I never called you a bigot. Not that it would surprise me if you are.

I said you say things that are deliberately provocative in order to get people to respond to your posts. You see a lot of that kind of posting on politics boards. Because politics boards are also full of frothy-mouthed liberals who love responding to them. It's a symbiotic thing. Doesn't really fit this format, though.

...

But that doesn't even make sense. You're just being foolish if you think the next airplane bomber is going to be garishly playing the "Check me out, I'm a devout muslim" card. That would be idiotic. Chances are, if a passenger is "muslim in appearance" that person will have already received 5 times as much scrutiny as you or I would ever receive at an airport.

I don't think you're a bigot. You're just someone who's been goaded by fear into embracing irrational suspicions of his fellow countrymen. It's pretty standard stuff, though if you'd like you can write me off as a liberal so you don't have to think about what I wrote.

I never said I thought the next airplane bomber was going to be a devout Muslim. Never.

I actually like MixedMedia's metaphor, suggesting that what I'm saying is like telling children the people they need to worry about the most are old men in trenchcoats.

The way I see it, it's more like you all telling little children: It's more like you all are saying to little children: Of course you should go say hi to old men in trenchcoats when my back is turned. If they were REALLY child molesters, they would never dress like that.

Let's tally: twice a bigot, twice a fool/foolish, and the little supercanadians meltdown. I'm so provocative.

---

-+-{Important TFP Staff Message}-+- No name calling

Goes for everyone in this thread, not just Matthew.

Keep it civil folks.

The secret to taking someone else's words and twisting them around to make your argument is coming up with something that actually makes some sense.

When you said I didn't make sense, then read what I said, but what you said made no sense. ZERO. then twisting of words when you said it, and tried to say that I said it the children in trenchcoats. PERIOD.

you can go home now too MixedMedia.

---------- Post added at 05:26 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:10 PM ----------

..............and I wouldn't have gone back and edited my post and deleted the extra line, when you pointed it out. It wouldn't have made any sense to people reading through, and I'm not a pussy like that.

...

I wasn't referring to the extra line. I understood what you wrote, just saying that it didn't make sense. I sincerely hope you don't have any children because anyone with any goddamn sense knows that you can't profile a potential threat by their age or the clothes they are wearing.

I can see where it would be helpful to you for me to go home, though.

what is all this 'you can go home now' and 'shutting you down' bs ?
is that any way to have a conversation ? sounds more like a schoolyard bully talk.

people can't come to these conversations with an " I'm right, your wrong" attitude or it just serves no purpose at all. for either side.
I doubt Atta was wearing 'traditional Muslim garb" when he walked up to the ticket agent, but I'll will agree he was probably giving off some bad vibes (for lack of any better terminology) so, sometimes you gotta trust your gut. in his mug shots he did look like a scary dude. I will give you that. but I doubt the ticket agent had any information or the authority to do anything about it.

since we're wandering off to sex offenders, the last 4-5 announcements on my local news have been profiled as mid 20's white males with knit hats.

I think matt needs a hug, he lives in a very scary world that forces him to act tough and premptively dismiss people because he's afraid they might hurt him.

I used to. Then posts like #131 and - for that matter - #40 became too common for my tastes. And I'd notice an implicit divide between the trolls and the respected trolls - those who got called on bad posts and those who didn't. It's very conducive to eschewing paragraphs of thoughtful elaboration for pithy 'hit-and-runs', since they're increasingly likely to get just about the same quality of response.

Add in blatant isolated incidents like World's King blatantly - and stupidly - flaming a better poster and apparently getting away with it, and you have my theory for cyn's thread about why TFP is in decline.

I don't often see myself exhibiting this posting style elsewhere. I guess it's contagious.

boink to answer your question:

what is all this 'you can go home now' and 'shutting you down' bs ?
is that any way to have a conversation ? sounds more like a schoolyard bully talk.


MixedMedia told me what I said didn't make sense. Didn't say why - just that my post didn't make sense. Where exactly did you want me to take that conversation?
Right - nowhere (and ironically from someone who was trying to instruct me on the "format" that is acceptable here).

So if that wtas he dialogue she wanted to have, rather than try to guess why she thinks my point didn't make sense and argue nothing, I told her she can pick up her toys and go home.

That simple.

...

Sorry I didn't spell it out.

