Took me longer to get back to this than I intended. Partially it was because of real life concerns. (Dad had a birthday, so there was most of a very nice day spent going out to the Cavanaugh Flight Museum and then to dinner. Dad doesn't need much in the way of "stuff". He just likes to -do- things.)
But mostly because I was mulling over how and what to respond to here. I'd almost see it as procrastination. Except I was going over several points carefully in my head. I wanted to be sure what I'm about to say I say correctly. Because frankly, near the end of the other evening on this thread, I was in a sloppy mental area. I was tired. That's no way to post when you're debating. You make mistakes.
Biggest mistake I made really, was reacting to the whole "you're a RACIST! You're a HOMOPHOBE!!" tripe and getting distracted by the privilege argument and reacting to that.
The post I made about privilege was rather lame because - let's be honest here - I was reaching to find a way to respond. I was upset. And I didn't see that the whole thing about privilege was a smokescreen. A tactic. It was a way to change the subject. To accuse. So was the racist and homophobe accusations. To accuse. To point the finger at a PERSON. And not address THE ISSUE.
Here's a little thing to remember - Decent people, like most of you out there, probably don’t appreciate just how easy it is to destroy someone of integrity if you have no integrity of your own.
Here’s how it works. You accuse someone of something heinous - for example racism and homophobia. This could be me - it might be some other conservative. It might be a private person. It might be a public servant. But you accuse them over and over and force them to deal with the accusation. It's incredibly easy to do. It's a wonderful tactic. Because it catches a decent man off-guard.
Alinsky's Rules for Radicals is, once again, the go-to source for these tactics.
Quote:"The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
There’s a reason the word Satan means “the Accuser” in Hebrew, and why
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” is one of the
Ten Commandments. A false accusation against an innocent person is often
more effective than a real accusation is against a guilty one.
It doesn't matter if the accusation is TRUE or not. Just making the accusation over and over is enough.
Especially if you are making an accusation about his MENTAL processes. About an attitude with which you wish others to associate him with. And not his actual words. It's very close, if not identical, to "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
That’s all it takes: false accusations. Consider this:
Bill Clinton spent every second of his Presidency – every second – knowing exactly what to say if the words “Paula Jones” or “Gennifer Flowers” or “Monica Lewinski” came up in conversation, or at a press conference, or even in the middle of deep sleep. If Hillary just whispered the words:
“Monica Lewinski”
…Bill would bolt upright in bed and sputter: “I did not have sex with that woman! Whichever one you mentioned!”
He’s ready for accusations because he knows he’s guilty. That’s what guilty people do all day: work on the explanation and the alibi. But an innocent person, when charged with corruption or lying or racism or worse – well, it shakes them to the core, the same way it would shake you to your core if you were accused of some heinous act you did not commit. And if these false accusations came at you again and again, how many times would it take before you said, to hell with this. Who needs this?
A guilty person has that factored going in; it’s part of their mental equation. But it’s enough to drive an innocent person to quit. To stop talking. To SHUT THE HELL UP.
And that was the goal. Wasn’t it? You didn't have a real argument against me. I just did something that pissed you off and instead of addressing any concrete issue, you decided to make it a personal attack. To put me off my game. To force me to shut up.
And it worked, for a little over a day. But ultimately you failed. And you did worse than fail, you alerted me to what tactics you were using.
Lets get the easy part out of the way first - privilege or no privilege is IRRELEVANT to any issue about the Mosque at Ground Zero or a response to it by other people. By saying I'm too privileged and that I can't understand certain things is to attempt to take me off the table. To make me someone who you don't have to listen to. It's another way of saying SHUT UP! LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA - I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!
So I'm going to ignore that as irrelevant and any argument along those lines.
What I do want to address is the accusations of racism and homophobia. Because it's important to me. It's sort of a point of honor.
Quote:I'm not going to start combing through the entire board for all your homophobia and racism.
Really? REALLY NOW? I thought you were so certain I had been racist and homophobic. This cements it for me. If my answer on privilege was lame, your statement here is the ultimate cop-out. In the vernacular of the current day - "Pics or it didn't happen". You'd better be DAMN CERTAIN of accusations like that rather than going on "gut feelings".
