Why do you think they're using the "Confederate Battle flag," specifically?

Let's talk about the Confederate flag, shall we?

In the wake of the racist hate crime in Charleston, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley apparently felt that residents of the Palmetto State weren't ready to discuss removing the Confederate flag just yet.

You know, right now, to start having policy conversations with the people of South Carolina, I understand that's what ya'll want, my job is to heal the people of this state... There will be policy discussions and you will hear me come out and talk about it. But right now, I am not doing that to the people of my state.

Apparently, this sort of flag talk is very traumatizing in South Carolina.

Eternal debutante Lindsey Graham positively got the vapors at the thought.

If at the end of the day, it is time for the people of South Carolina to reconsider that decision, it would be fine with me, but this is part of who we are.

The flag represents to some people, a Civil War, and that was the symbol of one side. To others it is a racist symbol, and it has been used in a racist way. But the problems we have today in South Carolina and across the world are not because of a movie or because of symbols, it is because of what is in peoples' hearts.

How do you go back and reconstruct America? What do you do in terms of our history?

Well, here's the thing about history, Scarlett. You aren't required to celebrate it. Particularly when it's the history of a group of people who felt they were allowed to keep other people as livestock, because those other people happened to have a darker skin.

There are things we shouldn't be proud of. Slavery is one of them.

The "heritage" argument has been around for years, and it's always been a fairly thin argument. As Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention put it:

Some would say that the Confederate Battle Flag is simply about heritage, not about hate. Singer Brad Paisley sang that his wearing a Confederate flag on his shirt was just meant to say that he was a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan. Comedian Stephen Colbert quipped, "Little known fact: Jefferson Davis - HUGE Skynyrd fan."

Or, to put it another way,

And it's not like this is a big secret, either. It's literally known around the world.

And yes, that is a fact.

So let's consider not clinging to your slave-owning past, and put away the symbols of racism. Maybe it's time to move on.

"Arbeit Macht Frei"

By Jeffrey Berger

These days the sunlight almost seems total.  A few men and women, trees,

stand between heaven and earth.  In the light of their shadows

we others are reading, still, messages the dead have stopped sending,

these days of almost fatal sunlight.  (Henry Braun, The Vergil Woods)

Seventy years have passed since the liberation of Auschwitz.  This post remembers a maternal great-grandfather who perished in the Holocaust.  It honors missing persons of a family tree whose fates will never be known. It commemorates innocent victims of persecution whose life possibilities were cut mercilessly short.

The exact death toll at Auschwitz remains elusive. Many inmates were undocumented, and large amounts of incriminating evidence were destroyed in the final weeks of war. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum sets the official record:

1.1 million - total victims

960,000 - Jewish victims

438,000 - Hungarian Jews

300,000 - Polish Jews

69,000 - French Jews

60,000 - Dutch Jews

55,000 - Greek Jews

75,000 - non-Jewish Poles

21,000 - Romani

15,000 - Soviet POWs

15,000 - disabled and other

The Red Army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Only 7,500 emaciated prisons were found alive among 600 corpses, 370,000 men's suits, 837,000 women's garments, and 8.5 tons of human hair.  Among the survivors who recovered and resumed full and productive lives:

Elie Wiesel (awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986), Simone Veil (served as President of the European Parliament), Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler (escapees who saved an estimated 120,000 to 200,000 inmates), Thomas Buergenthal (judge of the International Court of Justice), Imre Kertesz (writer and Nobel Laureate in Literature for 2002), Joel Lebowitz (mathematician and physicist who won the prestigious Max Planck award), Vladek and Anja Spiegelman (parents of American cartoonist Art Spiegelman), and Jack Tramiel (founder of Commodore International) ...

Little is known of my great-grandfather.  He was an author, a philosopher and college professor living in Prague when the Nazi army occupied Czechoslovakia.  No letters or literary works survive apart from anecdotal accounts handed down by word of mouth – until the trial of Adolph Eichmann in 1961 revealed his fate.