There is no correlation that I can see between being watchful of 'Muslimy' people on planes and telling children to say hi to old men in trenchcoats 'behind your back.' Plus, it still assumes that these people are inherently more dangerous than others because of the way they look, in particular due to the clothes they are wearing. I really am sorry to keep using the word 'fool' to describe these things, but it is foolish. If anything a person could open themselves up to more danger by not being observant of real threats.

I am a watchful person. I don't walk around in a blissful state trustful of everyone I see. Sometimes I encounter people that I (on an instinctive level) don't want to be around. But I haven't found that be a racial or ethnically specific phenomena. If you allow paranoia or irrational fear to replace your own instincts you only open yourself up to 1) unwarranted stress and 2) like I said, missing real threats.

Donate $100 to a charity for every time you have written that.


There are a number of people who are not affiliated with Fox News and who are liberal who have supported Williams also - what do you say to them?

And how do you feel about devote evangelical Christians in Congress? Is it your preference that they not be in Congress? Why? Are you a bigot?


Is there a difference between conservative racism and liberal (or whatever the opposite of conservativism is in your mind) racism?

So, are you saying you want all conservatives to crawl under some figurative rock? Is this a form of bigotry? Are all conservatives bad people in your mind? Why?

You give yourself far too much credit. With your approach you could not possibly convert or persuade me of anything.

I hope you are prepared for the future violence that will follow from such a narrow view of open dialog.

---------- Post added at 03:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:34 PM ----------

Why not address what is obvious about this issue?

---------- Post added at 03:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:36 PM ----------

So, what information do you use from your environment in order to minimize controllable risks?

Once I went to Bingo with my grandmother, I observed my environment and came to one conclusion regarding risk. The next night I went to a Club and came to a different conclusion regarding risk. I used information from my environment, including my observations of people - what do you do? Do you just go through life thinking everything is a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10? Does it make you a bigot if your number goes up to 9 in a certain situation?

---------- Post added at 03:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:45 PM ----------

Yes. If he/she is within my sight and they start acting abnormally, I am going to spot them - and act. Are you suggesting that you won't? Are you saying that you are not going to pay attention? Perhaps I don't understand the question.

first off i apologize for going that far in the post you responded to here, ace.

i do in fact take this particular line of conversation quite personally and sometimes the fact that parallel attitudes have had and continue to have unsettling consequences for people i am personally close to gets the better of me.

plus there's a degree of transferred frustration--i'd like to be able to wave a wand and vaporize what i see as a residual racism that derives from the hysteria that surrounded the "hostage crisis" in iran, so is really an element of the neo-conservative origin mythology, given that it was that hostage crisis and its packaging that i think explains why ronald reagan was elected more than any other single thing. but there seems to be no way of doing that, and sometimes that becomes frustrating and sometimes that frustration gets the better of me. that's what happened here.

when the thread started, it was about juan williams getting fired and the way the paliny ultra-right was trying to frame it as yet another instance of conservative victimization by setting williams up as someone who Stood Up to Political Correctness and Spoke About Reality. which i found funny, really. are you serious? was my initial reaction.

then it got a degree of traction and the positions shifted in the direction of people who support fox news--say---or who support the positions outlined by o-reilly et al, and so who are amenable to the ongoing creation of us/them stuff and the routine verbal abuse of muslims that are of a piece with it now try to defend not what williams said but the worldview that may have allowed for that to be said.

and that's where we are now. i don't see this getting anywhere, either. i think on this the differences in assumptions/viewpoints are simply too basic to allow for any motion.

but (again) this isn't a conversation about juan williams any more. it's about whether it's ok to hold what amount to racist views/bigoted views---or (another way) it's about one's relation to the abstraction "the war on terror" and of that abstraction to the construction of the Enemy that comes with it. folk who are suspicious of it vs. those who aren't. and it seems that once again this lands us back in the strange little world of identity politics.

yes is no up is down slavery is freedom war is peace.

sometimes discussions are like a chess game. you can play them out to the bitter end and end up with a king and a pawn chasing around another king and a pawn. or you can suss out the strategic situation and see from that what's likely to happen. better players will opt out of a game well before the bitter end if the strategic situation makes the outcome uninteresting by making it inevitable. sometimes i think we collectively play threads like 6th graders at chess. i think we'd be well served by working out a better way to end games.

