Facing the Myth of Redemptive Violence by Fremdfirma

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

ALSO

Quote:
Few cartoons have run longer or been more influential than Popeye and Bluto. In a typical segment, Bluto abducts a screaming and kicking Olive Oyl, Popeye’s girlfriend. When Popeye attempts to rescue her, the massive Bluto beats his diminutive opponent to a pulp, while Olive Oyl helplessly wrings her hands. At the last moment, as our hero oozes to the floor, and Bluto is trying, in effect, to rape Olive Oyl, a can of spinach pops from Popeye’s pocket and spills into his mouth.

Transformed by this gracious infusion of power, he easily demolishes the villain and rescues his beloved. The format never varies. Neither party ever gains any insight or learns from these encounters. They never sit down and discuss their differences. Repeated defeats do not teach Bluto to honour Olive Oyl’s humanity, and repeated pummellings do not teach Popeye to swallow his spinach before the fight.

It never occurs to people to ask:

WHY do we have the highest number of people who believe in religion of love... and the greatest difference between rich and poor?

WHY do we have the greatest incarceration rate and the highest crime rate?

WHY do we execute more people than all other industrialized nations combined and still have the highest number of murders?

At some point, you would think that people would take a look back, a look around, and say to themselves This not not working. Maybe we should try something else, something different.

As trite as it sounds, I think the answer is Be the change you wish to see.

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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 9:34 AM

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=37443#687361

According to the Paper today, Amnesty International places the US fourth on executions, behind China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and ahead of Pakistan and Iraq. Those are absolute numbers though, I don't know about per-capita.

My own take is that the state has little to no right to decide who lives and who dies, save maybe in matters of immediate self-defence (but those would be individual decisions anyway I would think?).

AURaptor advocates child murder:

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
When Pal women start dressing up their babies in suicide pampers, might be a good idea to go ahead and take care of both of them at once, before they have a chance to kill.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 9:39 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I should have qualified "In the industrialized world". But that we're within hailing distance of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan should give people serious... and I mean SERIOUS... questions about who we are and where we're going.

It should.

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Let's make the world right and kill kids.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 9:42 AM

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=37443#687361

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
I should have qualified "In the industrialized world". But that we're within hailing distance of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan should give people serious... and I mean SERIOUS... questions about who we are and where we're going.

It should.

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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

To be fair there's a big gulf between those top 4. China was 1716+, Iran 346+, Saudi Arabia 102+ and the US was 37.

AURaptor advocates child murder:

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
When Pal women start dressing up their babies in suicide pampers, might be a good idea to go ahead and take care of both of them at once, before they have a chance to kill.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 10:08 AM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

You guys do know that there is a difference between killing and murder, right?

The Bible actually says, "Thou shalt not MURDER"...

Not kill. Big difference.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 10:17 AM

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=37443#687361

And you'd think we're basing our arguments on the Bible because...

AURaptor advocates child murder:

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
When Pal women start dressing up their babies in suicide pampers, might be a good idea to go ahead and take care of both of them at once, before they have a chance to kill.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 10:25 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Not kill. Big difference.

Yeah, I'm sure the dead really split that hair!

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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 10:48 AM

WULFENSTAR

http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg

Sig, Cit,

There is a BIG difference. Killing, while not pretty....is FAR different from murder.

Killing someone who is destroying your life...ok. Murdering someone who disagrees with you.....not ok.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 11:14 AM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
Sig, Cit,

There is a BIG difference. Killing, while not pretty....is FAR different from murder.

Killing someone who is destroying your life...ok. Murdering someone who disagrees with you.....not ok.

What about murdering someone by invading their country when they're not a threat to you?

Mike

A baby seal walks into a club...

The "On Fire" Economy -
The Dow closed at 10,587.60 on January 20, 2001, the day GW Bush took office. Eight years later, it closed below 8000 on the day he left office - a net loss of 25%. That's what conservatives call an economic "success".

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 11:15 AM

Quote:

And you'd think we're basing our arguments on the Bible because...

Becuase, silly, America was founded as a Christian nation! Gosh, don't you know anything?

