from him as possible, but someone did not!
Terrist: “Aarrgle-bargle gumscooter!”
Alert Citizen: “Sorry, didn’t quite get that, could you repeat that, please?”
Terrist: “Aarrgle-bargle gumscooter!”
Alert Citizen: “Ah! ‘Allahu Akbar’, got it, thanks, and happy motoring.”
If there’s an inbred child-fucker polygamist cult in Utah somewhere calling themselves Christians, that tiny minority of Christians doesn’t represent the whole, and if let’s say China decided to go to war with the United States for being a bunch of backward, child-fucking, incest-breeding “Christian” neanderthals, one would assume you would rightly point out that this tiny and very extreme minority doesn’t represent the billions of other, more normal Christians.
That’s what “progressives” are (or, more accurately, any sane person is) doing when some Islamic radical guns down a bunch of people, and then fucktards stand up and go “we need to declare war on Islam, dad gum it! Let’s invade their home country!”, someone needs to be the adult in the room and point out that there are well over a billion followers of Islam, and the actions of a hundred or a thousand or even ten thousand extreme radicals (on the global scale, spread across many countries) who fall under the general umbrella of “Islam” are not representative of the whole, and that the flaw in the logic of attacking all of Islam for the actions of an extreme minority are akin to blaming all Christians for the polygamist-childrape-cults that exist in the name of Christ, or the Christian-identifying KKK. And that a significant portion of the time, the home country of the radical terrorist is the same country they attacked, so it’s often a dumbass idea to suggest invading an entire country over a lone wolf or a terrorist cell. It’s not the country at large which is the perpetrator, but often the victim of its own citizen.
As for apologizing for Islam: make no mistake, Islam is a bad idea, in a world that’s full of similarly bad ideas. It’s hardly unique in its badness- any fault you can find in the Koran can be found quite readily in the Bible, from claiming to be a peaceful religion under a peaceful god while simultaneously calling for the blood of infidels and other tribes, to really idiotic ideas about slavery and women. They’re all based on the same incoherent Abrahamic mythology that honestly should have died off by now. But it’s not being replaced by anything better anytime soon. Look at the cults that have popped up in the meantime, like Scientology.
People have bad ideas all the time. *Every *human being has bad ideas in their head. Most people can have a really dumb idea in their head and still refrain from going off raping or killing people. Having stupid ideas doesn’t make you evil, it just makes you human. If we start killing off all the people who have really dumb ideas, there won’t be anyone left on this planet. It isn’t the dumb idea which is the problem, but the person who is willing to turn to violence. That person will still exist even if Islam vanished from the face of the Earth. How do you know? Look at all the violent people who aren’t Islamic. Or even religious. Insane people still exist. Militant dumbasses in Idaho who want a racially pure country still exist.
The real problem is that no matter what one’s group identity or dumb groupthink ideology, there’s always **extremism **that can be found, there’s always **insane **people that would be insane no matter their belief system, where suddenly converting to Christianity wouldn’t cure them of their mental sickness. A person is not sane simply because they’re not religious. Likewise, a person isn’t insane for simply being religious. Extremists come in many varieties: You have extremist Muslims, racist Christians, Buddhists attacking Muslims in Myanmar, you have irreligious extremists in China who are opposed to religion, you’ve had godless militants in the old Soviet Union who killed people by the millions. You’ve got PETA people throwing blood on others for eating meat, you’ve got wacko environmentalists who will blow up factories to advance their agenda. Doesn’t matter *what *political or religious or nationalist belief system you have, someone out there will be a shitty example of a human being and act on that belief system in a way that’s not just dumb, but dangerously violent and militant.
Dumb ideas will always exist, but there’s no cure for dumb people. Dumb people are always going to exist. But the right and sane thing to do is to suffer fools, not advocate killing them all, or suggesting all the dumb people happen to be Muslims.
