Wingnut-watchers may remember A.J. Delgado,
author of a book of culture-war mad libs. Turns out she's been picked up by
National Review. Among her maiden efforts: A
long essay that's ostensibly a review of a new film loosely based on Jim Jones and Jonestown (Ti West's
The Sacrament), but mainly about how the People's Temple was a traditional communist cell -- you know, sort of like the
American Spring loonies are traditional Republicans -- and people who call it a cult are just covering up for Marxism and Marxists like Jerry Brown and Harvey Milk, who must be exposed.
It was with some trepidation that I attended a screening: Would West eschew any mention of Jones’s leftism, as others addressing the subject had before him? Would West blast organized religion as the culprit, rather than Marxism itself?
That's what Mr. and Mrs. Moviegoer will want to know! Delgado has mixed impressions:
But the big question is: Does the film represent the truth — i.e., Jones’s leftism? The answer is yes, somewhat. While not overtly highlighting Jones’s ideology or that of The People’s Temple, West certainly does not omit it. In a gripping, seminal scene where Sam interviews [Jones stand-in] Father, the ideology is in full view, for anyone willing to listen closely. Father bemoans issues at the top of any leftist’s top-gripes list: “poverty, violence, greed, and racism.” (A majority of Jonestown’s inhabitants were African American — another angle West truthfully represents.)
When Father mentions heroes who have been shot down for “trying to help others,” those heroes are: Malcolm X, MLK, JFK, and RFK. Not all leftists but not all exactly right-wing idols, either.
So, we know he's a commie because he's against poverty, violence, greed, and racism, is surrounded by black people, and admires Martin Luther King. But Delgado is concerned that Father also uses a cross and hymns, which might give filmgoers the false impression that Christianity can be used to confuse people, and "reaches out" to West, who politely explains to her that it's a movie. Delgado for some reason finds herself vindicated:
Father quotes Scripture in the film but, if one notices, only to the extent that it can be distorted for his social-justice arguments. Jones did the same, quoting Jesus Christ and Scripture only as red meat for his socialist sermons.
Whereas real Christians only use Jesus to denigrate homosexuals. I predict this young lady will go far.
Jesus Loves Tax Cuts! (And guns, of course.)
ReplyDeletehttp://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l227/DaNkinator/JesusNRA.jpg
~
My, what a stunningly marvelous lack of self-awareness this young woman has. Father name-checks some center-to-left heroes, so it proves he's a far-left Communist. But the fact that he's a Christian preacher who makes frequent reference to the Bible is thoroughly incidental and nothing should be read into it. Watch out, Jennifer Rubin, there's a new moron on the block.
ReplyDeleteSweet Sufferin' Moloch, I hope the GOP creates an entire attack campaign based on the fact Jungle Jim was against poverty, violence, greed and racism.
ReplyDelete"Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to reduce poverty. You know who else wanted to reduce poverty?" [Cut to clip of actor stirring powder into a big punch bowl.]
"Senator Franken wants to curb violent crime. You know who else wanted to reduce violent crime?" [Cut to clip of actor stirring punch with a gun, which dissolves.]
Also, Jones was against racism but killed a bunch of African-Americans so anyone who is against racism is the real racist!
[Hagee does] the same, quoting Jesus Christ and Scripture only as red meat for his [National S]ocialist sermons.
ReplyDeleteFixed that up a bit, for you, A. J. No charge.
... Whoops, I mean, my bill for copyediting is in the mail. Wouldn't want to be labeled a Christianity-hating communist for doing someone a favor.
Father quotes Scripture in the film but, if one notices, only to the extent that it can be distorted for his social-justice arguments.
ReplyDeleteFuck, that tricksy Scripture can mean anything if you want it to. I wonder why the Right's never thought of that?
Suffer the little children to play with loaded guns, that they may know the Kingdom of Heaven.
ReplyDeleteNew Rule: Stop thinking of these wingnut culture pieces as being rhetorical attempts at persuasion, or intellectual forays into analysis. They make much more sense, and become somewhat adorable, once you realize they're efforts at *reassurance,* both to the reader and to the writer. Implicit at the end of every sentence is "...right?"
