You Just Can't Make This S**t Up!...
by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
Texas Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) proving once again there really are looney tunes populating the the republican party. Really folks, dudes (and dudettes) with beliefs like this are trying to take America back to 1950. All we can hope for is a bolt of lighting to strike them (from above guided by the divine hand of their god)) and transform them into reasoned beings.
MORE BELOW THE FOLD.
Via: Memeorandum
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
Texas Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) proving once again there really are looney tunes populating the the republican party. Really folks, dudes (and dudettes) with beliefs like this are trying to take America back to 1950. All we can hope for is a bolt of lighting to strike them (from above guided by the divine hand of their god)) and transform them into reasoned beings.
So it is amazing that in the name of liberality, in the name of being tolerant, this fascist intolerance has arisen. People that stand up and say, you know, I agree with the majority of Americans, I agree with Moses and Jesus that marriage was a man and a woman, now all of a sudden, people like me are considered haters, hate mongers, evil, which really is exactly what we've seen throughout our history as going back to the days of the Nazi takeover in Europe. What did they do? First, they would call people "haters" and "evil" and build up disdain for those people who held those opinions or religious views or religious heritage. And then the next came, well, those people are so evil and hateful, let's bring every book that they've written or has to do with them and let's start burning the books, because we can't tolerate their intolerance.
MORE BELOW THE FOLD.
Via: Memeorandum
Given the Nazi treatment of homosexuals, Gohmert has used an inverted logic at best. So Typical of that wing of the right.
ReplyDeleteIt's called "projection."
DeleteI remind folks that this is the same idiot who came up with the concept of terror babies and who also slandered a respected diplomat named Huma Abedin (yes, a Muslim but also married to Anthony Weiner, one of the most reliable - strident, if you prefer - supporters of Israel in Congressional history).
ReplyDeleteAnd the way these guys flippantly throw around the Holocaust as a metaphor for the least little things that don't really don't even concern them. And they love playing victim and martyr. Jesus was a martyr too, betcha know, wink. Sleazy scumbags pandering to goofball idiots.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
People who invoke the Holocaust to score political points desecrate the meaning of it. Gohmert is being offensive on many levels.
DeleteAnd both sides do it. I remember those idiots over at Lydia Cornell's site constantly referring to Republicans as the "hard Reich" or the "far Reich" and to McCain specifically (back in '08) as "mon Fuhrer.
ReplyDeleteIndeed you are right Will. Unfortunately some on the right are incapable or rising above the BS hyperbole, just as some on the left.
DeleteThere usually is a difference, though, between the way the Left throws around "Hitler" and the way the Right does. When Seth Macfarlane does a sketch with a Nazi officer, back in the 1940's, wearing a "McCain/Palin" button, it's understood as zany comedy just barely and lightly (in the comedic sense) touching any political truth, dynamically ironic. When Glenn Beck says the things he says, there's no zany comedy there, no truth, no comedy, no sense of irony at all. There's also a huge difference between the intentionally obnoxious (like a college kid who never has to consider his future when he speaks) hyperbole of an Alan Grayson, and the foreboding rabblerousing of an Allen West.
DeleteIt's important you understand that difference. Gohmert is pandering to idiots who couldn't grasp irony to save their lives, Lydia Cornell makes a living at irony.
Beware the idiots.
JMJ
Incapable? Or just unwilling?
DeleteRepresentative Gohmert didn't say one thing that was not true, and there was no trace of rancor nor any semblance of a threat or invective in any of it. In fact he was very modest, even humble in stating his case.
ReplyDeleteAll that is seen as wrong or "stupid" is that his views are incongruent with those of the majority at this blog. I don't have to subscribe to someone else's position to know when they're being ridiculed, treated disrespectfully, and vilified simply for having opinions disliked by too large a sector of society.
Unless you have been asleep for the past fifty years and also happen to be are deaf, dumb and blind, the liberal fascism to which he modesty refers is everything he clams it to be -- and far, far worse.
In order to counter evil one must first be able to recognize it.
Just because Representative Gohmert is an apparently small, homely man who speaks with a hick accent, doesn't mean he's either stupid or ill-informed.
PS: I have copied and saved this statement in case it fails to appear here. In which case I shall print it a my bog with an appropriate link to RN, and we may discuss it there.
Copy and paste away, it's fine by me.
DeleteI am traveling, I will respond when I arrive back home.
He sounded perfectly reasonable to me.
DeleteFirst Mr. FreeThinke O assure you I have NOT been asleep for the past fifty years.
DeleteRep. Gohmert is a politician who excels at pandering to the base from which he draws his support and votes. Not at all different IMO than Rep. Pelosi. I find all of this ilk nauseating.
Rep. Gohmert's size, appearance, or accent it irrelevant, at least to me. He may not be stupid, and maybe he is informed. However, in this instance he is wrong. I refer you to (O)CT(O)PUS's comment.
I stand by my post.
“I refer you to (O)CT(O)PUS's comment.”
