Wednesday Open Thread, June 15, 2016
No F*cks to Give Obama is the best Obama. Yesterday, President Obama is finally done pussyfooting with Republican idiots who insist that if he would just say “Radical Islamic Terrorism” or “Radical Islam,” then all terrorists everywhere would be so shocked that they would turn their guns on themselves and boom ISIS is defeated.
Obama_06-14-2016 by DailyPolitics
What Republicans really mean when they demand their magic words is that they actually do want to go to full scale war with an entire religion. They want a war on all Muslims, everywhere. A war on Islam. It is what Trump wants.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is slated to address supporters with a video live stream on Thursday night, his campaign confirmed Tuesday. He may announce a transition to a platform campaign to press for changes to the party primary process and platform. Hillary seems to be doing a very good job of consolidating the Democratic base on her own without Bernie’s help, so I am less concerned about an enthusiastic endorsement being made as soon as possible. Hillary has carved out some space for Bernie, Hillary and the DNC to negotiate and slowly tamp down the primary heat. Which is a good thing.
A new Bloomberg poll finds that Hillary Clinton has opened up a double-digit lead nationally over Donald Trump, 49% to 37%, with Libertarian Gary Johnson getting 9%. Take out Johnson, and Hillary leads 54-36. That is simply a massive landslide that would sweep the country blue and give us back the House with a 20-30 seat majority.
Very interesting: 55% of those polled saying they could never vote for Trump.
Said pollster Ann Selzer: “Clinton has a number of advantages in this poll, in addition to her lead. Her supporters are more enthusiastic than Trump’s and more voters overall see her becoming a more appealing candidate than say that for Trump.”
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll also shows Clinton leading by 12 points.
Charlie Cook: “If anything that either Clinton or Trump says or does turns out to be a determining factor, Trump is more likely to play that role. Whether one likes or dislikes Hillary Clinton, or agrees or disagrees with her on issues, she is a tested and experienced candidate and considered a safe pair of hands.”
“Trump, by contrast, is a grenade with the pin halfway out. The possibility of a sudden explosion is never far away, and this prospect gives sleepless nights to Republican elected officials and strategists. GOP pollsters are probably doing a land-office business these days, surveying states and districts to advise their Republican clients exactly how they should position themselves—whether they should stand close to Trump or dig a protective trench.”
First Read: “Remember when Trump advisers were suggesting that their candidate would back off or moderate his temporary Muslim ban? Well, there’s no backing off after yesterday’s speech. And it raises a series of questions for every Republican out there, including House GOP leaders… Do you support or oppose Trump’s speech? Do you support his temporary Muslim ban? Do you believe that the U.S. should suspend all immigration from places where there is a proven history of terrorism? And do you agree with Trump’s insinuation — from his remarks Monday morning — that President Obama is somehow complicit in the Orlando mass shooting?”
“Senate Republicans have tried to work with Donald Trump. They’ve offered gentle advice and firm guidance, hoping he’ll morph into a general election candidate who won’t kill their chances of keeping the Senate, or better yet, will give Hillary Clinton a run for her money,” Politico reports.
“None of it has worked. And now a palpable mix of despair and resignation has permeated the Senate Republican Conference. Many lawmakers are openly frustrated, and refusing to defend the comments and actions of their own standard-bearer, the man they’ve endorsed for president.”
Sam Stein interviews Danny Diaz (Jeb Bush’s campaign manager), Jeff Roe (Ted Cruz’s campaign manager) and Alex Conant (Marco Rubio’s communications director).
“Well-compensated, highly intelligent and very publicly defeated, each one of them is still angry, both at Trump and at the media. Each one of them has theories about how we got to this very disconcerting place in American political history. And not one of them is prepared to vote for Trump.”
“The stories they told me over a 90-minute conversation at a bar called Black Jack in Washington DC provided an entirely different view of the campaign and of elite Republican thinking. They spoke with unusual candor about which strategies they pushed that they now regret, how they believe network executives conspired against their candidates, what a disaster the Republican convention will be and why a Hillary Clinton blowout may be upon us.”
