The Rise of Anti-Government Bigots: Spitting, the N-Word, Anti-Gay/Lesbian Slurs

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by key

The most powerful image of this whole health care debate (or screaming match if you will) is the man with Parkinson's disease who simply sat in front of the people who were wanting to deny him health care (to be his personal death panel).

His name is Robert Letcher, he has a PhD and was a nuclear engineer before being diagnosed with Parkinson's 15 years ago.

He is also a Martial Artist and he said he used his breathing exercises while he sat there and absorbed the hatred and condescension that was being violently hurled at him.

Personally I consider him an American Hero because of that moment.

Like Martin Luther King Jr, like Gandhi, like others have shown us throughout civil rights struggles in the past

pure and centered, righteous peace in the face of injustice really can change people's hearts. And when you have changed their hearts, they will change their minds

It was also VERY telling about just how 'compassionate' these conservatives are.

As an aside, while I admire both Gandhi and King I think, sometimes, we idealize these men without taking their actions in context. Gandhi and King were able to use non-violent protests because the people who were the oppressors were, for the most part, civilized people. By that I mean that, for instance, both British and American culture had (maybe still have) at their cultural cores the idea that it is just *wrong* for a stronger (read armed) person to beat up a weaker (read unarmed/unresisting) person. So both men and their followers were facing people who *could* be reached, eventually after enough bodies were broken.

Had Gandhi or King had to face down the Nazis then I think history would have turned out *very* differently. Post-Weimar Germany had, at its core, an ethic that the strong had every right and, what's more, every *reason* to beat up the weak. Non-violent resistance would have just *encouraged* the Nazis because it would have shown them that blacks or Hindus just weren't willing to fight back.

One of the things that makes me so concerned about what I'm seeing and the actions of the national GOP leadership (who are standing in a puddle of gasoline and playing with a lighter) is that I can't yet tell if we are dealing with the British circa 1940, the Americans circa 1960 or the Germans circa 1936. What I saw the other day, in the pictures of those Tea Party protesters throwing money at this man with Parkinson's was closer to the latter than the former two. What I saw were the healthy and strong chomping at the bit to do something to the weak and sick.


Cheers
Aj

[key]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

It was also VERY telling about just how 'compassionate' these conservatives are.


One of the things that makes me so concerned about what I'm seeing and the actions of the national GOP leadership (who are standing in a puddle of gasoline and playing with a lighter) is that I can't yet tell if we are dealing with the British circa 1940, the Americans circa 1960 or the Germans circa 1936. What I saw the other day, in the pictures of those Tea Party protesters throwing money at this man with Parkinson's was closer to the latter than the former two. What I saw were the healthy and strong chomping at the bit to do something to the weak and sick.


Cheers
Aj

Have you read the book "They Thought They Were Free"
The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer

he interviews people (Non Jews) who lived through the Holocaust. Here is an excerpt:

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

Key: I think for the time being we have a fundamentally decent leader in the Whitehouse so we (hopefully) will not see any huge loss of rights, and we may even see some gaining of rights (DADT being repealed) but the scariest thing going on right now is the Supreme Court being so tilted towards corporate facism. This Fascism paired with these ignorant tea partiers is a dangerous combination indeed.

Perhaps in Germany, if the right people had done the right thing (hello, Christian Churches?) things would have been different.

[dreadgeek]

I have not read that although it's now on my list. (If there had been a Kindle edition I would have bought it but alas, no) The last book on the period that I read was "Hitler's Willing Executioner's" by Daniel Goldhagen. It was a chilling book because it really brings home the reality of Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil".

Terry Pratchett , as usual, manages to describe it wonderfully:

"And what it means is this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes to work every day and has a job to do."

Cheers
Aj

Originally Posted by key

Have you read the book "They Thought They Were Free"
The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer

he interviews people (Non Jews) who lived through the Holocaust. Here is an excerpt:

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

Key: I think for the time being we have a fundamentally decent leader in the Whitehouse so we (hopefully) will not see any huge loss of rights, and we may even see some gaining of rights (DADT being repealed) but the scariest thing going on right now is the Supreme Court being so tilted towards corporate facism. This Fascism paired with these ignorant tea partiers is a dangerous combination indeed.

