Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally Madness

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 8/20/2017 at 1:36 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Then there's the Boston free speech rally.

A few hundred white folks (presumably white power, although I'm not sure) showed up in Boston to do a free speech rally. About 20,000 leftists (or more) mobilized via live protest to shut them down and they did. 

Here's a little tidbit from a guy who was threatened with violence just for asking a mob in this Boston thingie to explain what they thought.

And the police reacted by taking the guy out of there and walking him away.

Muh racist!

 

Take a good look at that mob and realize that each of those kids (or their parents) are probably in debt well over $100k so they could learn to be that way.

Let that sink in...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

They knew he wasn't of their tribe.

--Brant

[merjet]

On 8/16/2017 at 2:39 PM, anthony said:

Yes sure. The benefit of an O'ist background is we take that as assumed, we know the false dichotomy. Then I find it surprising when few other people do. You are interested in Jordan Petersen I notice, Michael. In my visit now to Stephen Hicks' site, I see the two will be in discussion, tomorrow- 17th. 1.00 PM, Eastern.

Peterson-Hicks video.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I wish the term below were mine, but alas, I got it off the Internet (and jazzed it up a little).

So here goes.

ESPN just carried the Charlottesville-inspired water of the establishment and SJWs in a thunderbucket of stupid.

Does this guy look like a white Southern racist of the Civil War era? 

No?

Well, in today's culture, some people think he should.

His name is Robert Lee and he works for ESPN. So?, you might ask. What's the deal?

ESPN, with forward-leaning visionary wisdom, pulled Mr. Lee off covering a college football game to avoid racial hostilities--not Asian, but black versus white Civil War era hostilities.

I guess they think the fans will confuse the Asian guy above with General Robert E. Lee.

MSESPN Pulls Asian Announcer Named Robert Lee Off UVa Game To Avoid Offending Idiots

Dayaamm!

 

Michael

[Peter]

Charlottesville’s Statue Burqas Feature Article by Robert Tracinski, August 27, 2017

Charlottesville’s novel solution to the conflict over its monuments to Confederate heroes is to drape them in statue burqas meant to shield viewers from the temptation to either worship or become enraged by the images of men who lost a war 150 years ago. Up until a year ago, of course, no such measures were necessary because nobody reacted that way. But sure, it’s the statues that are the problem, so they need to be covered.

It looks like this. That’s the statue of Robert E. Lee somewhere under there. Here is Stonewall Jackson.

Charlottesville has a tendency to put up bad Modern art, and these look like new entries—abstract pieces entitled “Moral Cowardice.”

This completes the kind of magical thinking behind the Confederate statues campaign: if we cover the idols of the old gods, we can finally banish their evil spirits.

You can also see this moral panic in the story of a vaguely Confederate-Flag-looking tile design in a New York subway stop—which is to say that there is an X of blue tiles over a white and red background—which has to be “altered to avoid confusion.” Clearly the tiles are not the source of the confusion, but people will insist on rearranging the outside world so they won’t have to do the more difficult work of bringing order to their own minds.

My sense of this is that the Charlottesville city council thought their campaign to remove Confederate monuments was going to be an easy layup. They thought it would be a cheap way to score some moral authority points and get fawning media coverage for themselves and the city, and that nobody would complain very much except a few stodgy country club types who look like generic southern gentry sent over from Central Casting.

They never had any idea that they were going to put themselves at the center of a giant firestorm of racial politics, or that somebody would turn the town into a war zone and a national watchword for racial conflict. They certainly had no idea they would be unleashing a political radicalism that would target them, too. But target them it has.

Here was the scene from a recent city council meeting:

A protest erupted inside Charlottesville city council chambers August 21 as councilors held their first meeting since deadly violence played out in city streets on August 12. The crowd screamed at councilors and eventually took over the meeting, which caused the police that were present to intervene.

The emotional crowd vows to see the statue taken down, even if it is by their own hands. At one point, councilors and city staff fled the room as protestors jumped up where the council sits. Two protestors held a banner saying “Blood on your Hands.”