James Hohmann: “Clinton made a savvy strategic decision last year not to tack left on national security during the primaries. She lurched leftward on everything from trade to Wall Street to head off Bernie Sanders’s unexpectedly strong insurgency, but she more or less stuck to her guns on national security – even in the face of intense attacks over her Iraq vote. She vigorously defended her hawkish posture in Libya and Syria during the debates, while expressing more regret for her vote on Iraq than she did last time. She also defended her relationship with Henry Kissinger, who many on the left loathe. The campaign was playing a long game, and they knew that there would be long-term costs for articulating more dovish positions.”
“Now that the nomination is wrapped up, if anything, she can take a harder line.”
I know Sanders supporters might not like it, but politically speaking, as things have turned out, it was the right strategic decision.
Florida AG Pam Bondi, who took a bribe from Donald Trump to drop a fraud investigation into Trump University, bombs in an interview with Anderson Cooper over her anti-gay record.
Rick Klein: “All conventional wisdom about how a politician responds to a terrorist attack or a mass shooting had gone out the window with Trump’s first series of Tweets, where he accepted congratulations for being right and called on President Obama to resign from office. Before Trump started speaking in New Hampshire, he had suggested that the president secretly might want ISIS to succeed. By the time he was done, he had misled his audience about the Orlando shooter’s birth status, and expanded his proposed Muslim ban to include all immigration from parts of the world with established ties to terrorism.”
“At some point, the talk about a new Donald Trump, or a reined in Donald Trump, or a ‘presidential’ Donald Trump – all of it will fade away. What’s left is a man who has played to the anger and fears of the American people to astounding effect, and apparently won’t stop until he’s either elected, or not.”
Josh Marshall says Donald Trump is a heavily leveraged property:
Like a highly leveraged business that does great as long as it’s doing well but can collapse under the weight of debt if anything goes wrong, Trump is uniquely dependent on winning poll numbers. [A]lmost the entirety of Trump’s campaign is based on his poll numbers, because they are a proxy for his strength and supposed ability to win in all cases.
A lot of this is ego and narcissism – the kind of thing that was on display when he couldn’t help giving out virtual high fives to supporters after the atrocity in Orlando supposedly “proved I was right.” But it’s more than that, numerical evidence of ‘winning’ is central to the Trump cult of winning. Bad polls hurt any campaign. For Trump they’re devastating.
If you’re campaign is based on winning and bragging about winning but you’re demonstrably losing – and perhaps losing badly – you start to look ridiculous. Like a highly leveraged business, without high poll numbers or some premise that he’s winning, he’s not just losing, he barely has a campaign.
More Josh Marshall on the denial we find in the many excuses and rationales pundits employ to understand or explain Trump:
These all seem rooted in collective denial because the United States has little historical experience, certainly not in living memory, of a major party nominee who is a mentally unstable narcissist, someone who is capable of almost anything but impulse control. Trump isn’t just someone who speaks out of turn, runs an intuition based campaign or isn’t politically correct. There’s something much, much darker about him. As happens with many would be demagogues or authoritarian rulers the prospect of real power isn’t steadying him. We’re seeing no process – either instigated by the candidate or by those around him – to bottle the magic, build some campaign structure around him to stabilize the campaign and make it more sustainable. On the contrary, as happens with demagogues and violent authoritarians, proximity to power is making him more unbridled, hotter and less restrained.
You want to understand Trump? It is very simple. He is fascist and he is a racist. He is Hitler. If we elect him, World War III will be fought to liberate America from his evil clutches. In 50 years, we will gather to celebrate the Brit’s landing at Dewey Beach.
For supporters of Bernie Sanders, this is one of the more important ways in which his campaign can have lasting influence. You make all the impassioned Facebook posts and Tweets that you want, but there’s no substitute for being in the actual arena. To truly influence a major political party, you have to do more than vote. You have to organize, and you have to infiltrate.
