William Rivers Pitt: Hatred and Stupidity ... But I Repeat Myself

[babylonsister]

http://www.truth-out.org/hatred-and-stupiditybut-i-repeat-myself62916

Hatred and Stupidity ... But I Repeat Myself

Saturday 04 September 2010

by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed


(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Chris S., Gage Skidmore)



snip//

Wrap your mind around this: at this point, a majority of Republicans not only believe Mr. Obama to be a practicing Muslim, but believe his intention as president is to impose Sharia Law on America and the rest of the world. I'd like Gallup or Pew to do a special poll so as to determine exactly how many of those who believe these things were dropped on their heads when they were babies. I'd wager the number would pop close to 95%. Of course, the media's love for spectacle - no matter how deranged or dangerous it is - has motivated them to run these cretins and their theories across the sky with klieg lights, and just as the right hoped, it is all having the desired effect.

There have been other effects, however, and deadly dangerous ones at that. Mosques have been firebombed. A Muslim cabdriver in New York City was savagely slashed by a man screaming anti-Islam epithets. A Sikh man was punched in a store for wearing a turban, even though he was as Muslim as a church steeple. The controversy over the Cordoba House project has inspired a rash of threats against the Imam in charge, the Muslims involved, and the building itself. In short, the right has basically stated that if the place gets built, they will shoot it up and/or burn it down.

There is nothing whatsoever funny or pleasurable about this phenomenon. The people pushing this vile tactic are someday going to find themselves burning in a deep ring of Hell, and rightly so. Sometimes, though...oh yeah, sometimes the tables get turned, and the hatred and stupidity being peddled by the right is transmogrified into a special kind of justice. Street justice, to be sure, but justice nonetheless.

There's a joint in West Haven, Connecticut, called the Fire and Ice Hookah Lounge. By all reports, it's a nifty little place; the theme is Middle Eastern, the hookah smoke is tasty, and the belly dancers are something to see indeed. Last Thursday, a fellow named Kevin Morris, also of West Haven, came ditty-bopping into Fire and Ice and staked his claim to first-ballot entry into the Dumbass Hall of Fame.

Mr. Morris, it seems, decided that any place with hookahs and belly dancers must be a festering nest of Muslims, and decided to give the patrons what-for. According to news reports, he barged through the door and started screaming racist and anti-Muslim epithets at everyone there. The crowd didn't really react until Morris tried to throttle the bartender...at which point, the patrons rose up righteous and basically beat the ever-loving Jesus out of him. Morris' mug shot looks like his face went through a wheat thresher, and as of now, he remains in police custody.

Hatred and stupidity, folks. When they ride in the same applecart, things can get truly dangerous. But sometimes, and only rarely, things can also get truly funny.

Thank you, Mr. Morris.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Eerily familiar: They Thought They Were Free...Milton Mayer

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

<snip>
"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

<snip>

"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies,’ without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have. And everyone counts on that might.
<snip>

[Common Sense Party]

2. 34% of Republican idiots think Obama is a Muslim.

I'm not sure how that's "a majority."

http://people-press.org/report/645/

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[babylonsister]

4. So we should hate all Muslims? Is that your take? nt

[petersjo02]

5. And quackquackquack to you, too

I see you're still around here spreading hate and intolerance. Figured you'd have been tombstoned by now.

[givemebackmycountry]

6. Will Pitt is the Rude Pundit without the microphone up the ass...

But, I like them both.
I would love to buy both of them multiple rounds of drinks and smoke a few butts with them while doing it.
I know how to choose my health providers.
More often than not, they say what I'm thinking late at night.

Thanks Will Pitt.

[provis99]

7. didn't this guy get tombstoned on DU? Why are we reading him then?

[bobbieinok]

8. Well, let's see----he's smart, a good writer, at DU since beginning??

If you don't want to read him, don't click on his posts. Pretty straightforward, no???