The city council is now meeting behind closed doors because they dare not face the public.

Hence the really amazingly stupid stuff like these Confederacy burqas, which was voted on unanimously at that last public meeting—after the city council got screamed at by protesters for three hours. It’s a sign that they have no idea how they got themselves into this and no idea how to get out.

What has been happening in Charlottesville and elsewhere shows the failure of leadership based on superficial virtue-signaling. They didn’t have a plan for dealing with serious consequences because they never gave the issue serious thought in the first place. But the moral panic that they started is now getting out of control, threatening to become a full-scale Cultural Revolution-style purge of the past. It’s no longer enough to target Confederate generals. The Red Guards have moved on to vandalizing statues of Thomas Jefferson and beheading the statue of a Revolutionary War hero, agitating to tear down a statue of Christopher Columbus in New York City, and actually defacing a monument to Columbus in Baltimore.

The issue now is less about the fate of Confederate monuments than it is about empowering lawless action by mobs of radicals. The Red Guards comparison is not far off. Remember the mob in Durham, North Carolina, that tore down a statue of a confederate soldier? The leader of the mob was a far left agitator with a Marxist-Leninist group that defends North Korea. When you give these people free rein, how is that going to end well for any of us?

Seeking to score easy political points, moderate center-left “liberals”—what’s left of them—have unleashed the far left, which is enjoying a new sense of power and a twisted kind of moral authority. Maybe the “liberals” hope these crocodiles will eat them last, but judging from events in Charlottesville, the mobs are going to eat them first.

Charlottesville, Christopher Columbus, Confederate monuments, Cultural Revolution, liberals, statue burqas, Thomas Jefferson

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

When is someone going to so something about these monuments to the oppressive class injustice of despicable slave labor?

Michael

[RobinReborn]

On 8/15/2017 at 11:57 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

RR,

So you don't believe in free will and moral codes? Self-responsibility?

Just gang warfare? That's your morality?

Michael

 

I believe in moral codes and self-responsibility, but a lot of that goes away when you dedicate yourself to groups that do not respect individual rights.

 

The Nazis are a gang, that's why they have their symbols and their hand gestures.  The antifa are problematic, but they are against something that I am also against.  I disagree with their tactics and I suspect many of them are socialists/communists.  I do not see them as a threat to me, but Nazis are.  

[RobinReborn]

On 8/28/2017 at 5:46 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

When is someone going to so something about these monuments to the oppressive class injustice of despicable slave labor?

Michael

 

 

That's one interpretation of the Sphinx and pyramids.  But it's not the only one.  There mere existence is a testament to the endurance of human creation.

[RobinReborn]

@Michael ESPN pulled a black woman for making a relative normal comment so it's hardly one sided.

As for the 'Free Speech Rally', it was hardly about Free Speech.

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, RobinReborn said:

I do not see them as a threat to me, but Nazis are.

RR,

Do you think there are enough Nazis to elect a dog catcher anywhere? Much less a political leader in a government?

Heh.

So what are we talking about? The threat of a few hundred boneheads who live in their mom's basement? Objectively speaking, where is the threat? 

But actually there are plenty of Nazi progeny, starting with Antifa. I doubt you will believe this, but it's true. Just look at what they stand for and how they act, then look at the original Fascists of Mussolini and Nazis of Hitler. Read their writings. Compare them.

Read the documentation in a recent book by Dinesh D'Souza, The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left. Or wait until the documentary comes out next year. This will become a thing in the culture when that happens. It isn't so much right now.

Left wing people will hate this as much as they (as Democrats) hated when Dinesh threw a spotlight on the KKK roots of the Democratic party, from the beginning all the way up through the Jim Crow laws. After trying to hold up the Civil Rights act from becoming law, the Democrats finally capitulated and the left rebranded itself as a champion of the blacks. Before that, they were pure racists of the worst kind.