I don’t even like using the word “infiltrate” because it sounds suspicious and illegitimate, as if you’re doing something underhanded or even unpatriotic. But, the point is, you have to get yourself into a position of power and influence to actually have any power or influence. At first, these positions may seen quite modest. You’re some deputy assistant for campus outreach or a delegate at the National Convention with a vote on some seemingly unimportant committee. But multiply that story dozens of times, and suddenly you have a small army of progressive-minded people creating a network that can further advance their values within the party and within the national political culture.
Of course, there’s an alternative. The alternative is that you grow despondent and disillusioned because your progressive champion came up short in the primaries and you reject making common cause with a Clinton campaign that you consider impure or hostile to your interests. You go back to being an outsider, an anti-establishmentarian cynic who calls for a pox on everyone’s house.
If you take that route, you may feel that your hands are clean, but you’ll be getting off a still moving bus. The Sanders movement isn’t over. It’s just getting started. And melding with the Clinton campaign is the next stop.
The Washington Post takes apart Trump’s response to the attack and his speech on terrorism, condemning Trump’s “assault on our values”:
Mr. Trump capped a day of assaulting fundamental liberal democratic values by announcing he would ban Post reporters from covering his campaign events. If this is his inclination now, imagine how he might wield the powers of the presidency.
Before the Orlando shooting, Beltway analysts speculated about how a terrorist attack might affect the presidential election. Now we know at least part of the answer: Mr. Trump would reveal himself more clearly than ever as a man unfit to lead.
Chris Cillizza on Trump’s press bans:
This should worry you. And by “you,” I mean everyone who is a citizen of the United States.
How long will it be before American Muslims are forced to wear yellow badges with the star and crescent? Donald Trump, the man Republicans will nominate to be president, has already said that, in addition to banning Muslim immigration, he would also look at closing mosques and forcing Muslims already in the country to register with the authorities. […] He does deserve congratulations — for a new wave of radicalization. Trump’s anti-Muslim hostility makes it easier for terrorists to recruit and to inspire disaffected young Muslims. Trump warned Monday that the terrorism seen in Orlando “is going to get worse and worse” — and, thanks to him, that’s probably true.
Any of the Republicans that Trump beat would be saying the same thing about Muslims right now. Trump isn’t the disease, he is a symptom. The disease is the modern GOP. Its rank disregard for our history and democratic traditions that include compromise and assumed good will.
The modern GOP is a cancer that John Carney still believes is a trustworthy partner in governing.
Jason is correct. That’s the reason none of the other GOP candidates could beat Trump. They agreed with what he was saying, just not how he was saying it. They couldn’t call out his tax/economic policy, immigration policy, abortion policy, etc. because their policies were pretty much the same. That’s why they lost.
I find it incredibly funny that Obama, the ultimate politician, whose administration is keen to always refer to the Islamic State as ISIL (every time all the time) when everyone else in the world calls them ISIS or Daesh, scolds everyone about how specific words don’t matter.
Then he stands up there and lectures and you fucking clowns cheer. Hooray! He really told ’em!
I mean are you stupid twats fucking serious or is this some sort of put on? I feel like I’m in the fucking Twilight Zone. You must see this, yes? You must see how fucking dumb it looks.
And actually specific words do matter. This is from self-loathing Muslim & racist, Maajid Nawaz:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/14/admit-it-these-terrorists-are-muslims.html
@Dorian: But Blanche you are in the fucking twilight zone, you are!
Don’t mind Dorian, he’ll be wearing his Take America Back cap shortly.
Wow! How fucking clever! I’ll be Trump supporter soon. Way to add quite literally zero to the discussion. Although we should all be used to you adding zero. Anybody else have anything of use?
I don’t follow this as closely as Dorian, because I don’t care that much. I’ll describe the issue, as I see it in my ignorance, and you can correct me.
There are people on the right who want to associate “terrorism” and Islam. So they want the President to say “Radical Islamic Terrorism” or “Radical Islam.”