According to trial testimony, Eichmann ordered the SS to stop a deportation train headed for Auschwitz.  Aboard that ill-fated train was a 'nettlesome agitator' for human rights. Eichmann ordered his execution by firing squad. This man was my great-grandfather. 

Everyday in 1961, my mother and grandmother watched the Eichmann trial on TV.  I recall their stunned silence when the name of my great-grandfather — and his final fate — was revealed during trial testimony. A family chapter was finally closed.

Are some people more predisposed to obedience than others - willing to follow even the most heinous orders?  Yale University research psychologist Stanley Milgram tested this hypothesis, with disturbing results:

The percentage of test subjects willing to inflict pain on command was constant across all population groups – ranging from 61 to 66 percent regardless of ethnicity, gender, nationality, or circumstance.

Milgram’s experiment reveals a grim truth about human nature: Everywhere in the world are people innately capable of unspeakable savagery.  Genocide did not end with World War II.  It happened again in Tibet (1959-1966), in Cambodia (1975-1979), in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995), and in Rwanda (1994).  Even today, atrocities continue unabated in Darfur, Iraq, and Syria.  The record of human history is long and grim:

Wars of aggression and oppression; true believers versus infidels, Christians against Christians, Muslims against Muslims; vainglorious empires, colonialism, greed; whites enslave blacks; Nazis murder Jews, Hutus slaughter Tutsis; inquisitions, persecutions, pogroms, endless cycles of retribution and revenge and unrelenting violence … since the beginning of time.

Yet, there are deniers and revisionists who still dispute the indisputable, and madmen who target innocent civilians. Is one massacre worse than another? Does the tragic history of one people invalidate the tormented history of another?  Either no account is valid, or every account is valid and deserving of remembrance.

Consider the diversity of life that has evolved on Earth over eons of time.  Here is a single species united in time but divided in language, culture, customs and tribe.  ‘Ecce homo.’  Behold the lot of humankind constantly at war, each committing acts of violence upon another.

‘Arbeit macht frei.’  Perversely cynical words intended to exterminate, not liberate. Words more aptly inscribed above the Gates of Hell: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'

How will humanity ever find peace?  Shall we segregate people by geography, by race, religion, and custom?  Shall we end all commerce and cultural exchange?  Shall we prevent the free migrations of people and the free exchange of human invention?  Or …

Shall we learn how to integrate and tolerate – even appreciate – the diversity and rich cultural heritage of all humankind?

There will be no peace, no hope, no freedom from tyranny and war until people come to terms with their darkest impulses.

© February 1, 2015

Did Adolf get right with God?

Let's talk about Hitler again, shall we? That's always a fun topic, right?

Here's the thing. The God-botherers keep trying to avoid the sad truth - that Hitler was, in fact, a Christian. I've just had a 3-day argument with a guy on Twitter who doesn't want to admit it, and he had two different arguments. The first is just to lie about the subject, and the second is to claim that Hitler wasn't a Christian because he didn't follow the proper "Christian virtues."

Here's the problem: Hitler was an amazingly private man. He didn't share his private thoughts with a lot of people, and that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. On the one hand, we have the writings of Goebbels and Bormann, who claimed he spoke badly of Christianity to them. Unfortunately, these were private conversations with no way to verify them, and both men were open, contemptuous atheists, who wanted Hitler to believe the way they did.

And then you get books like Hitler's Cross, written by Erwin Lutzer, an evangelical pastor, who desperately wanted Hitler not to have believed in the same things he did.

But on the other hand, we have his extensive use of Christian themes in his writings and speeches. We also have the fact that the Wehrmacht had the motto "God is with us," which seems fairly straightforward.

We also have the fact that Hitler was raised Catholic, and went to a monastary school; he was even an altar boy. The Vatican had an agreement with the Nazis called the Reichconcordat. Hitler never left the Catholic church, and (unlike Goebbels), was never excommunicated. But, to be honest, he wasn't Catholic. What he actually was, was a member of the religion he sponsored and supported, the Deutsche Christen (German Christian) movement.