I grew up on Star Trek. I was born the same year it came out. Though I may have my disagreements with Roddenberry's vision on certain things (No money? We've "evolved" beyond certain social awkwardness in the 23rd/24th century like religion? A little unrealistic there. But then, we're talking about a science fantasy with "magic" technology like transporters. I don't let it bother me too much.) I ALWAYS believed in a world where people of different cultures exist together and never think it odd. I never questioned it. It was FACT that we would always be trying to achieve this. Even if we weren't perfect, that was what we were striving for. Because it's a quintessentially American thing to do.
Because I honestly believed in that sort of idealistic dream, I have always studiously avoided racism. I think it's ugly. I think it's wrong. I think it's evil to engage in that sort of thing. I would sometimes catch my father at it. And always said to myself that that was the wrong way to go. (To his credit, my dad knew it was wrong as well, and though he couldn't stop himself from having certain attitudes, he tried to avoid passing it along to me. Even encouraged my idealism about that.)
Similarly I've never had a problem with homosexuality. I mean, I'm straight and other men don't do anything for me. But love is love, and attraction is attraction. You can't hope to understand it. The best you can do is to not make it your business what anyone does privately. (Men don't do anything for me. But women do, and though I know it's a hopeless double-standard, I do find two women together pretty hot. I think this is a case of I can't help it because "that's the way I'm wired" as much as gays and lesbian's are wired that way. As long as I'm aware it's a double-standard and never act on it, I think I'm generally going to be ok. As much as anyone else anyway.)
And I support committed relationships and the institutions that codify them.
I do want gay marriage to happen. I'm just concerned with the way it happens. I worry that in pursuit of it, that people are accepting "any port in a storm" in regards to judges rulings. I want gay marriage to be based on ACTUAL law rather than DE-FACTO law. The problem with any precedent set by a judge is that it can be overturned too easily by another court in the future. I'm concerned that with the way things are now, that marriages could actually be rendered null and not recognized by some later court. Make it an actual law - or better yet - a constitutional amendment, and you're much more safe.
But if I'm wrong I'm wrong. I'll be happy to be wrong in this case. But I think -someone- should think about technicalities like that. Play "devil's advocate" as it were.
"The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults." - Alexis de Tocqueville
I believed all of the above right up until two airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center. And one into the Pentagon. Everything changed. I still believed in the dream. But as I studied Islam over the next few years in an honest attempt to understand the "Religion of Peace" I came to understand something essential. There are people in the world who don't believe in that dream, and never did. And never will. There is an entire culture and religion that encourages and excuses people like them. Individually, any Muslim can be good people and most are. But as a whole, Islam was and is a cancer.
Just like many of you believe that Christianity is one.
I think I proved in a previous post - I've studied as carefully as I can the history of Islam. So I know that the Park 51/Corboda house Mosque is a provocation. And a big one.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Notice that everything that I say about Islam is about ISLAM.
NOT Arabs. NOT people who are darker skinned than me.
NOT. ABOUT. RACE.
So to accuse me of racism because you don't like my stance on Islam is to accuse falsely. And the same with homophobia. And I KNOW it's false because you "can't be bothered" to look up or find anything I said to back up your false accusation.
In short, you've got NOTHING to accuse me with. So don't even try.
So, back to Alinsky again.
Quote:"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
If the backers of the Park 51 site are trying to say that they are building there to "promote understanding" then the gay bar is a way to call them on it. Make them live up to their words.
Quote:"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage."
Whether or not the gay bar gets built. The IDEA behind it has made a lot of people laugh. And a lot of people with no sense of humor furious. GOOD. When they get mad, they reveal more of themselves than they want to.
Quote:"A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
I think the way the idea of the gay Islamic bar was put forth was funny as hell. I enjoyed it immensely. And to a degree - I've been enjoying the response of each and every one of you who gets pissed off about it. It makes me feel like Bill Murray enjoying the discomfort of the "dickless" EPA guy in Ghostbusters. If it infuriates you, then GOOD. I enjoy pissing off unfunny, stuck up people like you.
And back to Star Trek and one of my favorite lines from it -
"I'm laughing at the 'superior intellect'!"