There are people on the left who say that if you make this about a religion you are playing into the hands of the extremists, and alienating the moderates that you need to help fight extremism.
There are also people on the left (like Bill Maher and Dorian) who say, “You can’t leave the fact that the extremists are Muslims out of it.”
Jason… Pretty good summary. My first reaction was to Obama saying that the words politicians use don’t matter. This is ridiculous on it’s face. I gave an example illustrating how it’s also a lie. The Obama administration has a mandate on saying ISIL rather than ISIS. I have no issue with it. It’s just odd that he’s entitled but not anyone else. And all you morons give him the hip-hip Hooray!
On the broader point, I understand that it is a very subtle argument. It takes like an 8th grade education to understand. The fact that a radical but scripturally legitimate interpretation of the Qu’ran and the hadiths influence terrorism does not implicate every Muslim. But it doesn’t change the fact that radical, politicised Islam influences terrorism.
Just a few weeks ago an imam from the UK was preaching at one of the larger mosques in Orlando. He said all the gays must be killed and killed now. Go ahead and look it up… Now is this a coincidence?
This idea of “it plays into their hands” is a meaningless political trope. So are we to pretend the facts aren’t the facts because that’s exactly what they want us to think? Twilight Zone shit, that.
I know you all generally only go to the NY Post if they do a funny front page on Trump… but how about this:
http://nypost.com/2016/06/14/hate-imam-preached-executing-gays-at-orlando-mosque-before-massacre/
And while we’re at it, don’t ignore the Nawaz bit in The Daily Beast. Should I provide you babies with a trigger warning?
@DG: I basically agree with you, but refuse to restrict this to Muslims. Christianity preaches against homosexuality too, and throws fetus worship into the mix besides. Not to mention that statistically speaking, in this country you remain far more likely to be killed by a stranger who is Christian or atheist than Muslim.
First, this… “I mean are you stupid twats fucking serious or is this some sort of put on? I feel like I’m in the fucking Twilight Zone. You must see this, yes? You must see how fucking dumb it looks” … is not what I’d call adding to the discussion.
No one has claimed that that these mass shooters aren’t Muslim. My problem with this is that if a shooter is Muslim then that becomes the reason for the shooting. No mental illness. No personal problems. No other extenuating circumstances. No concern over access to guns. If the shooter is Muslim then he did what he did in the name of his religion (and we should do something about Muslims? Go to war? What?). To me, that doesn’t address the entire situation – and the case of the Orlando shooter appears to be quite complicated. That doesn’t mean his faith wasn’t a factor, but it sure looks like it wasn’t the only factor.
It’s tiresome when we distance ourselves from “christian” shooters, but are quite comfortable lumping all Muslim shooters together. That’s the problem. And, let’s be honest, if women, or black/brown people, or LGBT people were doing the mass shootings we’d be endlessly discussing what’s wrong with women, black/brown and LGBT people. The only group that never gets discussed – that gets the “individual/lone wolf” treatment – are white men. And we should be discussing what’s going on with white men, because something is. And if that sentence bothers you then you can relate to how most Muslims feel.
So, if we want to discuss factors, like religion, when it comes to mass shootings then we have to discuss what’s going on with white men, because, by percent, they are the bigger threat.
No more selective analysis of mass shooters. No more shrugging when a white guy shoots up the place while freaking out when a Muslim (or discussions about Tiger-moms when Seung-Hui Cho shot up Virginia Tech, or how Elliot Rodger was mentally ill and not really a misogynist) does the exact same thing.
We are pretty damn quick to come up with all sorts of excuses for certain mass shooters. Just sayin’
And Donald Trump is showing us, quite clearly, where the path heads when we condemn a specific religion. I’m not comfortable with that, and my Muslim friends are terrified. That’s not right.
I don’t pretend to know much about Islam but I understand there are many branches, some of which are indeed a “religion of peace,” and others that want to kill infidels and avenge historic slights. Sort of like how Christian religious sects have widely different views on abortion and gays.