See, the problem with standard Christian doctrine was that it was a little too Jewy for Adolph and his party boys. So, back in 1907, a guy named Max Bewer wrote a book called Der Deutsche Christus ("The German Christ"), where his theory was that Jesus was a product of Mary cuckolding Joseph with some German soldiers from the Roman Garrison (that's the body - the whole "spirit" thing still comes from God).

Philosophically, they ignored (and in some cases, removed) the Old Testament (you know, what some people even today call "the Hebrew Bible"), and pushed what they called "positive Christianity" (Positives Christentum) - less stress on that Lutheran "sinfulness" thing, more on redemption (in fact, if you strip away the Nazi overtones, it's similar to what mega-churches preach today).

Was Hitler a "good Christian"? Well, that's where you have to define your terms. Was he raised a Christian? Yes, he was. Did he go to church? Why, yes. He did. He also prayed with his troops, and insisted that chaplains travel with his troops, too.

Did he attend church every Sunday? Probably not. He was a busy man: had a country to run, other countries to invade, people to oppress. Kind of like Donald Trump.

An argument can be made that "Hitler was more of an opportunist than a good church-goer." But that doesn't negate his Christianity: my grandfather, an Army chaplain, used to talk about "Et Cetera Christians" (ETC - Easter Thanksgiving Christmas).

Most Christians go to church out of habit, mouthing the words because that's expected. And then they go about their daily lives, slandering people, ignoring the sick and the hungry, and generally ignoring all the good things that Jesus Christ supported ("Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Matthew 25:31-46)

And remember: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:8-10) And while you may not agree with him, Hitler always thought he was doing good works

So the basic argument against Hitler being a Christian boils down to "Some people who hated Christianity said he hated Christianity too!" and "Some of his writings opposed the other churches and he didn't like the Jewish parts of Christianity! I'm going to ignore all the pro-Christian things he said!"

Once you strip those away, you're left with "Well, he did un-Christian things," which would certainly be an effective argument to make, if you were likewise going to say that nobody can be a Christian: Hitler may have done more horrific acts than most, but who actually lives up to the words of Jesus?

For example, even if you're lying about Hitler, you're still lying.

Godwin's Law Redux

There is a constant drumbeat from the right comparing Obama to Hitler. I mean, let's ignore the fact that Obama's signature legislation is a method to ensure that everybody can go to a hospital when they're sick without ending up living out of their car. Because that's exactly the same as slaughtering six million Jews and attempting to take over Europe in a bloody campaign of destruction.

Yeah, let's ignore that. Instead, let's ask ourselves why every single time that somebody disagrees with a politician, it's become de rigueur to compare them to Hitler? Why is the litmus test for political arguments the ability to reduce your enemy to the level of the worst dictator in history? Last week, I pointed out an unintentional violation of Godwin's Law, but let's consider the issue a little, shall we?

Following World War One, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty included Article 231, which is commonly called "the guilt clause":

The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

Using this as a legal basis, Germany was forced to pay reparations to the rest of Europe. Unfortunately, Germany didn't think they'd lost the war - the German High Command told their citizens that the Army had never been beaten in the field, and the defeat was actually due to actions by civilians, particularly Jews, Socialists and Communists (the Dolchstosslegende, or "Stabbed-in-the-Back Legend").

That's right - Hitler didn't start the rumor that Jews were destroying the economy. Antisemitism was well-established in the German culture long before he was born.

So the Weimar Republic resisted the reparations, and defaulted on payments quite frequently. The French and Belgians, realizing that the Germans were able to pay and simply weren't, eventually invaded and occupied the Ruhr valley, which was the center of coal, iron and steel production in Germany.

Take this reduction in raw materials for the Germans and the resulting reduction in cash-flow, and add to it the fact that the German government funded a passive resistance movement among the citizens of the Ruhr by simply printing more money. This led to the famed hyper-inflation of post-WWI Germany.

