But honey lemme innerdeuce you to another example of a conservative blind spot, this one provoked whenever someone wonders why they hates us so.
The unvarnished history of the Middle East isn't a comfortable subject for staunch defenders of capitalism--the secular history, this isn't about a holy war, much as the powers-that-be wish we'd believe it so, this is about resource extraction by force, a slow secular war, that began when Sykes and Picot sat out WWI in a sidewalk cafe in Paris, and drew the lines on the map that became the Middle East we know and love today. (What a tortured, convoluted sentence...but I wouldn't change a word.)
Focusing on the secular reality and not getting distracted by the shiny bauble of holy war leads away from existential terror of a tangible sinister organization like ISIS, with all the Bond-villain simplicity that implies, into a perhaps even scarier, for conservatives, world of complexity and shades of grey, of shared responsibility for the mess there, after a century of stretching the Middle East on the rack of mercantile geopolitics. You can't stop knowledge of that history at the border; Farook heard about it from inside America. And the circulation of those ideas is pretty scary, even if you're not an RWA.
Because how the hell do you fight an idea?
Flame » in reply to They just want to hate with a clear conscience.
Not sure that's where Tom thinks I ended up
The whole thread (72 posts)
- Bad time to talk about restricting guns. Really bad. (n/t)
- Bowser, it's "too soon"...
- Obama was quick to call for gun control. How long will it take for him to say we were attacked by Isis. N/T
- Rob, we weren't attacked by ISIS
- The only thing that scares me is your attitude towards this. There's really no point in elaborating. n/t
- Then you're an idiot and I refuse to elaborate further
- Just what do you think Isis "is"? n/t
- A wannabe "Caliphate"
- No. It's not Rob.
- Just what do you think Isis "is"? n/t
- Then you're an idiot and I refuse to elaborate further
- The only thing that scares me is your attitude towards this. There's really no point in elaborating. n/t
- Why does that matter more to you...
- Rob, we weren't attacked by ISIS
- Why choose between "gun violence" and "Islamic terrorism"?
- Yemen has less than half the rate of gun violence as does the US. There has to be a way to work together to lessen it.
- It was radical fucking Islamic terrorism. I so "wanted to see that". You ass...I
- Conservatives would rather see recent events as "Islamic Terror" rather than "Gun Violence."
- "the U.S. gun-related murder rate is almost 20 times that of the other 22."
- It appears that everyone is circling the wagons. n/t