[/sarcasm]

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 11:19 AM

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=37443#687361

Quote:
Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
Sig, Cit,

There is a BIG difference. Killing, while not pretty....is FAR different from murder.

Killing someone who is destroying your life...ok. Murdering someone who disagrees with you.....not ok.

I don't remember making any distinction between killing murder or anything else. I remember saying the state has no right to decide who lives and who dies.

AURaptor advocates child murder:

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
When Pal women start dressing up their babies in suicide pampers, might be a good idea to go ahead and take care of both of them at once, before they have a chance to kill.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:29 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Siggy, those are the questions that occured to me just prior to my teen years, and the adults could not, or would not, answer.

Knowing the answers is easy, applying them is not.

Watching Synanon/The Seed/WWASPS and their whole adversarial hate-based compliance through torture model crash and burn though...

That's domino number one.

We need to elevate our young to people, consider them human beings, rather than sub-humans about on par with livestock on a social and legal level.

We *CAN* do that, consider how women were once considered the same, but have damn near acheived equality despite rock-headed throwback neanderthals with a Y chromosone pissed off about it.

And yes, before anyone starts whining, sure, there ARE folks who want retaliation instead of equality, but the best defense against that brand of stupidity is never giving it the serious credence it requires to obtain traction in the first place.

It really does, in every case, come down to what we DO to our kids in the name of this society, and how the backlash from that dynamic poisons every single step and structure of it from the ground up.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009 3:17 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

FREM- At the risk of sounding religious: Amen, brother.

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 3:02 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Frem- never got your pm. If it was important, try again.

---------------------------------
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 3:15 AM

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.asp?b=18&t=37443#687361

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
It really does, in every case, come down to what we DO to our kids in the name of this society, and how the backlash from that dynamic poisons every single step and structure of it from the ground up.

I've always been interested by the correlation that those that commit atrocities are often those that were abused as Children. Saddam Hussein was apparently beaten and tortured regularly as a child. I think Stalin was as well. Hitler said his father beat him, and that he had resolved never to cry out when his father whipped him.

When so many of the worlds most fucked up dictators all have the commonality of being abused as children, I begin to wonder how much it is correlation and how much it is causation.

AURaptor advocates child murder:

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
When Pal women start dressing up their babies in suicide pampers, might be a good idea to go ahead and take care of both of them at once, before they have a chance to kill.

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 3:22 AM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:

I've always been interested by the correlation that those that commit atrocities are often those that were abused as Children.

GW seems to have been a victim of neglect...

The laughing Chrisisall

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 4:58 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"The Bible actually says, "Thou shalt not MURDER"..."

The OLD Testament says thou shalt not murder. The NEW testament says thou shalt not KILL as does the Christian version of the OT.

As followers of crust, er ... Christ in a Christian nation (I think that's where you're going with this), I believe we are to follow the words of Christ, not those of the Jews. Is that the point you're making ?

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BTW, there are MANY passages in the Christian version of the OT that were changed from the Jewish version. Are you going to argue for the purity of the Jewish version or of the Christian version ?

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Silence is consent.

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 5:36 AM

Actually, short of a time machine, I doubt many, if ANY, actually KNOW what the bible says about much of anything. You know what you've been TOLD it says, but unless you read dead languages, you don't even know for a fact what was written down - and even then, it was written down many years after the alleged events took place. And it was written from many points of view, so that one gospel doesn't usually back up what another gospel says.

And that's not even going into the "lost" or "fogotten" gospels, which were stricken from the canonical record and purposely left out, because they said things that didn't jibe with what the early Church wanted to say.

Mike

A baby seal walks into a club...

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 5:39 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Frem- never got your pm. If it was important, try again.

Heh, you're already here.

I PM'd you with the link above and the thought that it deserved it's own thread, and then was like "doh!" and created the thread myself... silly me.

-F

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 5:54 AM

RUE

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

I'm midly interested in the historical issues of biblical writings, or indeed other religious writings. I've read the translation of the Nag Hammadi Library plus the NT put out by historians, linguists etc billed as the "what Jesus really said" version (roughly 10% of what was attributed to him, the rest was added later).