Technically, the inflation started when the Kaiser decided to fund WWI by borrowing money instead of taxing his people and using his own fortune: the value of the German mark fell from 4 to 9 per US dollar. But the war ended in 1919; by November 1923, the American dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks. Or in more concrete terms, in 1919 a loaf of bread cost 1 mark; by 1923, a loaf of bread cost 100 billion marks.

This was the situation when Adolph Hitler rose into power. During the course of his leadership, he brought his people back from the brink of ruin and ensured they could eat.

People want for life to be simple. They want their enemies to wholly evil, so that there's no question that "destroying them" is a bad thing. The reductive power of the human mind wants those we disagree with to have no redeeming features. Homophobes want gays to practice pedophilia and beastiality. Radical conservatives want liberals to be fascists and totalitarian dictators. Radical liberals want conservatives to be inhuman monsters who laugh as children starve in the streets.

The reality is that people are more complex than that. But to see that, to understand the forces that drive someone, is to understand that perhaps evil is not something simple. Perhaps evil and good are in all of us. That bad things are done by good people, and good things are done by bad people, and the world isn't the simple place we want it to be.

Would you like to see the most frightening picture of Adolph Hitler ever taken?

Hitler, holding hands with a little girl and walking in a park. Hitler loved children. He loved animals: he was a confirmed vegetarian and was opposed to vivisection.

Were you aware that Eva Braun took home movies?


Hitler was a human being. It challenges your worldview: he should be a monster, pounding on desks and ordering people to their deaths. But he lived, he loved, he laughed, he played with children.

He also destroyed much of Europe, threw the world into war, and established concentration camps where 11 million people were killed.

Perhaps "good" and "evil" aren't the simple concepts that some people want them to be.

Can Godwin come down and rule on this?

You know, the GOP keeps trying to claim that they don't have a "War on Women." They claim that they respect women (even though the womenfolk can't be trusted to make decisions regarding their own bodies). But then they'll stumble, and somebody like GOP candidate Todd Akin will try to claim that rape is not a reason that abortion should be kept legal, because, after all, nobody gets pregnant that way.

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare," Akin told KTVI-TV in a clip posted to YouTube by the Democratic super PAC American Bridge. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Or you get somebody like, say, Trent Franks (R-AZ), who, after ten years in the House of Representatives, should know better.

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), whose measure banning abortions after 20 weeks was being considered in the House Judiciary Committee, argued against a Democratic amendment to make exceptions for rape and incest by suggesting that pregnancy from rape is rare.

"Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject — because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low," Franks said.

Franks continued: "But when you make that exception, there’s usually a requirement to report the rape within 48 hours. And in this case that's impossible because this is in the sixth month of gestation. And that's what completely negates and vitiates the purpose for such an amendment."

Now, let's ignore the fact that The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, who make it their business to know such things, report that ten to fifteen thousand abortions due to rape occur each year, which makes statements like that "medically inaccurate, offensive, and dangerous." And we can ignore that particular piece of data because, after all, facts don't matter to this crowd.

Instead, let's all try and remember a wonderful little bit of information dug up by Tim Townsend and Blythe Bernhard for the St Louis Post-Dispatch following Akin's comments.

While U.S. Rep. Todd Akin cited only "doctors" as his source of information about the rarity of pregnancy resulting from rape, it is two pages, from Mecklenburg's 1972 article, "The Indications for Induced Abortion: A Physician's Perspective," that have influenced two generations of anti-abortion activists hoping to build a medical case to ban all abortions without exception...

In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.

The Nazis tested this hypothesis "by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate."

Finally, Mecklenburg said it was likely that the rapists — because of "frequent masturbation" — were unlikely to be fertile themselves.

(I just threw in that last line as a bonus.)

So, are we clear on this? The GOP is trying to claim that there is no such thing as rape-babies, because the Nazis said there weren't. They are now basing their arguments on unscientific and inhumane experiments performed by Nazi doctors in death camps

Do you know how happy that one little fact makes me? I don't have to call the GOP racist, fascist, or Nazis! They're doing it to themselves!