The dumb idea is to try to kill them all, or to paint them all with the same brush. That’s the same idea that motivates the extremist Jihadist- he feels that everyone else is wrong and evil and needs to die for it, indiscriminately, and more likely to gun down someone like you or me, and not the childfucker polygamist or Klansman that gives the rest of America a bad name. See, he doesn’t care which of us dies, as long as it’s one of us. And that’s a profoundly dumb idea.
You, on the other hand, make the exact same mistake he does when you suggest that all Muslims are just as complicit in terrorism as him, or just as guilty, or that it is **Islam **itself that is the root of it. Because that idiot could just as easily turn around and point to the polygamist child-fucker cults and KKK hate groups in the United States and go “see? There’s something hideously wrong with Christianity, and only Allah can cure Christians.”
That would be a really, really dumb idea on his part. But it would be no dumber than the idea that all Muslims are terrorists, or even a significant minority of them are; only a very insignificant minority of Muslims are radical terrorists. Just like a very insignificant minority of Christians are polygamist childfuckers or obsessed with racial purity. Painting them all with the same brush is the definition of ignorance.
It’s not Islam or Christianity that is the underlying cause of all our societal ills. Fringe militant groups are closer to the mark, but still not exactly the right answer. It’s ignorant people everywhere. And there’s no cure for that. Certainly not violence.
When reactionary idiots call for more violent rhetoric or extreme condemnation of all Muslims for what a tiny minority fringe group does, or when they call for violent action against all Muslims, or to bar access to the country from all Muslims, or to deport legal Muslim American-born citizens, someone has to be the adult and point out that it’s unwise, self-defeating, and extremely impractical.
And that adult need not even be a liberal or a progressive.
These are not crazy fringe liberal ideas that I’m talking about here. These are the same ideas that was shared between the Obama administration and the Bush administration. Bush and Cheney and all the war hawks of that administration knew that condemning all Muslims for the actions of a few was really fucking dumb, and very counterproductive considering we rely on the support of friendly people in other nations all the time while our troops are over there, or that at the very least, provoking more people to attack our soldiers is dumb, or to provoke more unstable people in our own country to attack us within our own borders is dumb. It’s dangerous to make more enemies out of people who would be our friends and are just as tired of these militant radicals as we are. But if you shoot them indiscriminately, or take away their civil rights, you might just turn normal ordinary friendly people into enemies. And that’s really stupid.
It takes a true blowhard to attack his allies. That’s what happens when reactionary idiots call out all Muslims for the actions of one or a few.
And the plain fact is, we’re not fundamentally different. I can *guarantee *that if the situation were reversed, in an alternate universe where the only difference was that the United States lacked a strong military and had been invaded repeatedly by armies of Muslim nations, who killed us somewhat indiscriminately based on the actions of a few of those Klansmen or childfucker cultists, condemning us all as equally guilty, there would be a lot of Americans who would view armed resistance as legitimate, and would even try going over to their home countries and gunning down as many of them as we could, or plowing into them with trucks. Why would that happen? Because people are sadly predictable.
But predicting isn’t justifying.
The above is not an attempt to justify what radical terrorists are doing, it is still very wrong; I’m just pointing out, I doubt 100% of Americans would remain peaceful and just sit by while our nation is occupied by an invasion force and everyone in the United States is demonized, and compared to the childfucker cult or the Klan. I sincerely doubt anyone here thinks this is a nation of pacifists who would just roll over if our basic human dignity were violated. That’s not our style at all.
If the situations were reversed, some of us would probably behave a whole lot like the terrorists, because (“Progressives” like me believe that) underneath all that nationalistic identity, racial identity, or religious belief, we’re all human beings who react in predictable ways when others start shooting at us.