ReplyDeleteHad a right-winger persuaded followers to join him in retreating from society and building their own enclave, then held them prisoner and ultimately persuaded or forced them to take their own lives in some sort of revolutionary act, Jonestown would be taught more widely in schools than Abe Lincoln.
ReplyDeleteI just love the shirt tucking!
Jonestown life was nearly identical to that in Communist nations: Inhabitants were essentially prisoners (prohibited from leaving the settlement and punished if caught trying to leave); no private ownership of any goods was allowed; no communication with the outside world was allowed; hard labor in the fields was mandatory, as was attendance at Jones’s lengthy, Castro-like sermons...
ReplyDeleteBecause there's no history of communal ownership, isolation from outside influence, or a strenuous agrarian lifestyle among religious groups, right?
But enough about Cliven Bundy.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I've always assumed. I don't see how you can read any of their "African-American outreach" pieces and not see them as being directed towards their white base.
ReplyDeleteThat commie Pope Benedict: "At St. Joseph's Seminary, the pope said the evils of substance
ReplyDeleteabuse, homelessness and poverty, racism, violence and the degradation
of girls and women result in people being treated as objects and the
denial of God-given human dignity."
http://www.americancatholic.org/News/PopeUS/April19/PapalTrip041908-13.asp
Commie action link for the new even more commie Pope here http://network-education.org/images/PopeandPoliticsMessagingPacket.pdf
Sometimes, it's so hard to show good faith towards these guys. So if opposition to poverty, violence, greed and racism is the liberal position, then the conservative position is...?
ReplyDeleteWTF is with these people? I can't imagine going through life and putting absolutely everything through a "How does this support my ideology/undercut the opposing ideology" filter.
ReplyDeleteWe often ask, half in jest, whether writers such as Ms. Delgado ever talk to any real people. I think the answer to that is either "no" or "not for any discernible length of time" because any normal person would start edging away from someone who started going off about such tripe.
And thus help themselves and others to get there more quickly.
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows that Catholics don't count. Well, unless an evangelical pundit is trying to inflate his numbers for his latest crusade, then Catholics can get a day pass.
ReplyDeleteCatholics do count . . .
ReplyDelete. . . when they're pronouncing that the Democrat candidate should be denied communion for not being anti-choice, or that healthcare that allows for women's health issues and reproductive rights should be declared unconstitutional, or that doing something to alleviate poverty, heal the sick, clothe the naked, house the homeless, or make life a touch more bearable for prisoners is part of some ultra-extreme leftwing plot. When Catholics are denouncing these things, they count just as much as any WASP.
I don't think many of these poly-sci Manicheans fully believe the things they say. Oh, there are plenty among the rank and file who do, but the people at the top have more sense. They're not really liars, though, more like entertainers with a very specific audience. Overanalysis of pop culture is big these days, and I don't see these guys as any different than the people who got popular by dissecting 80's children's films or budget video games. The main distinction is that Delgado's fans are slightly bigger assholes.
ReplyDelete"Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to reduce poverty. You know who else wanted to reduce poverty?"
ReplyDelete...
"Senator Franken wants to curb violent crime. You know who else wanted to reduce violent crime?"
You've basically just outlined the first two chapters of Liberal Fascism II. It's the Socrapic Method -- faaaaarrrrt.
Because there's no figure more relevant to Mr. and Mrs. Everyvoter's lives in 2014 than Jim fuckin' Jones.
ReplyDeleteOnly my views of what is and isn't a cult are acceptable! All else is a lie!
ReplyDeleteWell, the Second Aliyah kibbutz movement was predominantly secular, but otherwise fair point. See also monasticism, Acts 2:42-45, and Acts 4:32-35.
ReplyDeleteYou have to be of a certain age to even know who Jim Jones was. I'd bet cash money that if you asked 100 people on the street who Jim Jones was, one third of them would shrug, another third would guess he founded a sausage company, and only 10 percent or so would be able to tell you. As for the rest, you'd get wild-ass guesses all over the board.
ReplyDeleteFather bemoans issues at the top of any leftist’s top-gripes list: “poverty, violence, greed, and racism ... Jones did the same, quoting Jesus Christ and Scripture only as red meat for his socialist sermons.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Jesus have something to say about not being greedy, and helping the poor? Or did I make that up?
A significant portion would think he was the creator of a high-test improvisational alcoholic beverage.
