Why Park51 is Important

Folks, it’s all the same bigotry.  The fact of the matter is that it’s the same 20% reliable Republican Teabaggers who are still fighting for Nathan Bedford Forrest’s KKK Nation of White Male Aryan supremacy.

I have all the taints traits that would enable me to walk among them as a Master of the Universe, but I’m a Class Traitor and proud of it.  These bigots need to be beaten back into the dust of the defeat of Appomattox, they obviously didn’t get it the first time because of their boneheaded idiocy.  All people are created equal and your position of privilege as an accident of birth does not confer a special nobility.  That attitude needs to be eradicated.

This is class warfare and were I an investing man I’d go long on Guillotines.

The "mosque" debate is not a "distraction"

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Monday, Aug 23, 2010 07:24 ET

This is like a metastasized anti-Semitism.  That’s what we feel right now. It’s not even Islamophobia; it’s beyond Islamophobia. It’s hate of Muslims, and we are deeply concerned.

Can anyone watch the video of that disgusting hate rally and dispute that?  That’s exactly why I’ve found this conflict so significant.  If Park51 ends up moving or if opponents otherwise succeed in defeating it, it will seriously bolster and validate the ugly premises at the heart of this campaign:  that Muslims generally are responsible for 9/11, Terrorism justifies and even compels our restricting the equals rights and access of Americans Muslims, and more broadly, the animosity and suspicions towards Muslims generally are justified, or at least deserving of respect.  As Aziz Poonawalla put it:  “if the project does fail, then I think that the message that will be sent is that bigotry and fear of Muslims is not just permitted, it is effective.”

That’s exactly the message that will be sent, and that’s what makes this conflict so significant.  Obviously, not all opponents of Park51 are as overtly hateful as those in that video — and not all opponents are themselves bigots — but the position they’ve adopted is inherently bigoted, as it seeks to impose guilt and blame on a large demographic group for the aberrational acts of a small number of individual members.   And one thing is certain:  if this campaign succeeds, it will proliferate and the sentiments driving it will become even more potent.  Hatemongers always become emboldened when they triumph.

The animosity and hatred so visible here extends far beyond the location of mosques or even how we treat American Muslims.  So many of our national abuses, crimes and other excesses of the last decade — torture, invasions, bombings, illegal surveillance, assassinations, renditions, disappearances, etc. etc. — are grounded in endless demonization of Muslims.  A citizenry will submit to such policies only if they are vested with sufficient fear of an Enemy.  There are, as always, a wide array of enemies capable of producing substantial fear (the Immigrants, the Gays, and, as that video reveals, the always-reliable racial minorities), but the leading Enemy over the last decade, in American political discourse, has been, and still is, the Muslim.

It’s all the same culture war

by Amanda Marcotte

Friday, August 20, 2010

When they talk about the “liberal elite”, they mean white class traitors who find their tribalism stupid.  Since you can’t tell white people apart just by looking at us, they invest a lot into singling out tribal markers of the liberal elite and shunning them.  Which is why you have some wingnut showing up in my threads about my CSA here and bragging about how he eats McDonald’s all the time.  The point is to make it clear that he would rather have a heart attack than associate with the class and race traitors who have what he considers feminized habits.  But as Rick Perlstein has documented, this anger and hatred is spiked through with jealousy.  Feelings of insecurity just cause more freaking out, which is why you get the “our women are hotter!!!!!” nonsense.  It’s kind of the natural reaction when you’ve cast your enemies as people who lives lives of sensual pleasure and good health, lives that you shun but are hard not to want sometimes for the obvious reasons.  So, defensive childish reactions.*