Perhaps in Germany, if the right people had done the right thing (hello, Christian Churches?) things would have been different.

[Zimmeh]

I read this book for my Psych 305 class, Motivation and Leadership. Thus book made my skin crawl to the point as to where I never finished it and gave it away.

I will never own such an evil book again.

Zimmy

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

I have not read that although it's now on my list. (If there had been a Kindle edition I would have bought it but alas, no) The last book on the period that I read was "Hitler's Willing Executioner's" by Daniel Goldhagen. It was a chilling book because it really brings home the reality of Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil".

Terry Pratchett , as usual, manages to describe it wonderfully:

"And what it means is this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes to work every day and has a job to do."

Cheers
Aj

[Zimmeh]

Thank you AtLast for starting this thread! I live in a state I refer to as Hell. Two years ago come early June, I found out what rights I had in this state. My former boss asked me to come into her office. She informed me that I was being written up for sexual harassment. I giggled at this thought since I know the laws about this. I then informed her that it was really about me being gay, it was a female dominated job and they were all straight; and I would use my sexual discrimination card if she tried me. Needless to say she wrote me up for causing an intimidating work environment. After I left work that night, I contacted the ACLU and told them everything and then emailed my HR rep. By the time I was done, that company had the ACLU watching them and she was severely reprimanded. I left that company on June 27th and I don't regret anything I did. I wasn't going to allow that company to mistreat ppl and get away with it.

That is why until someone gets elected as governor here, we will never have any rights,

Zimmy

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by ZimmygLrL

I read this book for my Psych 305 class, Motivation and Leadership. Thus book made my skin crawl to the point as to where I never finished it and gave it away.

I will never own such an evil book again.

Zimmy

I'm curious. What was evil about the book? It's a hard book. It's a disturbing book. But I thought that Goldhagen bent over backward to be fair, accurate and scholarly. I never got the feeling that he was writing an anti-German book rather was debunking a widely held myth: that the Holocaust was committed by SS men without the knowledge of the German populace.

Cheers
Aj

[Zimmeh]

Hey AJ,

That is what I meant by evil. The book is very disturbing and one I can honestly say I never could finish. It was a book the professor recommended since our report was on Hitler.

Have a good day,

Zimmy

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

I'm curious. What was evil about the book? It's a hard book. It's a disturbing book. But I thought that Goldhagen bent over backward to be fair, accurate and scholarly. I never got the feeling that he was writing an anti-German book rather was debunking a widely held myth: that the Holocaust was committed by SS men without the knowledge of the German populace.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by ZimmygLrL

Hey AJ,

That is what I meant by evil. The book is very disturbing and one I can honestly say I never could finish. It was a book the professor recommended since our report was on Hitler.

Have a good day,

Zimmy

Okay, thank you. I thought that's what you meant but I wasn't sure so I thought I would ask.

[Gryph]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

I'm curious. What was evil about the book? It's a hard book. It's a disturbing book. But I thought that Goldhagen bent over backward to be fair, accurate and scholarly. I never got the feeling that he was writing an anti-German book rather was debunking a widely held myth: that the Holocaust was committed by SS men without the knowledge of the German populace.

Cheers
Aj

I've never read the book, but I spent some time in Germany as a soldier. I had several friends among the "Nationals" as we called the German citizens. I heard time and again from those who were alive in that day and age, just how scary it was and how you complied with Hitlers laws, because if you didn't you and your family would be the next ones to end up in a camp somewhere.

One of my favorite friends had been a nurse at that time and she felt so bad for so much of her life after the war ended, because of what she couldn't do to help those who were the camp she worked in.

Unfortunately I see the same mentality in those who are calling the names, as I saw in the Brown Shirts from the history movies.