ReplyDeleteThat's the OLD Bible. The latest American version deletes all that wimpy Beatitudes stuff and inserts the REAL scripture about Jesus gunning down the bad guys, oppressing widows and orphans, and helping the money-changers in the Temple with their IPO.
ReplyDeleteTheir version of those things is infused with Jesus-y goodness? IOKIYAR? It's just different, and you're stifling her speechthought freedumbs with your questions?
ReplyDeleteI don't bother with the show of good faith, unless you count not kicking them in the pants.
Do you, by chance, have a newsletter?
ReplyDeleteTalk, yes. Listen, no way.
ReplyDelete(Would you or another of the erudite readers here please define "shirt-tucking" for me in this context? It's one of those things that's unGoogleable.)
ReplyDeleteJim Jones? 900 dead people? Hell, Obama is the Marxist cult leader of millions of suicidal libtard moochers who drink his Kool-Aid and sign up for Death Panels.
ReplyDeleteI mean, that's the point of this crap, isn't it?
Sometimes I can't help but think that's it's all some long-running bet, i.e. A: "I bet I can write how chunky peanut butter outselling smooth is a sign of liberal fasicsm and get them to publish it." B" "You're on!"
ReplyDeleteI don't think that at all--at any rate not of any one of these writers who is under the age of 30. I think its impossible to grasp just how impoverished their idea of the bible is, let alone of history. But if you read Wonkette's Sunday review of the kinds of texts Christianists use to teach history/society you can discover a world as hazy and as circumbscribed as a mideival map with "hear be dragons" inscribed all around the edges. These people literally have no idea what is in the beatititudes, no idea that Christianity predates the world historic struggle with communism or ever could have been understood in terms other than the manichean America against Satan.
ReplyDeleteWaaaaco! oh WAAAACo!
ReplyDeleteRoy is probably the only one who can do it justice. To me, I guess it's sort of like an unstated "So there! Put that in your pipe and smoke it," although I could be wrong.
ReplyDeleteSomewhere deep in my memory resides a character from some old movie or TV show -- a pudgy, not too bright fellow -- who has just told somebody off and is pulling up his belt with one hand and retucking his shirt with the other. I cannot remember who it is or where it's from.
I was woken from a sound sleep, freshman year, in my dorm room by my roomate's clock radio going off with the news of the mass suicide. It was really one of those signal moments in my own life, in my own movement from highschool to college, from adolescence to the horrifying realization that I was going to have to live my entire adult life with the rest of the country basically as a denizen of an enormous insane asylum.
ReplyDeleteI think I remember the news breaking into Saturday Night Live. Can anyone confirm that?
ReplyDeleteWell, Wikipedia does say that Jones was a "community organizer." How much more do we need to know?
ReplyDeleteI thought that the news really didn't get out until early morning, US time.
ReplyDeleteCould be we're both right.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I think that is because my personal memory is so strong (though we didn't have a dorm room tv and wouldn't have had a chance to see SNL at night) but also because I think the murder/suicides happened at night and were not discovered for a day or two or at least not until the morning. I believe the first deaths were the congressman and his aides and that took place late evening.
ReplyDeleteInhabitants were essentially prisoners (prohibited from leaving the settlement and punished if caught trying to leave); no private ownership of any goods was allowed; no communication with the outside world was allowed; hard labor in the fields was mandatory, as was attendance at Jones’s lengthy, Castro-like sermons; armed henchmen spied on and intimidated others who dared step out of line or complain
ReplyDeleteWorking title: Weekend At Galt's Gulch
and here's the visual . . . http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif
ReplyDelete" how chunky peanut butter outselling smooth is a sign of liberal fasicsm"
ReplyDeleteWell, obviously. Chunky peanut butter is made up of peanuts who refuse to assimilate into the larger peanut butter culture. It's basically the "por espanol, oprima el dos" of sandwich spreads.
Chunky peanut butter, like dijon mustard, aioli, or salsa, is a leftist attempt at radical social engineering in the name of "diversity" and "individuality". Real American condiments -- circus mustard, mayonnaise, catsup -- do not have chunks.
You know who else is chunky? That's right, the America-hating traitor Michael Moore.
"When Father mentions heroes who have been shot down for “trying to help
ReplyDeleteothers,” those heroes are: Malcolm X, MLK, JFK, and RFK. Not all
leftists but not all exactly right-wing idols, either."