This is history and it is verifiable. So you can read about it--not only through Dinesh. Look it up elsewhere and try to rely on original documents, voting records, speech transcripts, etc. Then keep rubbing your eyes in disbelief. One day it will sink in that this actually happened.

Ditto for that despicable Nazi progeny called Antifa. They call themselves anti-fascists, but like I said, they talk, act and hold ideas identical to Mussolini's Fascists and, later, Hitler's Nazis. There are plenty of records to prove it.

You can call a snake a rabbit and some people might even believe it, but it will still be a snake.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, RobinReborn said:

That's one interpretation of the Sphinx and pyramids.  But it's not the only one.  There mere existence is a testament to the endurance of human creation.

RR,

So how do you propose that the Egyptians build those structures.

Did they use Donald Trump's contractors and pay union scale?

   

My recommendation is don't run from the truth. That will not lead you anywhere good. The Egyptians used slaves and lots of them to build. When Moses left Egypt, he took with him two and a half million Hebrew slaves. That's right. About 2.5 million. Let that number sink in.

And those were only the Hebrews. The Egyptians had many more slaves left over after the Hebrews departed.

Michael

[RobinReborn]

Nazis are a threat to me personally because I speak out against them and can easily shatter their fragile egos.  Thus they may be violent towards me.  I am not going to suppress my anti-nazi feelings which makes me a potential target for them.  Apparently three of them were arrested just today after a shooting:

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/3-arrested-after-shooting-following-white-nationalist-speech/ar-AAtM2UJ

 

I do not believe they are a threat to gaining political power in the short term future, but the historical record is clear, their political power grew exponentially (and now again in Germany a 'far right' party has gained representation in parliament... that's more of a threat as I see it)

I do not see Nazis as fitting nicely within the right-left political paradigm.

 

I do acknowledge that Naziism had many ideas in common with modern liberals, I don't see it as relevant.

 

I acknowledge the racist history of the democratic party, but I don't think political parties distant history is that relevant.  The Republicans had a Southern Strategy that employed racism... don't get me started on the horrible Ron Paul newsletters, they really upset me, especially since I agreed with Ron Paul on so much.

[RobinReborn]

5 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

RR,

So how do you propose that the Egyptians build those structures.

Did they use Donald Trump's contractors and pay union scale?

   

My recommendation is don't run from the truth. That will not lead you anywhere good. The Egyptians used slaves and lots of them to build. When Moses left Egypt, he took with him two and a half million Hebrew slaves. That's right. About 2.5 million. Let that number sink in.

And those were only the Hebrews. The Egyptians had many more slaves left over after the Hebrews departed.

Michael

 

I don't know how the Egyptians built those.  Perhaps they were built in the off season and the employers guaranteed the workers food from silos in case of a bad harvest.  But even if I had proof that they were built by slaves, that does not mean that they are monuments celebrating slavery.  It's not like everything built using free people's labor is a monument to freedom.

 

And I don't believe any of this Moses stuff... give me sources, though I will still probably be skeptical of the sources.  Moses also allegedly killed the first borns of every Egyptian, why I would believe that claims he made were anything other than fake news?

[anthony]

Ugh. The Fascist Left is getting a free ride by playing up the less dangerous far Right. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robin,

All I can say is read original sources.

Propaganda fairy tales will rob precious years from your life.

I will not do your homework for you. I've done that sort of thing too often in my online efforts over the years. It goes like this. I bust my ass to provide the best quotes and material I can find (material I actually read), then I offer it and the person counters with a propaganda talking point. And I'm not talking about burying someone with a mountain of copy/paste bullshit. I'm talking about curated and carefully selected material. They don't even know what the hell I'm talking about most of the time. 

Screw that. From your responses, that is exactly where you are right now. I'm not saying that as an accusation. I'm merely identifying a pattern I have seen far often and you fit it based on your responses so far. Hell, you don't even believe they had slaves in ancient Egypt. Or worse, I bet you don't even believe they had slaves everywhere back then. But they did. A person doesn't need to read much to know that, but look at what you write. This is a flat earth level discussion and I'm not going to participate at that level...