Some human beings are dumb and can’t tell the difference between a radical jihadist and a peaceful muslim civilian selling mangoes at the market. Some human beings are JUST AS DUMB and similarly paint the United States with the widest possible brush. ***Neither of those brands of idiots ***should be deciding political policy in their home countries, because they’re both fucking stupid. And so is the idea that you can wipe out all the stupid or extreme people with violence- the only people who would believe such a patently silly idea in the first place are the stupid assholes you’d need to kill off, and they’d be the first ones to enlist, and they very famously can’t tell which are the dumb people and which are the smart people. But you really can’t blame them for not being able to tell the difference; what do you expect? They’re dumb. They can’t help it.
“The terrorists” will attack no matter what we do. “Letting” the terrorists attack is the same as not letting them. No amount of intervention in the middle east has stopped global terrorism. It has killed individual terrorists, and inspired others to take their place. You kill those, and still others will take their place. Why? Because idiots condemning all Muslims end up killing innocent people along the way, creating more people who want revenge.
A lot of assumptions and misunderstandings here, so it’s not that surprising that your political allegiance shifts easily. As you misinterpret or assume wildly about people, your loyalties will change. If you lack a strong understanding of your opponent, you can’t hope to out-think them. If you want to defeat your opponent, learn more about them. That goes all the way back to Sun Tzu, it’s a truism. Stop assuming so much.
I predict that at no point along this process will you decide “hey, maybe I’m wrong” so there’s probably nothing that I or anyone else can type in your direction that will change your mind. I assume you started this thread to vent some frustration over your perceptions of progressives, not to learn something new.
If your mind is set, and you’re convinced you’re correct, anyone disagreeing with you about this subject matter is foolish and therefore their arguments can be dismissed.
It might involve swallowing your pride to admit that maybe the reason why others take a different approach on this issue is because your viewpoint is ill-advised and theirs is better. That may be impossible for you. And me pointing that out won’t make it any easier. But if you have an ignorant idea in your head, no one ever said that fighting it would be easy for you. If you’re not inclined to fight it, you’ll never win.
How many members of your racial/religious/ethnic/philosophical group would have to commit terrorism/crimes before you would consent to having your freedoms curtailed?
Not to detract from our obvious agreement that Derek is a twit who wouldn’t understand history if it crawled up his ass and died and wouldn’t let silly things like facts get in the way of his narrative, but: The Soviets weren’t dragging their feet and trying to do nothing, nobody save perhaps Germany wanted the Soviet Union to get into the war with Japan until Germany was defeated. At the time of Tehran when Stalin agreed in principle to enter the war with Japan after Germany’s defeat, he was much more concerned with what from his perception was the Western Allies dragging their feet on opening a second front against Germany. The Eastern Front was consuming millions of lives a year and while the American High Command had pushed for an invasion of France in 1943, the British - with some justification - wanted to wait until 1944, so the only ‘second front’ of sorts in 1943 was in Italy.
As I said, nobody save perhaps Germany wanted the Soviets in the war with Japan before Germany’s defeat. Japan already had its hands full, didn’t want a fight with the USSR and went out of their way to avoid antagonizing them. The USSR was in a life or death struggle with Germany and didn’t want war on another front as well. The US was happy to keep the USSR out of the war in the Pacific until Germany was defeated in no small part because over half of lend-lease aid from the US to the Soviet Union was being sent on the Pacific route through Vladivostok, largely on US freighters that had been reflagged to the Soviet Union. Not wanting to antagonize the Soviets, Japan did nothing to interfere with this. Although from the timing of the Soviet entry into the war on Aug 9, 1945 after one atomic bomb had been dropped but before the second might seem opportunistic, it wasn’t. Stalin had agreed to enter the war three months after the defeat of Germany, which had surrendered on May 9, 1945. Aug 9, 1945 was exactly three months later, and the timing had nothing to do with the atomic bombs. The three months had been used to redeploy the massive force used to invade Manchuria from Europe and logistically prepare for a three-pronged invasion that overran an area the size of Western Europe and destroyed the Japanese Kwantung Army of 713,000 men in little over three weeks.