Republikanische Partei über alles!

London Blitz

Listen to the air raid sirens in this first video while reading the introduction. It creates a realistic backdrop for the eerie horror Londoners experienced during the Blitz in World War II.






INTRODUCTION: The Blitz began on the night of September 7, 1940 with the non-stop bombing of London by the German Luftwaffe. This first onslaught lasted for 76 consecutive nights and would destroy many towns and cities across the country before ending on May 10, 1941. Over 43,000 civilians, half of them in London, were killed by bombs and more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged in London alone.

The London Blitz, 1940*

The appearance of German bombers in the skies over London during the afternoon of September 7, 1940 heralded a tactical shift in Hitler's attempt to subdue Great Britain. During the previous two months, the Luftwaffe had targeted RAF airfields and radar stations for destruction in preparation for the German invasion of the island. With invasion plans put on hold and eventually scrapped, Hitler turned his attention to destroying London in an attempt to demoralize the population and force the British to come to terms. At around 4:00 PM on that September day, 348 German bombers escorted by 617 fighters blasted London until 6:00 PM. Two hours later, guided by the fires set by the first assault, a second group of raiders commenced another attack that lasted until 4:30 the following morning.

This was the beginning of the Blitz - a period of intense bombing of London and other cities that continued until the following May. For the next consecutive 57 days, London was bombed either during the day or night. Fires consumed many portions of the city. Residents sought shelter wherever they could find it - many fleeing to the Underground stations that sheltered as many as 177,000 people during the night. In the worst single incident, 450 were killed when a bomb destroyed a school being used as an air raid shelter. Londoners and the world were introduced to a new weapon of terror and destruction in the arsenal of twentieth century warfare. The Blitz ended on May 11, 1941 when Hitler called off the raids in order to move his bombers east in preparation for Germany's invasion of Russia.

"They came just after dark... "

Ernie Pyle was one of World War Two's most popular correspondents. His journalism was characterized by a focus on the common soldier interspersed with sympathy, sensitivity and humor. He witnessed the war in Europe from the Battle of Britain through the invasion of France. In 1945 he accepted assignment to the Pacific Theater and was killed during the battle for Okinawa. Here, he describes a night raid on London in 1940:

Shortly after the sirens wailed you could hear the Germans grinding overhead. In my room, with its black curtains drawn across the windows, you could feel the shake from the guns. You could hear the boom, crump, crump, crump, of heavy bombs at their work of tearing buildings apart. They were not too far away.

Half an hour after the firing started I gathered a couple of friends and went to a high, darkened balcony that gave us a view of a third of the entire circle of London. As we stepped out onto the balcony a vast inner excitement came over all of us-an excitement that had neither fear nor horror in it, because it was too full of awe.

You have all seen big fires, but I doubt if you have ever seen the whole horizon of a city lined with great fires - scores of them, perhaps hundreds.

There was something inspiring just in the awful savagery of it.

The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we watched. Big ones died down under the firemen's valor, only to break out again later.

About every two minutes a new wave of planes would be over. The motors seemed to grind rather than roar, and to have an angry pulsation, like a bee buzzing in blind fury.

The guns did not make a constant overwhelming din as in those terrible days of September. They were intermittent - sometimes a few seconds apart, sometimes a minute or more. Their sound was sharp, near by; and soft and muffled, far away. They were everywhere over London.



Into the dark shadowed spaces below us, while we watched, whole batches of incendiary bombs fell. We saw two dozen go off in two seconds. They flashed terrifically, then quickly simmered down to pin points of dazzling white, burning ferociously. These white pin points would go out one by one, as the unseen heroes of the moment smothered them with sand. But also, while we watched, other pin points would burn on, and soon a yellow flame would leap up from the white center. They had done their work - another building was on fire.