I do have a suggestion, though.

You have a good mind. I suggest you use it.

But that takes work, real work. Some of that reading is boring. Not all of it, but some is a slog. And there is a hell of a lot of it. But the rewards for going through that stuff can't be bought.

Or hell, maybe it's better to stay in a peer pressure bubble where all you have to do is listen to some folks sound off with nothing but emotion-laden talking points while scapegoating a target group, say right on, and be granted some kind of group acceptance and approval for agreeing. It won't give you knowledge and insight, but you will get peer approval. Besides, it's a hell of a lot easier to let others do the thinking...

It's your decision.

As for me, I do my own reading and thinking. And I stand up to the crowd when I've done the boring work of checking my ideas (checking them for real) and know I'm right. I will never give my mind over to a group. Ever.

Michael

[9thdoctor]

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

RR,

So how do you propose that the Egyptians build those structures.

Did they use Donald Trump's contractors and pay union scale?

   

My recommendation is don't run from the truth. That will not lead you anywhere good. The Egyptians used slaves and lots of them to build. When Moses left Egypt, he took with him two and a half million Hebrew slaves. That's right. About 2.5 million. Let that number sink in.

And those were only the Hebrews. The Egyptians had many more slaves left over after the Hebrews departed.

Michael

The historicity of Moses (and the Exodus) is widely rejected today. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses

Which is tangential to your (valid) main point about slavery in the ancient world. 

But I hear they had free health care.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, 9thdoctor said:

The historicity of Moses (and the Exodus) is widely rejected today. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses

Which is tangential to your (valid) main point about slavery in the ancient world. 

Dennis,

So the way you do research is go to Wikipedia, pick out the conclusions related to some scholars in an article that promote one line of thinking, but ignore the others, then make a sweeping claim as if it contained only the view you like? Granted, the word "consensus of scholars" and the like is thrown around liberally in that Wikipedia article, but when I looked, I found such statements tended to reference rather obscure sources. In fact, on my skim of that article, I saw scholars landing all over the place on what is historical and not about Moses. Don't you want to play with them, too?

I agree the story of Moses is embellished up the wazoo with legend (it's what happens when dealing with ancient stories and verbal transmission leading to mostly verbal transmission), but, like with climate change, when scholars are constantly yelling at each other over an issue, its hard for me to get excited as a debunking knight in shining armor. 

The one thing that cannot be denied is the impact the Moses story had on human civilization, even underpinning the civil rights movement last century.

It's not going anywhere.

As to holding up an obscure source or other (as seems to be the case on Wikipedia when I just now read around a bit on other related issues) and claiming this a "consensus of scholars" yada yada yada, and besides, it is proof there was no slavery in ancient Egypt, or slave labor was not used in building the pyramids, that makes a great David and Goliath story (with the payoff of an emotional feeling and impression that only the slavery of blacks by evil hypocritical America ever existed), but life is short and all this cherry-picked controversy to debunk major practices in basic history is long...

I'll leave that to the Round Table boys...

If you want to see some recent breathtaking cherry-picking about Biblical issues in O-Land, check out Valliant and Fahy's book on Jesus (it's called "Creating Christ" and is available on Kindle and Audible). They claim the Jesus story was made up by the Roman elite in the second half of the first century to quell trouble with rebellious Jews and keep them obeying Roman emperors.

(Oddly enough, when this book was first published and for the longest time, Fahy was not included as author. Now he is...)

They kinda leave out a lot of stuff, including a lot of empire... But, to hear them tell it, there go those damn Jews again... always causing trouble... But, this time, the Flavian emperors cunningly defanged them with altruism... 

(yawn...)

Michael

[9thdoctor]

15 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Dennis,

So the way you do research is go to Wikipedia, pick out the conclusions related to some scholars in an article that promote one line of thinking, but ignore the others, then make a sweeping claim as if it contained only the view you like?

 

Coming on the heels of your post about not doing people's homework for them, this is pretty rich. 