One of the intolerant branches is Wahhabism, which is the sect of the House of Saud. No doubt one of the reasons US officials are reluctant to say “radical Islamic terrorism” is to avoid offending our Saudi allies.
i admire almost everything about obama. even when i disagree with him, i like the way he handles himself. but radical islam exists and should be called by its name.
Way to add quite literally zero to the discussion.
Just following your lead here. You can’t be surprised that anyone here is calling out your clear issues with Muslims.
It’s not an excuse. It isn’t the only reason. It’s a very strong influence. I don’t particularly care what Donald Trump says. And I don’t particular care what you’re comfortable with. That’s the real problem as I see it. You’ve all convinced yourselves over the years that if you just think this you’re a racist Trump supporter. So you can’t even see the truth in front of you. Very sad.
I also don’t understand the almost immediate compulsion to change the subject to other religions. Weird. Yeah, I mean Christians have radical sects, as do Jews. I fail to see how that matters for the incidents we’re actually discussing.
And back to the original point, Obama is a transparent liar on this score. But nobody’ll mention that.
Hey Cassandra, go fucking sod off. Don’t you have a think piece to write about Bernie Bros on Twitter or the cultural appropriation of bagels on campus?
You a neo-liberal parrot and your ideas are a fucking joke.
Show me where I wrote anything. One fucking thing… that would indicate I have a “clear issues with Muslims.”
Don’t fucking make an accusation you can’t back up you fucking little joke. I do not sit quietly while I’m called a bigot. It’s a fucking nasty accusation. It’s dirty and completely untrue. I think you actually owe me an apology.
Can you really not understand the reluctance of a politician to alienate Muslims? Seems like second nature for any politician who isn’t a Republican to avoid alienating anyone.
Once Obama admits these people are Muslim, what flows from that? I wouldn’t mind demonizing Islam provided we demonize Christianity along with it.
Every murderous right-wing militia asshole is a Christian, so don’t tell me they’re not a threat. They’re a much greater threat to me than all the Muslims on Earth put together.
I understand why Obama is doing it. What’s odd is he’s lecturing others for doing what he does and everyone thinks it’s super. That’s what I’m criticising.
Again, for what seems like the thousandth time, calling out extreme Islamist ideology (and showing it’s scriptural roots) and demonstrating how it influences violent acts does NOT (read clearly NOT) demonise Islam.
Are you all really this obtuse?
NRA said: “top NRA official cited growing acceptance of transgender people as an example of how American values have become “twisted” and “perverted” in a speech before 80,000 NRA members.”
Baptist Minister:
“Now let me just be real clear: I’ve never advocated for violence. I don’t believe in, you know, taking the law into our own hands. I would never go in and shoot up a gay bar — so-called. I don’t believe it’s right for us to just be a vigilante… But I will say this: The Bible says that homosexuals should be put to death, in Leviticus 20:13. Obviously, it’s not right for somebody to just, you know, shoot up the place, because that’s not going through the proper channels. But these people all should have been killed, anyway, but they should have been killed through the proper channels, as in they should have been executed by a righteous government that would have tried them, convicted them, and saw them executed. Because, in Leviticus 20:13, God’s perfect law, he put the death penalty on murder, and he also put the death penalty on homosexuality. That’s what the Bible says, plain and simple.
But the bad news is that this is now gonna be used, I’m sure, to push for gun control, where, you know, law-abiding normal Americans are not gonna be allowed to have guns for self-defense. And then I’m sure it’s also gonna be used to push an agenda against so-called “hate speech.” So Bible-believing Christian preachers who preach what the Bible actually says about homosexuality — that it’s vile, that it’s disgusting, that they’re reprobates — you know, we’re gonna be blamed.Like, “It’s all extremism! It’s not just the Muslims, it’s the Christians!” I’m sure that that’s coming. I’m sure that people are gonna start attacking, you know, Bible-believing Christians now, because of what this guy did.