The greatest of all the fires was directly in front of us. Flames seemed to whip hundreds of feet into the air. Pinkish-white smoke ballooned upward in a great cloud, and out of this cloud there gradually took shape - so faintly at first that we weren't sure we saw correctly - the gigantic dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.

St. Paul's was surrounded by fire, but it came through. It stood there in its enormous proportions - growing slowly clearer and clearer, the way objects take shape at dawn. It was like a picture of some miraculous figure that appears before peace-hungry soldiers on a battlefield.

The streets below us were semi-illuminated from the glow. Immediately above the fires the sky was red and angry, and overhead, making a ceiling in the vast heavens, there was a cloud of smoke all in pink. Up in that pink shrouding there were tiny, brilliant specks of flashing light-antiaircraft shells bursting. After the flash you could hear the sound.

Up there, too, the barrage balloons were standing out as clearly as if it were daytime, but now tey were pink instead of silver. And now and then through a hole in that pink shroud there twinkled incongruously a permanent, genuine star - the old - fashioned kind that has always been there.

Below us the Thames grew lighter, and all around below were the shadows - the dark shadows of buildings and bridges that formed the base of this dreadful masterpiece.

Later on I borrowed a tin hat and went out among the fires. That was exciting too; but the thing I shall always remember above all the other things in my life is the monstrous loveliness of that one single view of London on a holiday night - London stabbed with great fires, shaken by explosions, its dark regions along the Thames sparkling with the pin points of white-hot bombs, all of it roofed over with a ceiling of pink that held bursting shells, balloons, flares and the grind of vicious engines. And in yourself the excitement and anticipation and wonder in your soul that this could be happening at all.

These things all went together to make the most hateful, most beautiful single scene I have ever known."

References:

This eyewitness account appears in: Pyle Ernie, Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Reprinted in Commager, Henry Steele, The Story of the Second World War (1945); Johnson, David, The London Blitz : The City Ablaze, December 29, 1940 (1981).

*Source: "The London Blitz, 1940," Eyewitness to History, 2001

GALLERY:

 

A BLESSED KRISTALLNACHT TO ALL

When I first thought of this post, I didn’t know what to call it. My intention was to recognize a conservative blogger for her courage and strength of character in withstanding a deluge of criticism from fellow conservatives.

I decided to take a generic approach because this post is no longer about the subject blogger but about a more widespread and pernicious phenomenon: The subculture of invective, dishonest hyperbole, and slash-and-burn character assassination that has metastasized into our political life, our media, and our online interactions.

This is not the first time your liberal (O)CT(O)PUS has defended a conservative blogger. Last year, another conservative blogger asked a fair question: Do we really want President Obama to fail? Since liberals and conservatives alike are riding in the same ship of nationhood, she asked, do we really want to sink the entire boat? An intellectually honest question, I thought, but not according to rabid reactionaries who accused the writer of spreading apostasy and treason.

Rightwing critics disparage the term political correctness as a Marxist plot whose aim is to undermine conservative values and impose social conformity. The linguistic argument is one more front in the so-called culture wars. Yet, the same rightwing critics employ a far more sinister version of political correctness. They make use of litmus tests to enforce ideological orthodoxy in thought, speech, and personal associations. They will not hesitate to browbeat fellow conservatives into submission with condemnation and excommunication. How ironic! The rightwing accuses the left of using political correctness to impose social conformity; yet, the same rightwingers use coercive means to enforce groupthink within their ranks.

This post has a background story in two parts. Part One begins with Shaw, our fellow Swash Zone colleague, who asked me to look after her weblog in her absence while she underwent cancer surgery. In due course, I enlisted mutual friends including one conservative writer as guest contributors. There were no constraints or guidelines imposed on any writer; and there were no objections from Shaw for any contribution on her behalf.

Part Two: This drama moves to the weblog of our conservative friend, who posted a simple holiday greeting, A Blessed Christmas to All. As expected, her comment thread filled with good wishes from followers of all persuasions … until a few days ago when one reader discovered her name as a contributor on Shaw’s weblog:

[Name redacted] said: “I saw your name on the Progressive Eruptions blog as one of the contributes [sic] to that FILTH (…) If you wish to be part of that commie-Marxist blog then so be it. That's your mistake and I for one won't be part of it or of this. And I hope that my fellow republicans [sic] will feel the same way.”