I suggest Richard Carrier's books Proving History and On the Historicity of Jesus.  Which aren't about Moses, though there's some discussion of the topic.

No, I'm not interested in reading anything by Valliant.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:

Coming on the heels of your post about not doing people's homework for them, this is pretty rich. 

Dennis,

Why?

Do you want me to do your own homework for you? I merely took a look at a link, followed a few links in the article, and, despite the claim, what I saw didn't show a consensus of anything much less a consensus of scholars, but I did see the word and phrase a few times...

Well, folks did agree in general that ancient religious stories are a mix of fact and legend. There was a consensus about that...

   

2 hours ago, 9thdoctor said:

I suggest Richard Carrier's books Proving History and On the Historicity of Jesus.  Which aren't about Moses, though there's some discussion of the topic.

I haven't read any Carrier book yet, but currently I'm not not reading around trying to delve into the historical accuracy of different religions. My zeal to debunk religions has waned, but not because I converted to anything.

I've done some debunk-religion crusading in my time, even here in O-Land. For instance, see this post from 2006 over on RoR (when it was still Solo). I used to read a guy named Earl Doherty who tries to debunk an historical Jesus (you can see his books on Amazon here). I've even talked about him over here on OL if I'm not mistaken and, if I remember correctly, there are posts that are probably still available, but only as screenshot images. That means they are not searchable, so I will leave off uncovering them (if they exist) right now. It's too much work for too little point. This problem was due to the hacking attack OL suffered back then.

Over time, I stopped this line of inquiry and started delving into the religions themselves to see what was there. I've read the main texts of the main Western religions (Bible, Qu'ran, all three Mormon books, and a few things like Augustine's Confessions, etc., including more fringe stuff like New Age texts). And I've read some texts of Eastern religions. I started with the Bhagavad Gita, but only followed with sporadic texts from Hindu, Buddhism (in its various denominations), Taoism, Shinto, etc. There have some great stories...

I've completed a lot of online courses on religion (and other things, for that matter) from The Great Courses using the following system. I watch one lecture per day. Later I print out the PDF. Then I go back and do the course one more time. This go-around, I read the PDF chapter for each lecture, make notes, then watch it again--generally one lecture per day as before. It's not a perfect system for fully absorbing the material, but it is wonderful for getting an in-depth overview. This system allows me to blast through a lot of learning quickly and let me know where to pursue things if I want to go deeper (as has happened in a few cases).

There are other resources I study, too, in addition to delving into philosophy and other interests--especially modern advances in understanding the human mind and how storytelling is at the root of everything cultural. I've been fascinated about the epistemology of storytelling, including the science part (what neurochemicals are released and how, etc.)

But I'm still doing all this religion stuff. I haven't stopped. In fact, I feel like I've only scratched the surface. So why am I doing it? 

Well, I spent a lot of time bashing religion when I was younger, but it was always based on second-hand knowledge. I started with Randian views on mysticism, memories of my upbringing, and branched out from there. But I got trapped in my own undertaking. When you are earnest in searching for truth, especially if you seek to destroy something as big as religion, you cannot accept someone's view and only that view (or the views of those who agree with that view) as the real deal. You have to look at the original stuff and you have to do it in an "identify then evaluate" two-step  mode in order to be fully objective. So I bit the bullet and got busy looking.

Also, my view of history changed radically. (Or, maybe, social unfolding is a better term. I mean the broad strokes of history, not the gotcha details.) I now see where certain themes in different cultures come from. I remember my first impression when this dawned on me in all it's glory. I literally thought: "Woah..."  

Then there was this. I could not accept the premise that the majority of mankind was a bunch of doofuses who don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. And, by extension, I belonged to a superior insider group of The Smart People who know The True Truth. When I looked around me in my bubble back then, I kept seeing that there were us awesome smart folks on one side, and them, the rest of the awful stupid human cattle, poor things, on the other. The doofus side, by that standard, included the major geniuses of mankind throughout history who sporadically emerged out of their doofusness to do something worthwhile, then sank back to their stupid stupidity. To put it mildly, once I perceived that, especially when I asked myself the big questions of life, that group vanity crap no longer resonated with me.