Who said it is o.k.? First, some people are acknowledging fears, including Williams. Some see those fears as irrational and some have yet to come to that conclusion. There has been support of the use of "free speech" to air these issues without being called a bigot or a racist or arrested by the "PC" police. And, I firmly believe an open and honest dialog is important to get beyond irrational fears including the irrational fear of peace loving Muslims.

What part of anything I said infers that I don't adapt to my environment while gauging threat risks? I've never thought about how I gauge threats in my environment, but I think it is based on equal parts of observation of an individual's behavior and instinct. But I sense you are trying to cloud the issue.

The basic question is and let's not forget it:
Do you suspect someone to be more of a threat to you on a plane because they are 'dressed like a Muslim'? I do not. If you do, then fine. But whether you like it or not, you are subscribing to an -ism by basing your fears on who or 'what' a person is rather than how they are behaving. It's a pretty classic definition.

Throughout this thread I read that an irrational fear is unacceptable, I agree, but there is not agreement on how to deal with it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, irrational ignorance is also unacceptable in my view. There is a space where we can acknowledge and understand real threats without being irrational on either end. I can think of many circumstances where it would be reasonable and not be irrational to have fear of Muslims in traditional attire on a plane. Your position does not seem to allow for this.

I am trying to illustrate what is a human response.
I am trying to illustrate the importance of acknowledging fear.
I am trying to illustrate the potential consequences of the pretense of not having fear. On this last point, I grew up in a culture where you would never under any circumstance acknowledge fear. If you did, you risked being ostracized at best or even worse by others. Being an adult and looking back on it, it is clear to see how this culture of "no fear" lead to bad behavior, and poor decisions. Ironically, it usually took one courageous person to say he feared, for others to say, yes, I fear also - this lead to rational behavior. Find a 12 year-old boy who looks you in the eye and says, "I ain't afraid of anything", and you have found an irrational person prone to poor decisions and potential violence. If we could look into the eye of this nation and the response is, "I ain't afraid of anything", we have a problem. If the response is - "I am afraid of....Muslims on a plane" we have a starting point to resolve the problem.

Neither do I. How they are dressed has nothing to do with my fear. My fear is based on a declared war, expressed threats, and past activities. Others may have different fears. If I had a forum to express my biggest concern with the broader Muslim community, I would let them know that I am disappointed by the lack of action within their community to end or help end acts of terrorism in the name of their religion. I often do not feel we are on the same team. That is my biggest fear in this context. Do you have any fears in this context?

Why should random individuals of the muslim faith be held accountable for your epistemic failures, ace?

Look at it this way - most wolves could careless about me, try to avoid me and most likely do me no harm. However, they have the capacity to do me harm and if I don't respect that capacity, I would be a fool. On the other-hand my wife has a friend who has a couple of bishon frises...

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...QFmWtboQF3VlI=

when I visit, I have "no fear".:thumbsup:

Restating your epistemic failure isn't an answer to my question.

Yeah, good question. After the Oklahoma City bombing I don't remember a bunch of people running around freaked out at every thin white guy they saw.

I will state again, if I had a forum to communicate to the general Muslim population my concern primarily is with, in many cases, what I would categorize as passive approval-the end result being the small number of extremists defining the entire population. I thought my example artfully illustrated that.

No doubt there have been many in the fight against terrorist acts carried out in the name of the religion, but then there are these types of reports:



Yemeni students protest parcel bomb arrest

I don't know if the arrest was proper or not, time will tell - but my outrage is targeted to those who made the attempt, not those trying to find out who was involved. Are we on the same team? Do we have the same goals? I don't know, we need a dialog to gain a better understanding in my opinion. Just as some may have an irrational fear of Muslims, there are Muslims who have an irrational fear of us.

---------- Post added at 10:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:08 PM ----------

I did see a nation outraged. I did see a nation seeking swift justice. I did see a nation morn the death of babies. I did see people of all ideologies and faiths denounce the use of violence. It was virtually unanimous. Didn't you see that?
Was there any instance of support for this bombing, anywhere? Even from the most extreme? Can you share a source, if there was one?

Did I ask if the nation wasn't outraged? Did I ask if the nation did not morn? Did I state there was support for this act or the ideologies behind it? Though to be honest there was some support among the militia groups in this country. But that was never my point.


I asked, basically, why weren't "people freaked out at every thin white guy they saw." I mean if you're going to go around supporting profiling why wasn't that profile profiled?

