Startled eyewitnesses told of a highly unusual clash today between a snarling but more or less civil dinosaur and a pair of LaRouche supporters determined to vilify President Obama at a local Trader Joe's grocery store.
"It was amazing," said Joanie Contreras of _____, a systems analyst. "The two humans asked this big lizard if it 'had a minute' to talk about what Barack Obama is doing to America, and the toothsome, khaki-colored lizard cocked its head from side to side …" ("just like you see in Jurassic Park right before the T-Rex eats that lawyer!" chimed in Alyssa, Mrs. Contreras' still excited nine-year-old daughter) "and then it snarled something that sounded a lot like, 'I voted for Barack Obama. I like Barack Obama. Go to hell!' But it couldn't have said that because, as everybody knows, dinosaurs can't vote."
"So then it went inside and I'll be damned if it didn't buy some groceries," continued middle-school teacher Jim Bogle of _____, "and when it came back out a short while later at the same time I exited the store, there were those same two smartypants, ill-informed humans with the Barack-is-Hitler poster, asking again if the extinct lizard 'had a minute.' We thought that this time it would surely eat the pair and have done with it, but again it cocked its head and snarled what sounded like, 'Are you out of your minds? Get an education!' But of course that couldn't have been what we heard. Anyhow, the two humans tried to offer a comeback of sorts, but it made no impression and the cantankerous reptile was off to whatever godforsaken, time-forgotten swamp it calls home. The whole thing was just strange! And who knew that a predatory dinosaur would like garlic fries, bread, and avocados?!"
TJ's Manager Joe Stinson points out that the saw-toothed beast is a regular at his store, often buying such items as half-and-half, ricola cough drops, soy milk, and rennetless cheese. "We've never really been thrilled to have the creature ambling around the premises, to tell you the truth," said Stinson, "but at least it has a credit card and doesn't seem to bother anybody – unless, evidently, he or she is a seedy-looking, bandy-legged moron who compares the president to an evil dictator with a stupid-looking mustache. Which I kind of understand."
On a more serious note, it is unpleasant even to come across such people, as I did today. It seems to me that making a comparison between the sitting president and Adolf Hitler is tantamount to advocating the assassination of that president -- after all, the Nazis were and are considered beyond the bounds of normal political discourse and action, so why wouldn't some extremist understand the message in precisely that way? But who knows if these whack jobs are even intelligent enough to understand what their sickeningly immature gestures and language imply?
ReplyDelete“A minor clarification,” chimes the intrepid cephalopod. “One should not refer to dinosaurs as big lizards because ‘lizard’ connotes a cold-blooded creature whereas dinosaurs are warm-hearted and warm-blooded … as any bird ancestor will attest.”
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, there is a conundrum residing inside an enigma. If there an evil genius organizing this rabble, and one investigates and finds a conspiracy to incite mob violence, the organizers will claim plausible deniability and scream: “See, they really ARE fascists suppressing our rights to free speech and freedom to dissemble.”
Of course, anyone schooled in the fine art of “projective identification” knows that a fascist exorcizes oneself of charges of fascism simply by calling you a fascist, which confers even more wiggle room for plausible deniability. By gosh, the evil geniuses know this too!
Yet, they overlook a mighty large point. A mighty large creature such as a dinosaur makes a mighty large impression. And an octopus never buys boxing gloves by the pair! Thus, we are known as the X-creatures of the Swash Zone.
Bloggingdino: “It seems to me that making a comparison between the sitting president and Adolf Hitler is tantamount to advocating the assassination of that president …”
To confirm your point, I saw last week this report:
“Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent (…) including an alleged plot by white supremacists in Tennessee late last year to rob a gun store, shoot 88 black people, decapitate another 14 and then assassinate the first black president in American history.”
Even more disturbing, the Secret Service has directed these over-worked agents to put in longer hours and forgo training exercises and tests.
A 400% increase in threats against the president is no statistical outlier, and that is what makes this rabble so intolerable.
Octo, I'm just surprised that those racist cretins were able to count as high as 88. Who knew? As for "lizard," well, it's a shop term, no? We DO sort of look like "big lizards," lineage aside.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, the term "projection" resonates here: what we have is invidious, hate-spewing, fascist-tending thugs calling centrist-tending Democratic politicians "fascists." Those proudly vilifying Obama with a Charlie Chaplin 'stache are the very people who most likely wish someone PRECISELY like Hitler were running this country. Then they could eliminate their enemies (all rational beings, evidently) without conscience or hindrance of any kind.
I, for one, will have something frank to say to these ape-headed, mouse-eared mother-truckers whenever I see them befouling some joint I frequent with their miserable propaganda-stacked shit-stands. One can remain civil, but there is surely no reason to be respectful of someone who is only a hop-skip away from openly advocating the murder of our president.
To be perfectly candid and honest, ever since this hooligan stuff started, I have been losing sleep and find myself in an agitated state. Within the last hour, there was this exchange between Pamela of The Oracular Opinion and myself:
ReplyDeletePamela: "Octo: I’m sorry you feel an opinion needs to be based on facts. Last time I checked an opinion was based on a feeling and didn’t need anything factual to back it up."