What do you think about entire countries where women have to cover themselves head to toe? Where they aren’t allowed to leave the house unless accompanied by a male relative? Where they aren’t allowed to drive or go to school? Where they get blamed and whipped and/or sentenced to prison because they got raped? Where their own fathers and brothers kill them in so-called honor killings? And we don’t even need to get into what life is like for homosexuals. The majority of the populace in these countries agrees with and abides by these practices.
The evils that have grown out of Islam aren’t limited to terrorism and would have most of this board’s members in a state of apoplexy were anyone even to suggest we adopt the same practices here. Why they’ve chosen to defend it is anyone’s guess.
:eek: That is an impressively ridiculous way to inflate the numbers. I suppose if you want to see it that way, you’re free, but most people look at the support numbers and compare those.
America’s record of assimilating immigrants, including Muslim immigrants, is very impressive, and far better than Europe.
You might not think this highly of America, but I do.
Islamic society has in some places, including America. There’s nothing special about Islam that would prevent this development from continuing.
There is something special about ignorant bigots like you, though… and your type of bigoted ignorance is the kind of thing that could slow this progress and help ISIS. Stop helping ISIS.
Seriously? Have you ignored the past 50 years of African history? It’s not jihad by that name, but the violence has been catastrophic.
How is this a bad thing? Iraq was a disaster! Of course Muslims turned away from the GOP. If only Christian Americans were as smart and educated as Muslim Americans, in general…
So, regarding this jumbled, unsourced litany of evils, you are actually trying to claim that “most of this board’s members” are defending them, i.e. at minimum saying that they are A-OK in our books? Most of this board’s members? That’s a pretty serious charge. If I were you, I would be coming up with a couple of quotes by other posters at least attempting to demonstrate that such a ridiculous claim is factual.
But hey, I understand if you can’t be bothered. It’s not as if you, personally, are doing anything at all material to prevent these evils from occurring. Glass house, stones, etc.
I didn’t say anyone defended those practices. What I said is that they defend the religion these practices are based upon.
It’s all political of course. One never sees anyone around here rushing to point out that most of the world’s Christians are peaceable and that abortion clinic bombers and War On Christmas agitators make up only a small number of the total. If the nation’s conservatives were pro-Islam the roles would reverse and the country’s liberals would be criticizing and mocking it.
Extremist Muslims suck, and the extreme versions of the religion suck. The version of the religion that most American Muslims practice, and many Muslims in various other countries, is as peaceful as any other religion, and perfectly compatible with being American.
The problem, as I see it, is that our friends on the right suffer from sever nuance-impairment syndrome and that, therefore, any policy that doesn’t consist of chest thumping and “blowing shit up real good”, is perceived as apologistic.
Kind of ironic considering that the man who said “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” was a Republican. (They probably wouldn’t take him today, though.)
Obama’s policy has been to speak nicely while swinging the stick.
Don’t forget that a major part of the Jihadi narrative is that this is an “us or them” deal and that the people here who spout that same line, albeit from the opposite perspective, feed that narrative.
Whatever else this guy was, it’s becoming pretty clear that he was a major asshole. Do assholes here feel obligated to apologize for him?
I think that the Saudis are terrible and as bad are the ignorant bigots who instrumentalise them to attack all muslims by nasty implication and ignorance.
I think that the Saudis are terrible and as bad are the ignorant bigots who instrumentalise them to attack all muslims by nasty implication and ignorance.
I think that the Saudis are terrible and as bad are the ignorant bigots who instrumentalise them to attack all muslims by nasty implication and ignorance.
I think that the tribal habits in the rural Afghanistan and its neighboring areas in the Pakistan are terrible and as bad are the ignorant bigots who instrumentalise them to attack all muslims by nasty implication and ignorance.
ETC.
Of course the person who uses paper tubes for his rationalisations of the rape is the very ironic person to be pretending to give moral comparison litanies, especially the idiotic ones that make a melange of the Saudi, the rural tribal customs (as if these are special to the islamic region).