It seems impossible to pin you down to a single opinion on this matter, ace.

To me you say that irrational fears need to be expressed so that they can be dispelled. Now you seem to be rationalizing them.

So your answer to my question is "If only I could tell those muslims to stop letting me think all these tingly things about muslims then I wouldn't have to think all these tingly things about these muslims." Yep, I'm sure all these moderate muslims are just waiting for some random dude from the internet to tell them that he personally doesn't think they've taken a public enough stand against extremism for him to not feel uncomfortable when he sees them dressed all muslim-ey. You should rent one of those planes that spell out messages with smoke. You could have the plane spell out something like "Hey muslims, are we cool?"

As I implied before, your inability to correctly suss out the give and take between cause and effect has nothing to do with muslims. Why should they have to answer for your ignorance of them? Why do you think you understand how muslims feel about islamic extremism? How could you possibly be ignorant of the multitude of muslims who've come out against extremism? Here's a hint: they don't typically end up on Rush.

Who gets the focus of your outrage couldn't be less relevant here. It doesn't matter in the context of this discussion. The fact that you think it does means you've misread me. The fact that you think the situation could be simplified if only you could just sit down and have a dialogue with muslims means you have a fundamental misunderstanding about reality. Really, that doesn't even make sense.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you don't know shit about the situation in Yemen, nor the competence of Yemeni officials or their propensity to arrest someone because they want to appear to be doing something. When one doesn't know shit about a situation, the most advisable course of action is to refrain from comment, lest people assume that you're the type to drone on about things you don't understand.

I attempted to illustrate the difference between what I consider passive approval of an act and the opposite.


There are some circumstance where I would be on guard but I generally don't get "freaked out". After the bombing we did profile, we identified people who fit the profile and they where investigated, monitored and watched.

---------- Post added at 03:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:38 PM ----------

My opinion is that an open and honest dialog will help eliminate irrational fears, including irrational fears of Muslims.

I am saying I have fears. My fears may be irrational. The nature of personal fears is that the individual who has them often does not know.

I can see when another has an irrational fear when it involves something I have intimate experience with, however I do not have intimate experience with the Muslim culture. If I am not allowed to explore the Muslim culture in the context of my fears, I will never know.

I admit my fears, I share my fears and by doing show I open the door for others to help resolve them. Again, using the Iraq war, I remember many exchanges where I would clearly state that I felt Saddam was a threat, before, during and after the war. You can read what the responses were by doing a search. At the end of the day, Bush shared my fears and many others did also. Saddam rather than acting in a manner to minimize those fears he acted in a provocative manner. I see that an opportunity for a peaceful resolution was missed. Was my response to the perceived threat irrational? Was "machismo" the cause of poor decision making? I see these as serious questions, perhaps beyond the scope of a forum like this. But ultimately we can not pretend away the fact that millions in this country have similar fears to the fears expressed by Williams.

---------- Post added at 04:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:56 PM ----------

If they don't care, if you don't care - so be it. You've said it in so many words, perhaps they should rent a plane and spell out that they don't care what I think with smoke. Once that is resolved we can move on to the next step - how is that for a plan?

They are under no obligation.

I don't.

I get mixed messages from them, I see some speaking out against the use of terror, I see many being passive, and I see some celebrate the violence or anti-western sentiment.


Yes, your answer is to silence people like me, ridicule people like me, pretend that you are above anything that can be an irrational fear - I got that.

We disagree on the way problems get solved.

ace, so you're basically arguing that because there are racists whose racism is animated by fear that therefore it's legitimate to be a racist.

so presumably to oppose racism is to discriminate against racists.

which would mean that you are defending the "right" of racists to be racist publicly---because you want to use this "argument" to oppose npr's firing of juan williams.

so then there can be no problem with racism, really. instead, there should be some vague "dialogue" which would somehow "take seriously" the fears of racists and make them "feel better" about the things that prompt their racism. of course since there's neither form nor content to this "dialogue" we can only assume it'd be interminable.

and all that would happen in it really is that the political onus placed by most rational people on racism would be erased, and for it would be substituted some bizarre-o therapeutic regimen designed, presumably, by yourself, with the sole function of enabling you to "argue" that juan williams shouldn't have been fired for expressing what is basically a racist sentiment.

i'm amazed that you insist on this loopy position.

i'm less amazed that you repeatedly dodge the consequences of your own argument, however, because that's clearly how you roll.

and that is why i thought the tea party clip above pertinent here. the "argumentation" mode from the tea partier in it is the same.