Octopus: "Then, according to your world view, the earth is flat and only 6,000 years old, dinosaurs coexisted at the same time as human beings, Galileo was wrong and deserved to be persecuted, and 1 + 1 = anything you want it to be.
I am absolutely astonished!"
How can one have a dialogue with the other side of the aisle when hooliganism poisons the well and polarizes everyone? When one seeks safety in knowledge and phenomenology, it seems the evil geniuses were more clever than we imagined. There is no Archimedes point upon which to stand. I am feeling very disheartened.
I feel like this country is galvanized for a total meltdown and I don't think it will be on par with the Velvet Revolution.
ReplyDeleteWe are a violent, self-aggrandizing society. And given some of the recent more notable killings, attacks, etc, I see dark days ahead.
An opinion is generally a belief based on the facts at hand. While it does not require solid evidence to back it up, one should be prepared to defend their opinion with some sort of reasoning, otherwise it can only be considered wild innudendo and ignorant screed.
We must have a set of standards for discussions or we will simply continue to run in circles like we do now.
I too am frustrated and disheartened.
I constantly challenge conservatives to back up the allegations they make when they come to my blog and post outrageous stories about President Obama's secret plan to shred the Constitution and set up death camps for the old, the young, and the middle aged.
ReplyDelete"It seems to me that making a comparison between the sitting president and Adolf Hitler is tantamount to advocating the assassination of that president --"
That reminded me of a piece I just read online in Esquire and this particular part depressesed me the most:
An hour later, I found the "birther" booth behind the cafeteria. A big sign loomed above it:
URGENT: CALLING ALL PATRIOTS
Barry Soetoro AKA Barack Obama is SHREDDING THE CONSTITUTION
Behind the table, a man named Carl Swensson passed out flyers that were still warm from running through the photocopier. "If you agree with this," he called out, "we need you to sign up."
"String him up," said a man passing by.
"Do you know his mother did pornography?" said a woman sitting on the bleachers.
Another man stopped to look over the flyer. "What are you demanding?"
"We're just looking for his birth certificate."
"Or his death certificate," said a third man.
"The media's not going to report it."
"That's why you got to listen to Rush Limbaugh."
That kind of demonization has been going on for thousands of years and they're pretty good at it, piling one accusation on another using hate as mortar. There's nothing new about it whatever, nothing I haven't heard before a hundred times since America's predominant religion is build on it.
ReplyDeleteThe only difference is that Obama isn't a Jew.
Octo, "opinion" is a very complex word that runs from estimates of character to judgments and conclusions, to religious and political convictions, public sentiment, and what a person thinks about disputable points. I base this broad summary on the OED online definitions, which are very full for this word.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about your friend's ideas, but some tend towards the view that it's a fundamental right to make preposterous remarks rooted in mere sentiment or bias and then demand that others respect one for them or even agree with them. Thus if we criticize the far-right extremists who insist that Obama is a Kenyan or that he's just like Hitler and wants to kill our grannies, we are somehow victimizing them.
These same people can often be heard repeating a faulty, cruel notion until others get tired of correcting them. You could prove to these individuals that they are hopelessly wrong, and they would just keep repeating what they said because, as the idea goes, "I'm conservative, so I must hold to this view." As with a certain character from Lewis Carroll, "the question is who is to be master." It has nothing whatsoever to do with truth. Liberals are also capable of this, but I don't see it being as common to us as it is to the right: we tend to reject the strong impulse to conflate opinions and ideas with feelings, and we change our views when we find that they don't accord with the facts on the ground. Some conservatives – I don't say all or even the majority, of course -- evidently prefer to bully others into accepting their fake version of reality. In a word, they are relativists. Funny how from the Reagan era onwards, a key attack point of the right has consisted in accusing liberals of being relativistic, no? Projection again….
I think Rocky's definition is a fine one. Yes, a good working definition of "opinion" with regard to an individual could go something like, "a view that the holder believes to be based on an accurate assessment of the facts about a given situation and that is subject to refinement and refutation should that assessment change." So one might say something like, "my opinion is that the current health-insurance setup isn't sustainable for reasons x, y, and z. If you can prove to me that those reasons are unsound, I'll have to adjust my views accordingly." So an opinion, in this sense, is sort of like an hypothesis, isn't it? The term should not be allowed to slide into the realm of fantasy or bias, and so forth – that amounts to an abandonment of reason in favor of primal emotions such as fear and the powerful need to belong to a group, or to be "in control" of things.
Shaw, sounds like you ran into a real pack of crazies there.
But of course we should not be permanently disheartened -- if you think of progress as dialectical, it then makes sense that whenever good things begin to happen, the lunatics, the stupid and misinformed, as well as those with vested interests in the bad old ways and days will come out swinging. It's to be expected. Dim though they be, these people wouldn't be so agitated if they weren't on to some substantial and probable changes coming down the pipe.