No right-wing idol would be caught dead trying to help others, much less shot in the process.
This is a beautiful strip.
ReplyDeleteThat was the sense I'd gotten - pompous / erroneous / triumphalist harrumphing.
ReplyDeleteI want to print this strip out in extremely large format, then use it as a blanket while I sleep on a park bench.
ReplyDeleteChunky peanut butter also highlights the inherent uneven distribution of wealth, serving as a metaphor for irrational liberal hatred of the job creators.
ReplyDelete(Skippy-brand Chunky Peanut Butter: Dozens of servings of metaphors in every jar!)
I had the occasion a couple weeks ago to run across some old material about the Jonestown thing, kind of by happenstance, and one thing that surprised me was to realize that all these issues that Delgado calls "socialist" were very very much mainstream at the time. Jones was very connected to the mainstream politicians of his time and region. No one thought of these issues as being "far left" - it was pretty much the position everyone took, politically anyway.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird to realize how far to the right it's skewed since then.
That's right- Reagan was shot by a mentally ill guy whose family was close to the Bushes.
ReplyDeleteThe Gospel According to Ayn
ReplyDeleteThat was right in my back yard, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteBut then those meddling nuns have to ruin everything.
ReplyDeleteJim Jones? Didn't he play for the Browns!
ReplyDeleteTheir version of those things also only applies to those worthy of charity- sluts and queers and blahs can go jump in a lake.
ReplyDeleteHow many "right wing idols" were assassinated in the 60s and 70s...I forget.
ReplyDeleteThe point, seemingly completely lost on Delgado, is that Jones was a fucking crazy con man, who conned his followers, politicians, civic leaders--everybody--and when the jig was up, he killed all the witnesses, including a Congressman. That says a lot more about religious cult behavior than it does about so-called lefty politics.
ReplyDeleteLeave it to National Review to draw entirely the wrong conclusion from what is the fairly well-determined and -documented evidence.
Well, there was George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party,
ReplyDeleteassassinated in 1967 after a speaking appearance.
Oh, sorry, how silly of me: according to the Pantload, Nazis were left-wing socialists, so GLR doesn't count.
Okay, none, I guess.
Sounds -- what's the word? -- monastic.
ReplyDeleteFunny how I'm as politically minded as anybody, but I have never once pondered whether Jim Jones' particular brand of crazy was "left wing" or "right wing". It never seemed the least bit relevant to me. Am I naive and incurious, or just a normal fucking human being?
ReplyDeleteThe airstrip shootings occurred around 5:25 pm on Saturday, November 18, 1978 (that's both NYC and Guyana time). By then, Jones was already calling for a "revolutionary act" back at the compound and the deaths are thought to have begun around 5 pm.
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. ambassador learned of the airstrip shootings around 6 pm and cabled the State Department around 8:30 pm.
Guyanese officials first learned something more was happening when a Jones follower and her three children were found dead at the People's Temple HQ in Guyana's capital, Georgetown. The officials informed her husband of the deaths at approximately 7:40 pm.
At around 2 am on Sunday, November 19, two survivors who fled Jonestown reached Port Kaituma and told officials what was happening at the compound.
Around 10 am, Guyanese soldiers reached the compound and found it carpeted with bodies.
Jones with infamous communist Rosalyn Carter:
ReplyDeletehttp://s28.postimg.org/dup0mcnnh/rosalyncarter.jpg
My youngest daughter apparently believes that chunky peanut butter was some kind of oldest child inspired commie plot. Now that her sister is going off to college she has already petitioned for an end to Chunky Peanut butter tyranny.
ReplyDeleteIt's too bad that Jones was a psycho, and thus off the table for serious discussion, because otherwise he was somewhat fascinating as an example of a political vector totally orthogonal to everything now a days.
ReplyDeleteI've always taken it to mean someone has gotten so worked up, like an orchestra conductor in a bugs bunny cartoon, that they have become entirely discombobulated and look ridiculous, and then on their closing line before taking a bow they make a very superficial attempt to straighten out all appearances, in a way that fools no one but perhaps themselves.
ReplyDeleteThis is the image in my head. Not sure it's the one that's meant to be there.
