Thursday, July 28, 2011

What Is It With These People...?

Anyone remember Pat Buchanan? No? Consider yourself fortunate, because here he comes again, dredging the most wretched part of humanity along on his tailcoats. This man is sick, he has to be. I know he's evil; of that there's no question.

You'll recall that not even a week ago (maybe a little longer, I have difficulty keeping track of time when I have weird work weeks), there was a mass murder in Oslo, Norway. This mass murder was carried out by a Christian Terrorist by the name of Breivek, a nationalist, open Christian, and general right wing nut who loved to read, among other things, World News Daily (an American right-wing cryptofascist/insult to cryptofascism "news" and "opinion" webpage devoted to being as flat-out stupid as possible the right-wing cause). Mr. Breviek (whose name I will not be arsed to spell correctly because he doesn't deserve it) callously slaughtered 80 innocent children and teens in the name of Christian terrorism, and published an absolutely insane, 1500 page diatribe that rivals the Necronomicon in terms of sanity damage if you read it, without all the cool abilities that come along with reading the Necronomicon (i.e., the ability to drop Yog-Sothoth on the next CPAC meeting). Well, the right-wing noise machine's been scrambling, trying to distance themselves from Mr. Briefek, with the end result being the so-called "anti-Jihadists" in this country claiming they're somehow different from Mr. Befrvek's anti-Jihadism and Christian Terrorism. Out of the echo chamber comes Pat Buchanan, who I considered a real piece of work before this, but after it... well. Here, I'll dissect his argument just I have others in the past. It's probably the safest way to get near this, but remember - don't forget your moral hazard gear.

"Like a fire bell in the night," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1820, "this momentous question ... awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union."
For extra irony, he quotes Thomas Jefferson, one of the most ardently anti-Christian, pro-Separate of Church and State president in the Union. Mr. Jefferson also owned a copy of the Koran, which actually still sees use in swearing in scenarios today. But hey, give the guy points for style: "We didn't start the fire..."
Jefferson was writing of the sudden resurgence of the slavery issue in the debate on Missouri's entry into the Union, as foreshadowing a civil war.
  
And that massacre in Oslo, where a terrorist detonated a fertilizer bomb to decapitate the government and proceeded to a youth camp to kill 68 children of Norway's ruling elite, is a fire bell in the night for Europe. For Anders Behring Breivik is no Islamic terrorist.
  
He was born in Norway and chose as his targets not Muslims whose presence he detests, but the Labor Party leaders who let them into the country, and their children, the future leaders of that party.
"Sudden resurgence of the slavery issue." Uh, no. Slavery had been an issue ever since the founding of the Union, and it never, ever went away. Missouri made it stand out a lot more, with Brown's Raid on Harper Ferry and the conservatives of the time wanting to force Missouri to be a slavery state. The end result was the Missouri Compromise that did nothing but prolong the issue for another 15 some years before the election of Abraham Lincoln and Fort Sumter. So no, when you're wrong right off the bat, that is never a good sign.

"And that massacre in Oklahoma city, where a terrorist detonated a fertilizer bomb to decapitate the government and [...] kill children of nation's ruling elite, is a fire bell in the night for American. For Timothy McVeigh is no Islamic Terrorist."

Why is it important to point out that the terrorist targeted the children of Sweden's elite? Why? They were children. Mr. Buchanan wouldn't be trying to justify it, would he? After all, we all know that "elite = liberals", and "liberals = OMG TEH SOCIALIZM." And Mr. Beatnik had a problem with socialists (seriously; this guy was equal parts Unibomber and McVeigh).

He chose his targets carefully. They were on his naughty list. They weren't Muslims, no, that'd make too much sense. He went after the government, the people who let those Muslims in the country. See Liberals, we're trying to warn you. You keep letting those Muslims in this country and this stuff could happen to you. And we all that the conservatives don't kill people. No sir.
Though Breivik is being called insane, that is the wrong word.
   
Breivik is evil -- a cold-blooded, calculating killer -- though a deluded man of some intelligence, who in his 1,500-page manifesto reveals a knowledge of the history, culture and politics of Europe.
   