As to Valliant, you do well to not waste the precious non-repeatable moments of your life and beautiful mind (I mean that  ) looking at his boneheaded meanderings, omissions, biases, opinions and just plain wrong shit mixed with enough correct stuff to make a crap salad. We have a lot of common ground on that score, except you are smarter than me. I actually wasted some time on it. And I don't say that with pride.  

Michael

[9thdoctor]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Dennis,

Why?

Do you want me to do your own homework for you?

No.  You posted about how you'd wasted time in the past assembling "curated and carefully selected material", then criticized me for merely providing a Wikipedia link to back up the claim that Moses's historicity is "widely rejected today".  And earlier you wrote " My recommendation is don't run from the truth. That will not lead you anywhere good. The Egyptians used slaves and lots of them to build. When Moses left Egypt, he took with him two and a half million Hebrew slaves. That's right. About 2.5 million. Let that number sink in."  It looks like you're claiming the 2.5 million number is "truth".  And that there was a Moses.  I thought I could just chime in on that without derailing the thread.  BTW even Joseph Campbell (you were reading him recently as I recall) thought the Exodus story had no basis in fact (ref one of his lectures from the early 80's (and how's that for a scholarly reference?)). 

We've probably done about an equal amount of reading on religion.  I recommend the 2 books by Carrier because I'm confident you will find some new and valuable things in them.

Funny thing about Valliant, this recalls what Peikoff said about Barbara's bio: "non-cognitive". 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, 9thdoctor said:

It looks like you're claiming the 2.5 million number is "truth".  And that there was a Moses.

Dennis,

Let's put it this way. I believe there probably was a Moses (whether by that name or another), but a lot of different stuff got piled into the legend part as the stories were handed down. As regards the 2.5 million slaves, from my current frame, the detail is not as important as the viability that conditions existed back then for it to be true.

In other words, in the current story wars of modern culture, there is a general impression that slavery of antiquity was a sporadic thing that did not involve many people. It's a general impression and I believe it is engineered on purpose to contrast a fictional "good old days" against modern evil America and it's guilty-ass white self (so the left can expand into more power without resistance, of course). The idea of an ancient country having a population of 2.5 million, much less 2.5 million slaves (setting aside the rest) shocks against what modern propagandists call "the narrative." 

Granted, I have not read in depth statistical studies of Egyptian populations in Biblical times. What little I have looked at due to this discussion  is all over the place. But there were a hell of a lot of people around back then (millions and millions)--far more than we imagine nowadays.

That Egyptian slave number seems inconceivable in the modern narrative impression of antiquity.

But it's not.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 10/20/2017 at 6:38 PM, RobinReborn said:

@Michael ESPN pulled a black woman for making a relative normal comment so it's hardly one sided.

RR,

You mean this person, the one who said, "I deserved my suspension"?

   

(I couldn't resist.  )

This is a good episode, though, to look at the difference between fact and narrative.

Narrative as done in the mainstream culture will almost always come with a strong emotional component--these days, the predominant emotion is outrage through victimization stories.

Facts are simply fact. Most of the time facts are not sexy.

However, facts have the advantage of being facts.

 

Eventually facts win out, even when it takes a long time.

Michael

[william.scherk]

The guy who rammed his car into a crowd in Charlottesville is found guilty of first-degree murder and charges of malicious wounding.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, william.scherk said:

The guy who rammed his car into a crowd in Charlottesville is found guilty of first-degree murder and charges of malicious wounding.

William,

Good.

The asshole deserves it.

Michael

[Jonathan]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

William,

Good.

The asshole deserves it.

Michael

But you're supposed to be upset that he was found guilty, because the left's Narrative is that Trump said that the killer was "good people," and you support Trump and therefore you believe that the killer was good and what he did was right. Ha ha! Gotcha!

J