To assuage whatever demons my invitation had summoned, I replied:

“[Name redacted], if you want to blame someone for putting [her] name on the contributor list at Progressive Eruptions, blame me because I am the one who invited her (…) The civil and respectful thing to do is give [name of conservative friend] an appropriate greeting in keeping with the holiday spirit. So be a human being, a mensch, and do the right thing.”

The story should have ended here, but it did not. Within a day, another reader left this comment: “Goo [sic] there if you wish or if you must [[name redacted], but I will not be a follower.”

As chum in the water attracts predatory sharks, news of my friend’s so-called “defection” spread across conservative Cyberspace: “I too am disappointed in you [name of my conservative friend]. But like someone else here has said. [sic] we have to do what we have to do. And I too must do what I must do.”

When chatting with rightwing reactionaries, there is nothing to be gained in talking about helping a friend in need, about acts of kindness and compassion, about appealing to our higher angels, or pointing out what separates human beings from savages. There is no profit in mentioning freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom to associate, or in pointing out the shared American legacy that binds us together. Trust me: Every attempted outreach drew an inflamed response, as examples:

SLIME-BUCKETS … libtards … I’m sick of people like YOU … liberal holier than thou crap … The only standards liberals have are double standards … house flies … STUPID … the infectious horrible disease known as Liberalism … terrorist sympathizers … stupid and ignorant … filthy mouthed JERKS … take a hike … (O)CT(O)PUSSY …

Returning to the subject of political correctness, liberals prefer the term cognitive linguistics to describe the framing effect of language and word-choice in shaping the attitudes and actions of speakers and listeners. In concept, the abuse and misuse of language contributes to negative stereotypes that can restrict the rights, opportunities, and freedoms of people. One goal of cognitive linguistics is to render pejorative labels as socially unacceptable, thus encouraging us to view individuals on their merits as opposed to stereotypes.

There are critics who regard political correctness as a “euphemism treadmill.” And there are defenders who view those dismissals as a distraction to avoid a debate about racism, sexism, and other forms of class discrimination and inequality.

In his book, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, David Neiwert takes cognitive linguistics a step further:

Rhetorically, [eliminationism] depicts its opposition as beyond the pale, the embodiment of evil itself, unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus worthy of elimination. It often further depicts its designated Enemy as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and disease-like cancers on the body politic.

(…)

It is by small steps of meanness and viciousness that we lose our humanity. We have the historical example of 20th fascism as a reminder. The Nazis … didn’t get that way overnight. They did this by not simply branding their opponents as the Enemy, but by denying them their essential humanity, depicting them as worse than scum – disease-laden, world destroying vermin, in desperate need of elimination.

In short, reactionary ideas and talking points have infected public discourse to such a degree that it is poisoning how we treat each other in our daily lives. It is a political subculture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of outright elimination of the opposing side through suppression, condemnation, ostracism, or extermination.

On July 27, 2008, Jim David Adkisson entered a Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, killed two people, and wounded seven others. The shooter was motivated by hated of liberals, Democrats, African Americans, and homosexuals. A police search of his home found: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism by Sean Hannity, and other hate literature (source).

Liberal-bashing trolls harassed my friend on home turf and defiled her holiday message. Make no mistake. My friend has fallen victim to reactionary rhetoric as much as any liberal, or any other group targeted by this rabble. Perhaps one of her moderate followers said it best:

Seems your "friends" don't think you have the strength of your convictions. That you will somehow be "turned" or "brainwashed." That just by engaging with liberals you will be tainted and changed (…) How silly (...) She doesn't back off her beliefs. She knows irrationality when she sees it. She knows how to be a "true" friend (…) How many times has [she] asked her readers to cut the ad hom (…) you deserve better "friends" [my bold].