“I’m not sad about it, I’m not gonna cry about it. Because these 50 people in a gay bar that got shot up, they were gonna die of AIDS, and syphilis, and whatever else. They were all gonna die early, anyway, because homosexuals have a 20-year shorter life-span than normal people, anyway,” Anderson says. “At least these dangerous predators, these dangerous filthy pedophiles at this gay bar, at least they’re off the streets.”
Guess we can lump all these guys into one group now.
If the Orlando murderer were a Baptist, yeah I guess we could. When the wave of Baptist terrorism ramps up you should pull out that quote again. Maybe it’ll be relevant.
The little games you play to try to get out of this are really quite silly.
As far as religions in general go, yeah, they’re all rubbish. Totally agree.
Okay, demonize was probably the wrong word. If you’re familiar with the Bible, you realize that it, too, contains passages that would (and has) justified murder and genocide. So if there’s a difference, it’s not in the scripture but in the followers.
So the question becomes why some Muslims are so worked up about whatever they’re upset about that they’re willing to kill, and what could we do to counteract that. And I have to admit I’m stumped there. It’s hard to get keep the kids down on the farm once they’ve seen Aleppo.
I’d be interested in seeing the socio-economic conditions worldwide of the major religions. It seems to me that most people in Muslim-majority countries are either living under a brutal dictator hostile to the West, or a brutal dictator who is a puppet of the West. I think Islam is the EXCUSE a lot of desperate people use to justify their rightful hatred (not rightful murder) of either their own governments, philosophies, or the governments that control their governments.
All religions have something in their text that allow desperate people to turn murderous and feel it is “holy” or “justified”. The issue is we force millions of people into desperate conditions so we can have plastic bags at the grocery store and drive SUVs.
If it weren’t Islam that “the terrorists” used as their reason, it’d be something else. Remember all the godless commies? The used bombs, assassinated rulers, exterminated millions of non-believers and there wasn’t a God to be found.
It’s too easy to blame religions and it smacks of an attempt to absolve ourselves of the responsibility we bare in benefiting from the global economy that created these group and these conditions.
Well, this guy was living in the hellhole of Florida, and we all know Florida turns humans into lunatics.
Don’t you have a think piece to write about Bernie Bros on Twitter or the cultural appropriation of bagels on campus?
Since I’ve never done this ever, I just want to congratulate you on your continued run of personal idiocy here.
And I am sorry you are an idiot.
I think that’s worth considering, A. What is it about Florida that makes it generate so many lunatics? It’s a state that doesnt do much to help disadvantaged people and is pretty good at keeping the poor white population hating the poor non-white population… it’s like any other Southern State, but more humid and irritating. It cant be ignored how big of a role Homophobia and this contry’s obsession with masculinity had in this. The killer, according to some unverified news reports may have been closeted…. like most homophobes are… Living in a Conservative state and having conservative parents (a different flavor of conservative, but conservative all the same)… he likely received a bad education and had those Good Ol Boy philosophies driven into him. His possible attraction to men would have been something impossible to deal with. We’re making more of these people all the time.
Being called an idiot by Cassandra is the biggest compliment I could receive today. I feel so much better. Thanks.
@Ben, re Florida: It’s not the heat, it’s the humanity.
Just so you know, I’m leaving Delaware for good and moving to the tampa Bay region in two weeks.
I.Q of both states will go up.
(sorry, meatball… i probably dont really mean that, i just cant miss an opportunity to use that one-liner. best of luck)
I am going to go with “Obama just can’t win”
Obama was chastised for not calling the San Bernadino attack a terrorist attack. So now he calls Orlando a terrorist attack, what does he get? “oh he didn’t use the magic phrase, see how much he sucks?” The man can’t win.
Then again…….a christian shot up an abortion clinic not too long ago because Jesus told him to do it and Obama didn’t call it an act of Radical Christian Terrorist. So naturally, Obama should be run out of town on a rail, right?
@meatball: Invest in body armor. You’ll be glad you did, the mosquitoes are murder.