DeleteIndeed, my comment is based on fallacies of logic that are overused and abused in political discourse and online discussion threads. Commonly referred to as “Godwin’s Law,” the term applies to egregiously inappropriate and hyperbolic comparisons to Nazis, also known as “playing the Hitler card.” Once invoked, the commenter who plays the card immediately loses credibility and loses the argument.
As a logical fallacy, the Hitler card is based on false equivalences - literally the properties of apples as applied to oranges – and the most egregious examples I can offer are over hyped arguments over ACA. One need not agree with the provisions of ACA to acknowledge the alleged false equivalence to genocide: Healthcare versus murder, saving lives versus taking lives. Wielding the rhetorically excessive nuclear weapon of genocide does not win arguments; it merely turns the commenter into a ridiculous person.
“Projective identification” or simply “projection” is another commonly used and abused fallacy. A term derived from clinical psychology and often abused in politics, it refers to a person who transfers an internal fantasy or transgression onto another person: Commenter A commits a misdeed and attributes the misdeed to Commenter B, thereby exonerating oneself of the transgression.
Projection is a commonly used defense mechanism that rises to the level of pathology when accompanied by an angry rage reaction. “How dare you!” is a characteristic response when the fallacy of the projection is unmasked and revealed. This is easy understand: A homophobe bashes gay people with hateful language, then turns the table on critics by accusing them of hate speech. More than simple hypocrisy, projection serves a dual purpose by absolving the perpetrator of any guilt in the matter and putting critics on the defensive.
Projection also gives rise to a double standard often experienced online. When a commenter angrily lashes out with “How dare you ... and that’s why I hate all [fill-in the blank], it connotes: “Free speech for me but not for thee.”
Again, projection does not win arguments; it merely turns the perpetrators of projection into ridiculous persons.
Nice try FT, but Gohmert's accent is not the problem.
ReplyDeleteDo you have an example of "liberal fascism?"
JMJ
Woodrow Wilson with the Sedition Act of 1918, his segregating of the federal work force and the U.S. military, his support for the eugenics movement, his pile-driving of the country into what was essentially a war between empires in Europe, and his increasing of the federal income tax by 1,000% was probably in the ballpark.
ReplyDeleteSo, you had to reach back an entire century for your lousy examples, Will? There was nothing "liberal" about the Sedition Act, Will, or segregation, or eugenics, or expeditionary wars. All liberals universally decry these things. None of them are "liberal." As for the income tax, Wilson was the president who signed it into law in the first place, you loony. Just because you think someone is "liberal," that does not make everything they do "liberal." I'm sorry you stooped to such an argument.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
a) Wilson was one of the first "progressives" in the U.S. and Great Britain (along with John Maynard Keynes, Teddy Roosevelt, H.G. Wells, H.L. Mencken, Margaret Sanger, etc.) and anybody who's ever opened a history book knows it. And b) I know that Wilson started the income tax, you #$@*%^&%$*^%$. My point was that he raised it from the original 7% all the way to 77% (that's the 1,000% increase, Clyde) to pay for his idiotic war and now do you understand?
Delete“ … you #$@*%^&%$*^%$”
DeleteJersey,
Certainly you must be aware by now how certain readers of this forum:
- Cherry-pick data to validate a viewpoint;
- Revise history to validate a subjective agenda;
- Demonstrate knee-jerk intolerance for any difference of opinion;
- Counter arguments in an offensive manner, under cover of ASCII symbols (as in #$@*%^&%$*^%$) or in an openly derisive manner (see Wing Dings).
Woodrow Wilson ran for president on a Progressive Party platform; however any resemblance to the progressivism of the early 1900s versus contemporary progressivism ends at the door of semantics.
History records: Woodrow Wilson was the first southern-born president since Reconstruction. His parents identified with the Confederacy, owned slaves and defended slavery. Thus, Wilson’s social attitudes were more analogous to those of Southern Dixiecrats who abandoned the Democratic Party in the 1960s and drifted into the Republican fold in the 1970s and 80s.
Intolerant of criticism and opposition, Wilson did enact the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which were abused by an Attorney General infamous for his Palmer Raids that culminated in the arrest and detention of an estimated 10,000 activists and dissidents – all termed “leftists.” Regarding Wilson’s disrespect of civil liberties: Far more analogous to the authoritarian mindset of today's neo-conservatives and social conservatives - and the legacy of McCarthyism than still runs in Republican veins.
These examples of self-serving historical revisionism mirror the intolerant and self-serving personal narrative of a belligerent commenter.
I must comment that jmj has from time to time been guilty of the same. Most notably the use of derogatory descriptive adjectives like stupid, idiot, sleazy, and others. I guess you have to take the good with the not so good. We've all been guilty at one time or another I suspect.
DeleteI tend to extend the benefit of the doubt to people I believe are basically honest and who believe what they pass on in written form. How someone interprets information will shape their conclusions. Misrepresenting information is often due to this.