"The first shall be last and the last shall be first? That doesn't even make sense!"
ReplyDeleteI like that.
ReplyDeleteBut where do these archetypes come from? Who was the ur-retucker?
"So, we know he's a commie because he's against poverty, violence, greed,
ReplyDeleteand racism, is surrounded by black people, and admires Martin Luther
King."
That seems to be about the size of it. I mean, you can't even say that that's disingenuous. There is no other possible interpretation besides "only a communist could sympathize with BLACKS!"
Also, it seems poverty, violence, greed, and racism are now "gripes" like complaining about the noise from road construction near your house or something.
Why do right whingers insist on playing the "[left-leaning nutjob]'s bizzarre and demonstrably-uncharacteristic-of-progressives violence proves that progressives are violent and should be shunned" game, when it is absolutely clear that their fringe-dwelling violent nutjobs (i) are legion compared to ours, (ii) unlike ours, do represent a logical extension of conservative philosophy?
ReplyDeleteDo they have a learning disability of some sort?
.
"Shit happens, which is to be sucked up by people not like me."
ReplyDeleteBut the big question is: Does the film represent the truth
ReplyDeleteReviewing horror movies as if they were documentaries? This is encroaching on Onion territory.
Ah, for the days when one knew who the real cranks were, because they smelled of duplicating fluid....
ReplyDeleteI remember hearing the first sketchy but horrific reports on the 11:00 pm news in the SF Bay Area. Then, like ten days later, Harvey Milk and George Moscone were assassinated. I tell you what, November still gives me the creeps.
ReplyDeleteOh jeez, smell-memory: that wonderful, damp, purply mimeo paper smell, it's like, I don't know, madeleines or victory or something.
ReplyDeleteCrazy transcends, & Jones was an apocalyptic loony of the first water who would have used any line that worked on his selected marks, left right or center.
ReplyDeleteJonestown.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget Glenn Beck announced plans for Independence, USA back in 2013. They were going to produce his show there and grow food and stuff. Ties and shirt tucking required.
ReplyDeleteAgree completely. If I wanted a not-reduced-to-butter peanut chunk I'd buy a bag of peanuts.
ReplyDeleteThe long term effects of exposure to that stuff couldn't be good.
ReplyDeleteAll these explanations are fine. I'm just hearkening back to a old friend who, portraying a mass dork-out, cried "everybody re-tuck your shirts!" and it just made so much sense.
ReplyDeleteThere should be a Lifetime movie all about moi. Or maybe SyFy. Animal Planet? One of them TV things, can't keep 'em straight.
ReplyDeleteOh, but it would be worth it.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, what is it exactly?
Something solvent-y is my guess.
ReplyDeleteYeah, some kind of aniline purple chemical dye that smells like nectar an eventuly roons yr brane.
ReplyDeleteBack in 1979, Tim Cahill wrote a fearsome article on Jonestown for Rolling Stone.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/in-the-valley-of-the-shadow-of-death-guyana-after-the-jonestown-massacre-19790125
It's long, but worth the time. It's a copout to dismiss Jones as simply as Delgado does. In hindsight his arc from messianic to megalomanic to monstrous seems inevitable, but trying to cram the actions of an insane person into her Fisher-Price moral framework is a fool's errand.
From what I can remember from the research project i did about Jonestown in...Jesus, that long ago?...Jones did start out as a more-or-less left wing figure. Cults usually start out by looking like an appealing organization, and in the case of Jones, the appeal was some form of aid and support to the poor and downtrodden. By the end, of course, it was just about Jones and his personality as the God figure. What all this has to do with Dr. King, I couldn't say.
ReplyDeleteGood info is hard to find, but apparently the solvent is just methanol and isopropanol. That doesn't explain the smell though.
ReplyDeleteHa, thank you.
ReplyDeleteBecause there's no figure more relevant to Mr. and Mrs. Everyvoter's lives in 2014 than Jim fuckin' Jones.
ReplyDelete"Hillary Clinton wants to turn you into her pet rock. Vote for Hillary Clinton? Not! Disco sucks. Vote Republican".
As per my usual habit of trying not to be a hypocrite, I immediately try to think of things that are conventionally seen as good that the Right make a big production of standing for and that the Left therefore have a knee-jerk aversion to.