It looks to me like the right wing wackos have run out of things to rail about when it comes to Obama. They’re getting desperate.
And so now we’re going with: “but… but he didn’t say ____!!”
pathetic.
I’ll take up Dorian’s simplistic challenge. Words have meaning. Obama (and Bush) has been advised that the use of the term “Radical Islamic Terrorism” is counter-productive and inflammatory. I’m going to go ahead and pretend that I am shocked by your desire for something inflammatory.
ISIS = Islamic State in Syria (they are obviously larger than Syria)
ISIL = Islamic State in the Levant (a much better description of their area of operations)
Daesh = largely a derogatory word for the group and again, inflammatory
I understand that you like getting your opponents worked up and fighting, but it isn’t necessarily how diplomacy gets done. And this is why the Dorian as Trump supporter accusation has legs. Trump has essentially based his foreign policy on “I don’t care what offends other people.” Perhaps not coincidentally, he also is quick to hurl insults (although yours are certainly more erudite) and accuse everyone that disagrees of sticking their head in the sand or being idiots.
I wish our politicians etc would use the name Daesh. Calling them by their “preferred” name legitimizes them. It isnt like we can anger them any more by calling them something they dont like. There can be no diplomacy with this group…. like congressional GOP, they dont seek to find common ground, only to destroy. It also takes the word “Islamic” out of the equation and separates them from the 99.9% of Muslims who are repulsed by the group. Daesh Daesh Daesh.
We don’t need to be diplomatic with ISIL, per se. We need to be diplomatic with people that MIGHT be sympathetic with them. And by using a term that is literally designed to inflame ISIL (they have vowed to cut the tongue out of people that use it). This sort of thing could easily push people on the fence over to the other side.
“I wish our politicians etc would use the name Daesh. Calling them by their “preferred” name legitimizes them.”
Agreed. Creating a formal categorization for them (Radical Islam) does the same. I’ve never understood the need to define groups based on shared characteristics and then giving names to those groups. Science creates a taxonomy because it is necessary to establish the genus of a species to see where it fits. There is no such need in our everyday life.
There is no such thing as Radical Islam. There are Muslims who are radical, but they aren’t a monolithic genus with a defined taxonomy. The killer in Orlando was a homophobic Muslim extremist, who may have had sexual identity issues thus creating a potential for conflict in his family. But he was not a member of the Radical Islam tribe, because there is no such thing.
I wonder if it is a psychological need to name the enemy so that they are less scary or perhaps so we can declare war on them? Heck, without ISIL there wouldn’t even be anyone for these lone wolves to declare allegiance to, which would negate much of their rational to commit these acts.
And of course there is the Baptist pastor in Sacramento who celebrated the deaths and espouses a final solution for homosexuals. But of course he isn’t really radical because he hasn’t done anything, right? Just like some of these Muslim clerics calling for our death aren’t radical because they haven’t actually done anything. Besides the pastor is a Christian and we haven’t created the genus Radical Christian yet because they are just calling for violence, not actually committing it.
Interesting shift in the presidential prediction market in the last two days.
Trump has dropped all the way down to 20%, but the GOP hasn’t dropped.
There seems to be a sizable and sudden increase in betting odds that Trump won’t be the nominee.
Something is going on…
question, thought experiment, whatever: to what extent is a desire to identify radical islam like the nazis identifying jews as threats to germany’s peace and order? i ask because there seems to be a suggestion by progressives of a similarity.
were the jews threats to nazi germany in the same way that “radical muslims” are a threat to america. or only as part of a broader left-wing movement that threatened right-wing order. were the majority of jews — presumably non-political — punished because of fear of the genuinely “dangerous” ones. if there’s one thing for sure here, it’s that we don’t want to be like the nazis. but what does being like the nazis consist of here? is there a legitimate parallel?
Yeah, Jewish terrorism around the world was a real problem between the World Wars.
Taking offense to terminology is more of a political reaction than a emotional reaction. Nowadays “taking offense” is the very best way to avoid legitimate intellectual scrutiny.