He admits to his "atrocious" but "necessary" crimes, done, he says, to bring attention to his ideas and advance his cause: a Crusader's war between the real Europe and the "cultural Marxists" and Muslims they invited in to alter the ethnic character and swamp the culture of the Old Continent.
He's right here. "Insane" is the wrong word. I'm a pendant; "insane" is a legal term with no relation to any mental health condition whatsoever, and what it means in strict legal terminology is that he wasn't in mental control at the time and therefore unaccountable for his crimes (unless you're suggesting it can be used as shorthand for something incredibly stupid, then I'll agree to it's usage). That's not what Mr. Buchanan means here, though). So no, I agree. He's not insane - he will, and can, and should stand trial. I'll also agree that the man is cold-blooded evil, and the only thing his 1,500 page manifesto reveals is that he's a deluded mofo with no grip on reality, much less a grip on history.

"Cultural Marxist" -  Here, educate yourself on what Marxism really means, if you're not sure. I've read the Communist Manifesto, just like I've read The Wealth of Nations. No, I didn't burst into flames picking up one and then reading the other. There's a way to interpret sociology through Marxist interpretation, just like there's a way to interpret the economy, and interpret literature, and anthropology, and any other of the "soft" sciences. I'm familiar with the cultural interpretation of Marxism, but this is the first time I've heard the term "cultural Marxist." I'd be generous and suggest that it's just a different, shorthand way of saying the same thing but I know these people too well - it's not. This is "Ooga-booga-booga!" speech. Marxism is a "scare word" that gets thrown around to keep FOX noise viewers and regular readers of Pat Buchanan's columns awake at night. As such, it has no meaning; it means whatever I want it to, in the finest traditions of Newspeak.

This is a Crusade against Cultural Marxism! And Cultural Trotskyism! And Cultural Jeffersonism, and...

Notice how conservatives always suggest they've got a monopoly on the "real world" - Sarah Palin speaks for "Real America", while men like Mr. Brefiki are battle for the "Real Europe" in a crusade against... I guess imaginary Cultural Marxists? I never would've thought they'd be so honest in their intent - to admit that your opponent is an imaginary strawman takes a lot of guts. Now to actually do something about it, like to stop attacking it, is a different matter all together, apparently.
Specifically, Breivik wanted to kill three-time Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, the "mother of the nation," who spoke at the camp on Utoeya Island, but departed before he arrived.
   
Predictably, the European press is linking Breivik to parties of the populist right that have arisen to oppose multiculturalism and immigration from the Islamic world. Breivik had belonged to the Progress Party, but quit because he found it insufficiently militant.
   
His writings are now being mined for references to U.S. conservative critics of multiculturalism and open borders. Purpose: demonize the American right, just as the berserker's attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson was used to smear Sarah Palin and Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing was used to savage Rush Limbaugh and conservative critics of Big Government.
Oh, shame on those European media outlits, not sucking up to the right wing cause like the American corporatist ones do. Shame, shame, shame! "Multiculturalism" - that's another "Ooga-booga-booga!" word. They're gonna take away our rights as White people to call the shots and then persecute us! We better be careful, we can't let more immigrants from the Islamic world in (Islamic world like China? Or maybe like Russia? Oh, no wait, I know - Mexico. Could it possibly be the entire world is an Islamic world?).

Tar and feather Progressives - because we all know that progressives stand against immigration and multiculturalism, right? Of course. At least Pat is honest enough to note he quit, but you know what? If he didn't have it out against the progressives, that didn't even need to be in there. He quite. It's obvious he's not a progressive, so why even bother bring it up? Because progressive is... you guessed it, an "Ooga-booga-booga!" word. Pat and men like him are trying to do to progressive what they already did to Liberal and feminism: turn it into an insult, so they can continue to control the language in debates.

10/10 on the victim pose in the third paragraph. Note the skill, and the subtly, with which Pat becomes the victim. He goes from linking, however tenuously, Mr. Beefy to the progressives and then moves on to suggest that his writings are being "minded for criticism against Conservatives in the United States, with the intent to demonize us." Apparently, by merely pointing out that he wrote this document, and highlighting parts where he sounded a lot like Mr. Buchanan, we're "mining". Mining is another loaded word; it's to suggest that we're not even taking the stuff in context, so remember: if a Lib/Prog slaps you with an accusation that you're sounding just like Brefu, it's because they "mined" it from his manifesto, and it's not in any sort of context at all. And it's with the intent to demonize us. News flash: The left doesn't need help demonizing the right. The left just needs the stupid media to pay attention. That's all we need. You do it to yourselves.

Their logic is hilarious. It's like watching a dog chase it's tail.