When it comes to the commandments, there are three versions of Moses' commandments in the OT - two of which have only 9 commandments each, though there are some differences in the 9 from each other; the third set set is dozens of commandments long. Then there are the NT versions, bulked up to make 10 (though, again, different sets), and edited for content.

I just think arguing about them is silly, and using them as a justification in any other argument is even sillier. And trying to figure out the one 'true' version is like arguing about angels on the head of a pin.

My feeling, though, is that if one is going to make a Christian argument, one should look to the words of Christ - and he said there are only two important commandments - love god above all else, and your neighbor as yourself. (Get that Wulf ? Love, not hate.)

(For the record, I've also read several translations of the Tao Te Ching which are wildly different from each other. Though I admit I never made it through more than a small portion of the Bagavad Ghita.)

***************************************************************

Silence is consent.

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 6:04 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Citizen, this issue has been so thoroughly explored by Alice Miller, Andrew Vachss, Jordan Riak and SO many others, it's a wonder anyone would be unaware of it unless they wished to be.

Adolf Hitler: How Could a Monster Succeed in Blinding a Nation?
http://www.naturalchild.com/alice_miller/adolf_hitler.html

The Wellsprings of Horror in the Cradle
http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=46&grp=11

The most absolute, hands-down flawless connection of these elements was however, a speech by Andrew Vachss back in 1983, the truth of which offended so many of the so-called "professionals" he was giving it to that they simply got up and left.

WHO IS THE SERIOUS, VIOLENT, HABITUAL OFFENDER?
http://www.vachss.com/av_dispatches/lifestyle.html

The problem with hearing, and acknowledging stuff like this, is the need to ADMIT it, and most folk will not, can not, do this - believe me, you've got enough experience with outright denial of the obvious just on this site to know how damn frustrating that can be.

We make our own monsters, and are too willfully blind to see how and why - and the damage is incalculable, look at Carl Panzram as a classic example.

Another large chunk of the problem is how politicians focus on things that will get them some benefit while they're still in power, help them get re-elected, and all too often go with the established more control, more brutal "tough on crime" bullshit which has landed us here, instead of focusing on prevention of the criminal by not creating one in the first place, cause that doesn't pay off till 25 years or so down the road, and besides, kids don't vote so what the hell do they care.

PROTECT *makes* them care.
http://www.protect.org/

It took much longer than we'd hoped, but when you wish to threaten politicians, you need a big damn stick to do it, and that is what Protect is.

All my life I've fought from the shadows, to clear the way for those who can fight in the light, unafraid of the folks sponsoring and profiting from these destructive models, and no moment of that was more quietly glorious than when Pathway crumbled and the balance tipped against the hellcamps.

While I did my share to tear their veil of secrecy and set them up for it, it was Shelby's hand holding the blade that cut their throats, and more power to her.
http://www.isaccorp.org/

The funny thing is that I seemed to have worked myself right out of something to do, there's not really a *NEED* for sabotage and dirty underhanded viciousness, not since this fight has been brought into the light of day and waged by folks with far more professional credentials than I could ever dream of having - but for the massive efforts of shoving it there, of getting that boulder to start rolling, there's so many folk who's only reward for it was the scorn of this society, many of whom never got to see any benefit in their own lifetimes, and I am very proud of them.

Things as they are, these days more and more I am passing the torch down to younger, more capable hands, but I most certainly will be around, and thanks to the benefits of rumor mill reputation and the ability to all but vanish from the public eye, the bad apples gonna be lookin over their shoulders for long years, never sure *enough* that I or one of my proteges ain't creepin up on em.

So, having pushed over domino one, now on to domino two, which is the social and legal recognition of children as human beings.

-Frem

PS:Edit:
Oh yes, btw, you've probably noticed I tend to agree with Will Grigg on many issues, since I have linked to his blog on related points here and there...

What you probably do not know is that addressing WWASPS and Romneys connection to them is what got him fired from The New American magazine.
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/06/mitt-romney-and-teen-tort
ure-industry.html

In a time where the mere mention of such a thing was an instant express ride to the unemployment line, Mr Grigg deserves respect for doing it without flinching, and while I might not always agree with the guy, he's got the heart of a lion.

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 7:31 AM