And the proposition that “99.9%” of Muslims don’t have ideas that we’d consider extreme or radical or illiberal is a lie. Polling bears this out. I know you doughy nerds are always online so I know you know this. It’s a rude and inconvenient thing you’re struggling with. I get it.
Coincidentally, here’s an interesting take from a leading Jewish magazine:
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/205156/terror-and-oratory
there might be a parallel between how trump views radical islam — as a scapegoat for all the things his followers think ail us — and how hitler viewed/used the jews. but i don’t think identifying the specific threat of mass violence by radical muslims is the same thing. we can protect ourselves and search for root causes (islam seems to encourage fanaticism in certain followers) without demonizing muslims who have no use for that reaction.
@DG: The Berman piece makes the same mistake you are making — thinking this has some rational connection with “jihad,” the term Berman uses for violent acts committed in the name of Islam.
These lone wolf attacks, whether committed in the name of Islam or white supremacy (Dylan Roof), do not seem to me religiously motivated; the ideology is brought in as a rationalization, not a rationale. This contrasts with organized attacks like Paris or 9/11, which are organized like military campaigns.
We have suffered such lone wolf attacks for decades now, typically in school or workplace shooting situations. They are much different from organized terror, and almost impossible to stop because when only one person is involved, there are no communications to intercept.
Such attacks are deadly and frightening not because of their religions motivation, but because they are so easy to accomplish in a gun culture like ours.
I think the distinction is important because we refuse to acknowledge that when it comes to a guy with a grievance and a gun, it doesn’t really matter what the grievance is. The problem is the gun.
A person who would spray paint a presidential candidate’s name on a pick up truck is more likely to vote for which candidate?
Is it their own truck or somebody else’s?
DG, what happens when someone says “you’re right” about Islam? Do we enact Trump’s ban? Do we create shtetls for Muslims so we can monitor how many of them are radicalized? What exactly is the end you are trying to reach here by continuously insisting that the religion is the problem and not the excuse?
As far as Germany 1930s goes…. the Holocaust was set up for hundreds of years. Hatred of Jews was ingrained in the European mind-set long before socialist left-wing violence was ever a thing. Jews embraced socialism and left wing radicalism because it was opposition to a system of government that had persecuted us for almost a thousand years prior.
LOL
“A new Bloomberg poll finds that Hillary Clinton has opened up a double-digit lead nationally over Donald Trump, 49% to 37%….”
So I guess all that alarm about Bernie Sanders destroying Hillary’s chances to win the White House was just hysteria. But no doubt that won’t bring one confession of regret from her supporters for trashing that good man’s name.
“one confession of regret from her supporters for trashing that good man’s name.”
I confess that I regret that Sanders could not stand to support Senator Murphy’s filibuster on bringing legislation to a vote to close gun purchase loopholes being exploited by terrorists.
“I confess that I regret that Sanders could not stand to support Senator Murphy’s filibuster on bringing legislation to a vote to close gun purchase loopholes being exploited by terrorists.”
Proof?
@DG “Proof?”
He was in Vermont.
“So I guess all that alarm about Bernie Sanders destroying Hillary’s chances to win the White House was just hysteria.”
Sanders Derangement Syndrome will pass and we will settle back into our nice comfortable bourgeois centrism on the glide path to the bottom.
@LE: Yes, he was in Vermont keeping a promise to his voters to address them. Imagine that. A politician who keeps his promises. Clearly undeserving of establishment support.
@DG
And he could not have addressed them from Washington???
He should have been there.
@LE: You have no idea why he was in VT and why he had to be. You’re not psychic. Clearly, you just want to trash Sanders because he had the temerity to go against the establishment choice for the presidency. Nor have you addressed my initial point. In spite of all the handwringing by Hillary supporters, the predicted damage to her November prospects by Sanders campaign is already proven to be mere blather. And you lack the integrity to admit it.
Please stop. Thanks.