Because as we all know, cross-hairs and rhetoric themed around assassinations and shooting people (don't retreat, reload! Unless you're retreating from office, as a failed governor, then it's okay,) couldn't possibly help spark some mentally deluded fool into doing something as tragic as what happened either in Tuscon or Oslo. Framing is everything, and Pat is framing it so that it's the conservatives who are the victims when really, it's the conservatives who are missing the damn point: we liberal criticized the rhetoric. It's the rhetoric, you ignorant, deluded liar. We criticized her rhetoric, and her use of violence. No, I can't prove it had anything to do with it. But you can't prove it didn't. This is why, in a civilized society, we don't use rhetoric like that - it's called keeping yourself safe. But why bother, when you can frame the debate, miss the point, and lie like a damn rug?

Guilt by association, which the left condemned when they claimed to be its victims in the Truman-McCarthy era, has been used by the left since it sought to tie the assassination of JFK by a Marxist from the Fair Play for Cuba Committee to the political conservatism of the city of Dallas.
  
But Europe's left will encounter difficulty in equating criticism of multiculturalism with neo-Nazism. For Angela Merkel of Germany, Nicolas Sarkozy of France and David Cameron of Britain have all declared multiculturalism a failure. From votes in Switzerland to polls across the continent, Europeans want an end to the wearing of burqas and the building of prayer towers in mosques.
   
The flood of illegal aliens into the Canary Islands from Africa, into Italy from Libya and Tunisia, and into Greece from Turkey has mainstream parties echoing the right. The Schengen Agreement itself, which guarantees open borders within the European Union to all who enter the EU, is under attack.
"Since they claimed to be it's victims..." We "claimed" to be victims, but note - only conservatives can be real victims. This isn't a matter of framing; this is outright lying. Liberals were by large the most common victims of the McCarthy Red Scare - why the hell else would Ann Coulter be cheering for it?

Puh-leeze. Everyone knows the guy who shot Kennedy was a secret uncover agent for the Bilderbergs who loaded up a magic, physics defying bullet, so we could blame the Reploids to help further their great schemes by replacing Queen Victoria. Yes, he's right here - the guy who shot Kennedy was a communist, but his communism was overshadowed by his sense of self-importance. Oswald was an egotistic maniac, pure and simple. Kennedy's assassination was not a political murder. His assassination was an egotistical one; one man killing another for the sake of the murderer's own ego. It had very little to do with Oswald's political allegiance. Ask anyone who knew the man - Oswald wanted nothing more than be remembered. He wanted nothing more than go against the grain. So he murdered the president. And he got what he wanted, because he's remembered - and so is Jack Ruby, the guy who shot him.

Do you see what I did there? What I did there was the total opposite of what the right does. I never once said Oswald wasn't a leftist, because he was. I never once said he wasn't a communist, because he was. However, neither of those mattered in the grander scheme of things, because Oswald was also an egotist who wanted to be remembered. Oswald didn't kill Kennedy for political reasons. He did it because he was a self-important maniac.

But we're going to encounter difficulty equating opposition to multiculturalism with Nazism. Of course,because we always do that. That's a slippery slope we leftists always jump off of. Note what he did there - again, it's framing. The Right is the victim because they get called neo-Nazis for not supporting the multiculturalism that makes this country stronger, not weaker. Of course, if you scratch man like Buchanan, and back them far enough in a corner, you'll find that the reason they don't want immigrants is because they only want the "proper" or "useful" people in this country - that is, the right kind of person. Now you tell me - what makes a "proper" or "useful", and by extension, "improper" or "useless", person? When you start calling people "useless", you're boxing yourself into that train car heading full-steam ahead into Third Reich territory; no liberal jumping off of a slippery slope put your silly ass in there, you did this number to yourself.

The EU is under attack! The EU is under attack! The Brown People are coming! The Brown People are coming!

Now, pay very close attention to what he says next:
None of this is to deny the presence of violent actors or neo-Nazis on the European right who bear watching. But, awful as this atrocity was, native born and homegrown terrorism is not the macro-threat to the continent.
   
That threat comes from a burgeoning Muslim presence in a Europe that has never known mass immigration, its failure to assimilate, its growing alienation, and its sometime sympathy for Islamic militants and terrorists.
   
Europe faces today an authentic and historic crisis.
   
