Brownshirts tend to march down the street, smash shop windows, burn city blocks and shoot people. I can't see some Republican think tankers being active enough to make that happen. But maybe I am misreading America.
Brownshirts tend to march down the street, smash shop windows, burn city blocks and shoot people. I can't see some Republican think tankers being active enough to make that happen. But maybe I am misreading America.
There have definitely been a few roving gangs (the Proud Boys, for example), but they mostly just go to Portland to brawl with equally thuggish antifa gangs in what's become a civic religious festival of street fighting.
Yes, in my opinion you very much do misread the state of American culture, or what remains of it.
A slightly modified quote from the 1963 book Culture Against Man by Jules Henry. A book which was quite influential in its time.
"In Western culture today one must make a distinction between the culture of life and the culture of death. In the minds of most people science has become synonymous with destructive weapons, i.e with death ... Where is the culture of life? The culture of life resides in all those people who, inarticulate, frightened and confused, are wondering 'where will it end'.
Thus the forces of death are confident and organized while the forces of life - the people who long for peace and sanity - are, for the most part, scattered, inarticulate, and wooly-minded, overwhelmed by their (seeming) impotence. Death struts about the house while Life cowers in the corners."
Sixty years later the situation thus described is muchly more advanced - potentially catastrophically so! In my opinion the Heritage (lies, lies and more lies) Foundation which has created the 2025 project is one of the leading edge vectors of that "culture" of death - satanic barbarians all the way down!
In my opinion it is also in one way of another associated with the phenomenon described in the book by Chris Hedges titled American Fascists - The Christian Right and the War Against America.
See also my other comment on this site re the nature of the morphogenic pattern and the world-wide "culture" of death created and propagated the 800+ US military bases.
I tend to disregard any comment which uses the word 'fascist' to refer to people who are not actually fascists. It's the equivalent of 'conspiracy theorist', and has been useless since at least 1946. If we can't accurately pin down what people are and what they do, we are just name-calling. 'Satanic', by the way, is even worse - and I speak as a Christian.
I would be no fan of the Heritage Foundation or its views, but to associate it with the brownshirts, and also to attempt to smear Christians by association with it, is not helping anything anywhere. It only reflects on you.
In my view, people on all sides should try to calm down and call a spade a spade (rather than a 'fascist'). Then we might see what was happening. It's hard enough as it is, without the hysteria.
One reason I appreciate Rhyd's writing is that, while we come from quite different places, he is a man who tries to accurately portray the world and say what he means. If he disagrees, he tends to do so calmly and with an explanation. This kind of thing is much needed from all quarters.
This comment here, and then coming from a person who called the entire modern left "consumed by something that looks more like a bunch of vicious, mindless, ideologically crazy brownshirts" and "a poison in the veins of the culture"?
Fair comment, that was hyperbolic language. But the word 'consumed' was the key word. It feels to me that the left has been eaten by something bad and dangerous. Not that everyone 'on the left' is like this - obviously they're not, or Rhyd would not be under attack himself. But the lunatics have taken over the asylum, and I do see 'the left' as a whole as a poison at this point. Personally I think this was always likely - because it happens throughout history. But it also happens to other politics tribes, and regularly to religions.
Brownshirts tend to march down the street, smash shop windows, burn city blocks and shoot people. I can't see some Republican think tankers being active enough to make that happen. But maybe I am misreading America.
There have definitely been a few roving gangs (the Proud Boys, for example), but they mostly just go to Portland to brawl with equally thuggish antifa gangs in what's become a civic religious festival of street fighting.
If only they could all stay there. It could be a kind of political burning man. We could build a big wall around it.
Yes, in my opinion you very much do misread the state of American culture, or what remains of it.
A slightly modified quote from the 1963 book Culture Against Man by Jules Henry. A book which was quite influential in its time.
"In Western culture today one must make a distinction between the culture of life and the culture of death. In the minds of most people science has become synonymous with destructive weapons, i.e with death ... Where is the culture of life? The culture of life resides in all those people who, inarticulate, frightened and confused, are wondering 'where will it end'.
Thus the forces of death are confident and organized while the forces of life - the people who long for peace and sanity - are, for the most part, scattered, inarticulate, and wooly-minded, overwhelmed by their (seeming) impotence. Death struts about the house while Life cowers in the corners."
Sixty years later the situation thus described is muchly more advanced - potentially catastrophically so! In my opinion the Heritage (lies, lies and more lies) Foundation which has created the 2025 project is one of the leading edge vectors of that "culture" of death - satanic barbarians all the way down!
In my opinion it is also in one way of another associated with the phenomenon described in the book by Chris Hedges titled American Fascists - The Christian Right and the War Against America.
See also my other comment on this site re the nature of the morphogenic pattern and the world-wide "culture" of death created and propagated the 800+ US military bases.
I tend to disregard any comment which uses the word 'fascist' to refer to people who are not actually fascists. It's the equivalent of 'conspiracy theorist', and has been useless since at least 1946. If we can't accurately pin down what people are and what they do, we are just name-calling. 'Satanic', by the way, is even worse - and I speak as a Christian.
I would be no fan of the Heritage Foundation or its views, but to associate it with the brownshirts, and also to attempt to smear Christians by association with it, is not helping anything anywhere. It only reflects on you.
In my view, people on all sides should try to calm down and call a spade a spade (rather than a 'fascist'). Then we might see what was happening. It's hard enough as it is, without the hysteria.
One reason I appreciate Rhyd's writing is that, while we come from quite different places, he is a man who tries to accurately portray the world and say what he means. If he disagrees, he tends to do so calmly and with an explanation. This kind of thing is much needed from all quarters.
This comment here, and then coming from a person who called the entire modern left "consumed by something that looks more like a bunch of vicious, mindless, ideologically crazy brownshirts" and "a poison in the veins of the culture"?
Fair comment, that was hyperbolic language. But the word 'consumed' was the key word. It feels to me that the left has been eaten by something bad and dangerous. Not that everyone 'on the left' is like this - obviously they're not, or Rhyd would not be under attack himself. But the lunatics have taken over the asylum, and I do see 'the left' as a whole as a poison at this point. Personally I think this was always likely - because it happens throughout history. But it also happens to other politics tribes, and regularly to religions.