How does one vote when insanity rules?
...not that candidates supported by MoveOn provide an alternative to state-corporatism...
The two men attacking this woman are Rand Paul campaign officials/organizers, sure to be dropped for getting caught - with predictable claims being that "violence cannot be tolerated" by national leadership, whereas the grassroots militants and perpetrators will claim that they had no choice and in fact, that they showed great restraint. The attackers will feel indignant at any criticism, since they didn't do anything like rape and kill her, and only were trying to protect Paul. Frightening in itself and its universal consistency, this reflex of human cognition shows how tremendously difficult it is for us to view our own actions objectively. In contrast, what about Rand Paul political leadership's claims and thinking?
Of course, pointing out the defense argument above is a bit redundant since even the most violent, genocidal mass murderers claim they are "defending" against someone else's aggression. Another bizarre aspect of such interactions is the widespread belief that "Defending the Constitution" and "freedoms" would certainly be claimed by the attackers as top priorities. Incredibly, the attackers are seen calling for the police who eventually detained the peaceful citizen but did nothing to the violent perps. Mike Pezzano, the man in the video holding the woman down to punish and prevent her from exercising freedom of speech states/asks on a Meetup website "What's Liberty if you can't exercise it."
I find myself in a common state of amazement. In US politics, killing is peace (occupied terr), aggression is defense (Iraq & Afghanistan), hatred is love (of free speech), and violence is charity (to protect whatever). One simply must wonder: have we largely been driven insane?
I find myself in a common state of amazement. In US politics, killing is peace (occupied terr), aggression is defense (Iraq & Afghanistan), hatred is love (of free speech), and violence is charity (to protect whatever). One simply must wonder: have we largely been driven insane?
Comments
I think there is greater awareness and activism, but as we saw with the wars, it was not enough to stop the colossal crimes openly supported by elite sectors, especially the agenda-setting corporate media...including NPR, widely regarded as "liberal" and "pacifist".
This is quite different than the radical extremist whose compatriots are seen in the video gesturing for him to stop stomping on a helpless woman's head. While this is an individual example of a cultural mood in which Nazi's arose (economic downturn, scape-goating immigrants, homophobia, rampant militarism, religious fanaticism, and patriotic fervor) I don't consider this undisciplined, probably poorly educated Rand Paul campaign organizer representative of the highly educated Nazi leadership who had substantial religious and philosophical foundations making their decisions for horrific crimes entirely "rational" and justified in the defense of what they and Bush I call, "civilization itself".
The term "street thugs" seems a bit too smug a label for my comfort. I'm convinced we all have the capacity for horrible crimes as well as the noblest virtues, a truth seemingly obscured or made more difficult to remember when we use epithets.
Saying "Nazi's used thugs" also seems questionable... If capitalizing on support of followers who are sometimes violent, we could quite accurately say "Gandhi used thugs" also. I think we need better precision in our language if we want to understand why the Rand Paul incident is troubling and for me, widespread, deeply held misconceptions and militant attitudes suggestive of mass insanity are more important than the individual acts (like "using thugs") which illustrate such trends.
I think ignorance of Nazi violence probably helped them gain and maintain power, just as such ignorance helps U.S. and others maintain criminal, violent control of peoples around the world. Regrettably, I know of no remedy for deliberate ignorance, where people are willing to go to great lengths not to recognize obvious facts - just look at the percentage of people who believe the entire universe was designed so a highly destructive primate could briefly exist on a small planet near an unremarkable star out in the boonies of a small galaxy.
We are really, incredibly bad at having any sense of objectivity or perspective! :D