With her native-born populations aging, shrinking and dying, Europe's nations have not discovered how to maintain their prosperity without immigrants. Yet the immigrants who have come -- from the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia -- have been slow to learn the language and have failed to attain the educational and occupational levels of Europeans. And the welfare states of Europe are breaking under the burden.
Bolded for your pleasure. "Europe's native born populations now aging" - what this mean is that White people are aging and the populations are shrinking and dying off. Europe hasn't discovered how to live in prosperity without their immigrants. Let's reiterate that one more time: "with the White populations aging, shrinking, and dying..." This is what he means. He's not talking about second and third generation Jamaicans, or Tunisians, or Vietnamese, or Chinese. Those people never entered his mind, because soon, they'll be the "native-born" populations. No, he's talking about the White people. The White people are dying off, and because of it, Europe is in trouble. They need to learn how to live without their immigrants. These immigrants are not improving Europeans society at all, oh no, they're stressing it to the breaking point. You draw your own conclusions from that, because even if you won't say he's backing himself into a corner and shipping himself off to Third Reich land, the man is pretty damn close.

Assimilation failure! Failure to assimilate! Failure!

Multiculturalism is not about assimilation. It's not a melting pot, it's a salad dish. It's a smorgasbord of different cultures, and some of their blendings, that you can select from, while individuals retain their own ethnic identity without one ethic identity claiming superiority over the others by being the identity that they "assimilate into."
Norway, too, needs to wake up. From the first call for help, police needed 90 minutes to get out on the island in the Oslo lake to stop the massacre by the coward, who surrendered as soon as the men with guns arrived. Apparently, Breivik wanted to be around to deliver his declaration of European war in person. Yet, if convicted of the 76 murders, Breivik can, at most, get 21 years, the maximum sentence under Norwegian law.
   
Norway is a peaceful and progressive country, its leaders say.
   
Yet Norway sent troops to Afghanistan and has participated in the bombing of Libya, where civilians have been killed and Moammar Gadhafi has himself lost a son and three grandchildren to NATO bombs.
   
As for a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries, on this one, Breivik may be right.
Point out the flaws in the Norwegian system... they needed 90 minutes to get to an island (this was pointed out earlier, actually, and it is very appalling, but it's not my place to criticize the Norwegian system when there's so much wrong with my own country. I'll let the Norwegians do that, because they understand it better than I do.)

Norway is a peaceful country. This is the worst attack since WWII. That's better than half a century ago. Maybe that slipped his mind.

Criticize "Obama's War"... check...

And bingo. "Breivik may be right."

A mass murderer of almost 80 people may be right.

I think that speaks for itself.

You can find Buchanan's article here, although I'm not sure why you'd want to.

Edit: HOLY SHIT. Do not go into the comments section. They're a bunch of 'effin' LOONS. Seriously - there's not a stable person one who comments on that board.

2 comments:

  1. I'm a pendant

    *giggle* *snicker*
    Ah, Muphry's Law. I'm not sure you should even fix that. You might want to just leave it up in all its typo-y glory.
    (Also an extra apostrophe in then I'll agree to it's usage and like watching a dog chase it's tail , an extra e in He quite., and transposing letters as “Tuscon” instead of “Tucson”, just to give a sample. What is it with you and typos?)

    what they already did to Liberal and feminism: turn it into an insult

    Since when do liberal and feminism have negative connotations? Or does this say more about me? (It's “conservative” and “Republican” that are negative words in my household.)

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  2. Oh no, I have no intention of fixing that. That's fail that deserves to be commemorated.

    I type late in the evening after work. I could proof-read all I want to; I auto-correct 90% my own mistakes (or, like Tuscon, I don't even realize I'm making them), and unlike my novels or papers I turn in, I have no second set of eyes to look over it. So I just wing it, typos or not. lol

    Re: Liberal and feminism having negative connotations - I grew up watching Fox news, and I've submersed myself into that culture. "Liberal" is thrown around to short-circuit any kind of criticism. "You *liberals* always say that", or "That's just what I'd expect a *liberal* to say." The weight the word carries and the way it's usually said creates the end result where being a "liberal" is the last thing you want to get called, because that automatically poisons the well when dealing with conservatives.

    Likewise, courtesy of Rush Blabbermouth, feminism is forever linked to "Nazism," and any mention of it in that circle evokes images of ball-bashing, male castrating women (who, honestly, are the kinds of people those men need to run into, anyway.) Words that should have a positive meaning (they've even done it to "empathy," which, according to their leader Glenn Beck, is apparently a defining trait among the Nazis) and spun it to have a negative one. What they've done to language mirrors what happened in Orwell's 1984; you need a Conservative to English translation machine to completely understand it.

    ReplyDelete