Well whatever you did or tried to do you never answered my question... still haven't.

It is not legitimate to be racist.

Racism is a real condition, often caused by some irrational fear - there are other causes but that is not the issue here.

A racist condition can be changed.

An open and honest dialog is the best way to resolve a racist condition.

To the contrary, ridicule, attempt to silence, and pretense make the problem worse.

Why are these points not clear?

You are getting to the point of being absurd, because you know what my point is but you insist on putting effort into trying to mock my points. I consider this silliness. At some point I will most likely respond in-kind. Is this your goal?

I was a young child when Malcom X was murdered. I have read his biography and many of his speeches. The man evolved in a manner for the world to see. At one point he was a racist. Before his death he was not. We benefited from his public evolution - so yes, I defend the "right" of a racist to be racist publicly. And as my grandmother told me - it is always better when racists are openly racist rather than having people be undercover racists. I stated the Williams termination is not the issue.

Isn't easier just to read what I write? How much effort does it take for you to go through one of these exercises. Pure silliness.

i go through the exercise ace because your "arguments" are ridiculous.
and you simply refuse to admit problems with your positions.
in this case, it's funny because you're whining about "wanting a dialogue" while seeming to be yourself entirely incapable of carrying on a dialogue.

this happens over and over. you might think about it.

clarification: when i use the word "legitimate" i don't mean "good" in the sense of "yay racism." what i mean is that there's something worth taking seriously that shapes racist positions. i reject the idea that there is anything worth taking seriously about racism. i like hate crime legislation in the european style to address racist speech.

As a child I watched a cartoon called Casper the Friendly Ghost. Casper was a ghost who carried the baggage of ghosts being scary. As the title suggests Casper was a friendly ghost and meant no one any harm. He often befriended a character who carried no irrational fear of ghosts. His sort-term friendships often got interrupted when another character with an irrational fear would "freak-out". Casper had three uncles who often used Capser's attempts to befriend people to scare the sh*t out of those people for fun. Casper ahd a responsibility to deal with his plight, and he did the best he could, but he understood that he had a responsibility.

---------- Post added at 05:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:41 PM ----------

An open and honest dialog can help end irrational fear. In your mind that is ridiculous.

People having irrational fears. In your mind that is ridiculous.

A person may possibly not know that their fear is irrational. In your mind that is ridiculous.

People in this country have a irrational fear of Muslim. In your mind that is ridiculous.

Etc.

Etc.


O.k., I understand your position. We disagree. Now what?

---------- Post added at 05:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:45 PM ----------

In my opinion your approach fails.


Make it illegal and that will stop it???Make racism illegal and people will stop being racists???Make it illegal for people to say something that may be racist and that will stop racist comments? Make irrational fear illegal, and people will stop having irrational fear? Is this your line of thought on this subject?

1000 words

Does this mean you agree with me, as should everyone else?

...

One major flaw in your plan, Ace, is that it is predicated on the assumption that people (maybe even most people) don't know when their fears are irrational. From my experience people know damn good and well when they have racist views and they keep them willingly because they find them gratifying. Perhaps it gives them a false sense of control over their environment...free from being at the mercy of random, unforeseeable circumstances. But you see people hang onto these assumptions beyond all reason and in the face of overwhelming evidence against them. It is deliberate. I don't think you can 'educate' these people away from their prejudices. They like having them.

I haven't given a lot of thought to hate speech legislation before, but one immediate benefit that comes to mind would be that it sets a very clear and definitive standard for American public dialogue, esp. on the airwaves. It will not, of course, stop people from believing what ever stupid shit they want to believe, but it will prevent them from going on the air and trying to influence others with their poisonous talk. I have no problem whatsoever with America having a standard that says, this is what America is about when it comes to hate. They learned a good lesson on this subject in Rwanda.

MM -

Yes, but the only speech that needs protection is the speech that is difficult to hear. We as a society can reject abhorent speech, and we do all the time. When we allow the government to define it and control it, we will invariably slide that line until true freedom of speech is eliminated.

Instead, we must use those same public air waves to adamantly object to the hateful speech and expose the author for the bigot he is. I think that is what is happening with Williams, although there hasn't been any real penalty other than a career change.