ReplyDeleteI'm... kind of drawing a blank, though.
If someone says "personal responsibility" I tend to smell a wingnut... but honestly, I don't see how personal responsibility is a particularly good thing. I don't trust any one person to adequately handle anything, including their own life, 100% of the time. I want redundant fallback systems. :P
Faith? I'm an atheist, so again I am not a fan.
Old-fashioned morality - charity and kindness and all that sappy stuff? Eh, mmmmmmmaybe? But while leftists tend to scoff at those, wingnuts talk about them a lot and then go on to act in a way that is their complete antithesis, so even that one is a draw at most.
It also occurs to me that while "opposition to poverty, violence, greed and racism" all suggest things that the government might do, all conventionally-seen-as-good-things that the Right trots out are excuses for the government to not do anything, and seeing as political debate is supposedly all about what the government ought to do, that means that all they're really standing for is sloth...
Oh! That's it! The Right stands for being a lazy bastard who never does anything!
No, wait... that's not conventionally seen as a good thing, it's just me who's a big fan of it. :P
I can't imagine going through life and putting absolutely everything
ReplyDeletethrough a "How does this support my ideology/undercut the opposing
ideology" filter.
I can. That was my life for most of my twenties.
I... can not recommend it.
Woah. What an essay. I don't know that I'll be able to sleep after reading that. I wonder what happened to him as a writer?
ReplyDeleteYep.
ReplyDeleteThat's what makes comparisons to Hitler so all-pervasive, too. Hitler was a nutbag who could hold six different worldviews before breakfast and be completely convinced of each one, so no matter who you are, chances are he agreed with your opponents at some point.
Wait, leftists "tend to scoff" at charity and kindness? Personally, I'm a leftist who's a big fan of the both. Granted, wingnuts think about them in a really warped way, but that's no reason to just throw out the very concepts.
ReplyDeleteWho is that bespectacled crooner? His dulcet tones are soothing.
ReplyDeleteON THE OTHER HAND, chunky peanut butter demonstrates Rugged Individualism. Those chunks of peanut are not content to just fade into the crowd; they pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and demand to be recognized. Whereas smooth peanut butter, obviously, is communism. No individual pieces are permitted to stand out; it's just undifferentiated authoritarian mush.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun game!
Her analysis is especially delusional given that it was the Jesus-y part of Jones's philosophy and not the left wing stuff that lead to the suicide pact.
ReplyDeleteI scoff at reactionary claims that charity & kindness will solve all our social problems w/o the gov't. having to lift a finger.
ReplyDeleteBut I too am a lazy bastard, which is why I know that stuff doesn't work by itself.
The leftists I've spent most of my adult life around tended to consider talk of "kindness" as a sinister ploy to make women stay in the kitchen, and celebrated selfishness as not only the path to freedom, but a completely necessary tool of self-preservation in a world filled with moochers and insane criminals just waiting to take advantage.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, I am quite sure I did not hang out with a bunch of Randians by mistake. Though I admit that the rhetoric always felt oddly similar to me.
Jonestown life was nearly identical to that in Communist nations...blabbety, blabbety, blabbety...
ReplyDeleteOK, fine. Can she now please identify, in some kind of convincing fashion, any liberal or leftist or Democrat who espouses these beliefs.
Like, what's your point, lady? Other than to win an argument against your own nitwit assumptions.
Oh, I quite agree. In the areas of my own life where I've needed help, I've benefited far more from tax-funded government programs than from the half-hearted efforts of individuals.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, when people take a stand against charity & kindness I always suspect that their support for those government programs is not particularly heartfelt. If they can't spare even basic consideration for the people they actually meet, how long before they no longer want to give actual money to complete strangers?
Chunky Reese Witherspoon, on the other hand ...
ReplyDeletePeople rarely spend time memorising violent nutjobs and counting how many held what kind of politics. If they can remember at least one left-wing nutjob, they just assume that there were many more that they've forgotten about or didn't get told about. If you really want to believe, and convince others, that both sides are equally bad, then that is a useful thing.
ReplyDeleteI haven't counted either, but it does seem like being the side that argues against violence at every turn astonishingly enough leads to - having fewer nutjobs who use violence. You'd think that would be entirely unsurprising, but wingnuts seem to be determined that peace leads to war, love leads to hate, freedom leads to oppression and equality leads to elitism, and they're going to keep talking until they've proven that it is so if it so takes them another thirty-odd years!