Everyone has an agenda and the human tendency is to frame it in the best light. As to politics and governing, neither conservatives, progressives, republicans or democrats are immune from the temptation to spin the information to best suit their agenda. I have come to accept it simply is what it is and efforts to change it are, in the end futile.
Hopefully more of us have active inquisitive minds and don't just dismiss everything weprefer not to consider because it doesn't fit old paradigms or simply makes us uncomfortable.
At any rate the blogger you are talking about I do not believe is fully deserving of your inky wrath (O)CT(O)PUS. I do know a blogger who would likely agree with you however.
It's not the opinions of subject commenter that bother me. It's his tendency to lash out - even unprovoked - with gratuitous and unwarranted outbursts more suggestive of a person with a serious anger management problem. Not my idea of a civil blogging experience.
DeleteYou're full of crap, dude. Jersey started it by a) calling me a looney and b) ridiculously asserting that only conservatives are fascists. And I didn't "revise" anything. Wilson was one of the earliest progressives (born in Virginia but ended up in frigging Princeton, for Christ sakes) and of course his policies weren't enlightened (I won't call them liberal or conservative because that's only something that dichotomous thinkers like you seem to engage and revel in) and that was my whole point, Clyde; that there's enough backward thinking on both sides of the aisle and to try and say that there are only conservative fascists is pure, unadulterated...you pick a word.............And if Wilson is going back a little too far for you and Jersey, how 'bout a little FDR? That "liberal" interned the Japanese, refused to back an anti-lynching bill, violated the Geneva Conventions of 1865 NUMEROUS TIMES, used the IRS to go after his political opponents, persecuted the Schectors via his idiotic NRA, threatened to raise the top tax rate to 100%, and even tried to pack the court with tin-can schmucks in order to rubber stamp his unconstitutional agenda. Hm, maybe a little fascism there, dude?............And you keep saying that I have an agenda. What's my frigging agenda? To not put my brain on vacation when a Democrat is in office (a Democrat who is essentially doing a lot of the same garbage that Bush did; rendition, surveillance, drones - which he's actually accelerated, attacking the press, etc.) ? You are really messed up there, fella'.............And the $@#%&%^## that I did was in respect to Les who doesn't like profanity. Get it?
Delete“You're full of crap, dude”
DeleteA QED moment, I see. Regrettably, subject commenter treats any subject – and many people - in stark all-or-nothing terms where perceptions are all black or all white with no grey scale continuum in between – for whom “either you agree with me or you are against me.” The vector of “dichotomous” thinking is a projection that points back at him.
In the subtext of “You're full of crap, dude,” arrogance and anger are evident, leaving subject commenter bereft of self-awareness and incapable of engaging in any civil and respectful exchange Online.
RN,
DeletePerhaps these fragmentary comments from the above exchange offers clarification:
“jmj has from time to time been guilty of the same” [RN, May 15 at 5:32pm]
“Jersey started it” [Will, May 16 at 1:00 am].
First, I am not interested in the sandbox logic of who started what first – truly juvenile stuff at best. Seemingly unable to distinguish who said what to whom and get his emotional ducks in a row, what leaps off the screen in the above exchange is how subject commenter lashes out gratuitously and globally at anyone who takes time to articulate a different viewpoint. There was nothing in my above comment(s) that merited this response:
“You are really messed up there, fella” [Will, May 16 at 1:00am].
It appears subject commenter cannot tolerate any point/counterpoint simultaneously without breaking into a verbal tirade.
Octo,
DeleteSand box logic indeed.
I get what you are saying, although I suspect neither JMJ or Will fully understand.
No one is obligated to accept in part or in full the position another holds on anything. Each person, as an individual is entitled to their own views and beliefs, even if they are wrong.
Expressing ones views and beliefs in a way that offends someone, or many someones, is the risk one takes for having a position. As you have pointed before out there are ways to express ones position without intentionally offending or being belligerent the other person.
Sometimes people take thinks too seriously and allow their passion for a certain position to carry them away so to speak.
Enough for today, I must now turn my attention to the physical side of ones existence, physical exercise and fitness.
Yeah, and the whole "Progressive" tag was something they stuck in the schoolbooks. At the time, no progressive thought of Wilson as one of them. Glenn Beck retarded nonsense.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
That's funny because a lot of them were also racists who strongly believed in eugenics (TR, JMK, Margaret Sanger, HG Wells, etc.).......And would you just go out and buy an introductory history text, for Christ.
DeleteWill, you're just throwing names and ideologies around. There's no substance to what you're saying. Ever look back at the pile of steaming feces that comprises historical conservative thought? You'd have to look back, because that's where it was left.
DeleteJMJ
I rest my case.
ReplyDeleteAs was the steaming pile of leftist feces JMJ, but of course we won't talk about that now will we? Oh No!
ReplyDeleteJust accept you are not going to win until you look to your own ideologies failings and work to correct them.
I've had enough.
The time has come ..
Delete