A right-winger persuaded an entire country to go along with him and imprison and murder ten to twenty million people. To be fair, I do believe this is occasionally taught in schools.
ReplyDeleteNo way.
ReplyDeleteIs that a poster for famous communist comedian Bill Maher up there?
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering who the husky homeboy is over there with the swastika armband over his suit jacket. He may be a fucking Nazi but at least he doesn't also look like Gul Dukat.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that the smell came from the wax of the stencil...it was a long time ago.
ReplyDeleteHere's a recent article about him:
ReplyDeleteNEWS
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Thursday May. 15, 2014
In Through the Outdoors: Q & A with Travel Writer Tim Cahill
Adventure travel writer Tim Cahill, co-founder of Outside Magazine, is the featured author at Whitefish Review's launch party
Tim Cahill - Photo courtesy of Whitefish Review
By Tristan Scott, 12-12-13
Over the past four decades, Tim Cahill, a longtime resident of Livingston, has established a reputation as one of America’s best known and most intrepid adventure travel writers, penning narratives about wanderlust with his signature wry humor.
A founding editor of Outside magazine and the award-winning author of 10 books, Cahill wrote about rock and roll for Rolling Stone magazine, plumbed the nefarious depths
of the mind of serial killer John Wayne Gacy for his bestselling book, “Buried Dreams: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer,” and covered the brutal Jonestown Massacre before shifting the focus of his craft to adventure travel writing.
The intrepid journalist has tracked the supposedly extinct Caspian tiger across Turkey, collected samples of human hair in Mongolia, gone in search of giant centipedes in the Congo and embarked on a trip to visit the famous Saharan salt mines.
This month he ventures north to Montana’s hinterlands as the featured author in the latest issue of the Whitefish Review literary journal, which will be unveiled Dec. 14 at a gathering at Casey’s Bar in Whitefish. Issue #14 of the journal, titled “The Hunger Issue,” features an impressive lineup of local and regional writers, photographers and
artists, including Kate Ehrenberg, Charles Finn and David Allan Cates.
http://www.flatheadbeacon.com/articles/article/in_through_the_outdoors/36961
I find myself doing it more than I should, out of defensiveness at the incessant hostility of these frightened people. It is a difficult trap to avoid these days, even for those who know how socially (and personally) destructive it is.
ReplyDeleteThe money shot?
ReplyDeleteIt's weird to realize how far to the right it's skewed since then
ReplyDeleteOverton ain't gonna move that window all by himself, you know.
It's easy to recognise the far-left anti-Christian types. They're the ones demanding that their cult members "sell all you have and follow me".
ReplyDeletebecause there's no history of communal ownership isolation from outside influenceIt's easy to recognise the far-left anti-Christian
ReplyDeletetypes. They're the ones demanding that their cult members "sell all you
have and follow me".
Cahill's produced at least five books of essays. A couple of them may have gone out of print, but his stuff's around.
ReplyDeleteSee? Your reality filters just aren't turned up high enough? Everyone knows that vows of poverty, communal living, and social movements without leaders are not only leftist, but positively communist ideas. You just need to learn how to let your eyes sort of slide over parts of the New Testament. Okay...most of the New Testament.
ReplyDeleteSo, basically, she had no interest in the film unless she could plausibly (in her mind) compare your average lefty to a cult leader.
ReplyDeleteThese people are such freaks.
One of my favorite blogs (Stuff Christian Culture Likes, at http://www.stuffchristianculturelikes.com/ ) explained that most modern Evangelicals don't really read the bible - they read books about the bible, listen to sermons which fetishize short passages of the bible out of context, and sit in bible study groups which have an agenda-driven pick-and-choose approach to the text. Actually sitting down and reading the bible and putting it into historical context is discouraged, which is extremely funny if you know anything at all about why Protestantism exists in the first place.
ReplyDeleteSee also: most right-wingers' understanding of the Constitution and Bill of Rights
Enthusiastic support of those things.
ReplyDeleteInstead of compassion and justice, Conservatives embrace the so-called martial virtues. Honor. Bravery. Loyalty. Patriotism. Self Reliance. In essence, every virtue that can be used to cloak their "You're not the boss of me" and "Fuck you, I got mine" "You should totally go fight and die for imperialism" agenda with pretty enough apparel that they can discuss it in the public sphere without everyone else reviling them for being selfish violent assholes.
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty much an ideal magazine writer's life. And he co-founded Outside! He must be doing very well.
ReplyDeleteThe article characterizes him as longtime resident, which is Westernese for "He's from somewhere else, but we've decided he's cool anyway because he's been here so long.".
ReplyDeleteHe probably bought a spread there a while back and he spends some of the winters there is my guess.
Only because there has been a mass effort to keep his Marxism hidden. See how the the paranoid mind works?
ReplyDeleteWow. Thank you for posting that link.
ReplyDeleteDialectic Boogaloo
ReplyDelete"All aboard to the Heart of Darkness."
ReplyDeleteI believe Alex Cockburn did an essay about Jonestown in the Nation with that title, but I'm old and senile, like Hillary, so I could be wrong.
"When Father mentions heroes who have been shot down for “trying to help others,” those heroes are: Malcolm X ..." I don't know why A.J. thinks Malcolm isn't a right-wing idol. http://coreyrobin.com/2014/04/17/eleven-things-you-did-not-know-about-clarence-thomas/
ReplyDeleteStrap it to a goalpost.
ReplyDeleteI bet "football player" would be the most common guess to Derelict's question.
ReplyDeleteIt should be pasted into the title page of every copy of Atlas Shrugged in existence now and forever.
ReplyDeleteWWJS? (Who Would Jesus Shoot?)
ReplyDeleteNow, that is one unhappy looking dude.
ReplyDeleteWho wouldn't Jesus shoot?
ReplyDeleteI remember one NR staffer made a similar argument about Obama's parents: Only commies ever crossed the color line back then, which means Obama was raised by Reds!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIt brings to my mind Chris Farley's motivational speaker character, if the character was yelling about politics.
ReplyDeleteOr cartoon pamphlets in a convenient small format?
ReplyDeleteThe new version has the Bulletitudes.
ReplyDeleteReading that piece, I was struck by the parallels between the Jonestown rhetoric and the Bundy ranch: the extreme paranoia, the delusions of vast conspiracies arrayed against "the faithful", even the rapid demonization of people who drop out (see also the Bundamentalist reaction to Oaf Keepers leaving).
ReplyDeleteAre we sure Delgado's not just prepping the field for the world's most gruesome "OMG BOTH SIDEZ YOU GUIZE" when things come to a head in NV?
to paraphrase Gordon Gekko: "Poverty, violence, greed, and racism are good!"
ReplyDelete/ Hi, ALICU. What's here is what I ran smack into on the exciting net! /
ReplyDeleteHarvey Milk Stamped "Out" Forever !
The Obama Cabal is
behind universal GAYety with a "forever" postage stamp glorifying
Harvey Milk, a Jewish homosexual predator "attracted to boys aged
15-19," according to WikiAnswers! (Also see Wikipedia.)
Global gaydom was even predicted by Jesus (see "days of Lot" in Luke 17 and compare with Genesis 19).
And the Hebrew prophet Zechariah (14th chapter) says that during the
same end-time gay "days" ALL nations will come against Israel and
fulfill the "days of Noah" at the same time (see Luke 17 again) - a
short time of anti-Jewish genocide found in Zechariah 13:8 when
two-thirds of all Jews will die.
In other words, when "gay days" have become universal, all hell will break loose!
The same "days" will cause worldwide human government to collapse in
just a few short years! For the first time ever there won't be enough
time for anyone to attend college, have a family, enjoy retirement, etc.
It will also be the last time anyone like ObabaBlackSheep will be able
to keep pulling the wool over our eyes!
One final thought. The more we see gays "coming out," the sooner Jesus will be "coming down"!
For more, Google or Yahoo "God to Same-Sexers: Hurry Up," "Jesus Never
Mentioned Homosexuality. When gays have birthdays...," "FOR GAYS ONLY:
Jesus Predicted...," "USA - from Puritans to Impure-itans!" and "The
Background Obama Can't Cover Up."
(PS: HOMOgenized Milk has been honored by Gov. Schwarzenaggravator as well as Pres. ObabaBlackSheep.)