no. 487

"A good friend posted this to his site today. naylandblake.net
This has to be the one of the most reasoned explanations I've read on this massacre.

What to say after Pulse

June 14, 2016
This is what I have to say post the Pulse massacre.

The problem is not that this man was a demon, an outsider, some sort of outlier on the continuum of human American experience. This man was a citizen of this country. He was what is held up as the norm: young, religious, husband, father.

The problems are the systems that surrounded this man, that taught him that the normal reaction to seeing people different from himself was disgust.
The systems that taught him that his disgust was normal.
The systems that taught him to rationalize his disgust as an expression of faith. The systems that cloaked that rationalization in a rhetoric of nobility.
The economic systems that allowed him to weaponize that disgust, to turn that disgust into bullets and mutilation. At every step he made decisions that he is responsible for, but at every step those decisions were made easier by hundreds of other people whose words and actions told him : Yes, you are right to be disgusted, and the righteous way to deal with your disgust is to deal death to people you don’t know and to crow about it. Here is a gun that lets you do that, here is a system that will laud you for doing that.

When politicians pray after these things, pray after killing bill after bill that would break these systems, pray after taking money from people whose incomes come from making it easy for these men to spray death, I can only think that they are praying that people don’t connect the dots, that people don’t try to say to them, you continue to teach people that their disgust is normal, that their violence is normal and right and good, that their deadly actions are normal.
They are praying that people don’t wake up to the fact that you have said to all of those families and lovers of the people who died at Pulse that you would rather have your gun today than to have any of those victims still alive.

The killer was merely the agent of your contempt. When you put your righteousness above those lives, when you put your gun above those lives, you make a sham of the Constitution and the country and the god you claim to serve and revere.

The problem is not that the killer is beyond the pale: The problem is that the killer was an apt pupil for all the teaching that you left for him and which you are still maintaining today." 




Bric 1101 commenting at The Rant

no. 486

as Will and Ariel Durant wrote in The Story of Civilization:

"…the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.” 

no. 485

"I hate my job!"
"There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY. We meet at the bar."

From the Drew Carey Show.

no. 484

"As for the election, it's sometimes about winning, and sometimes it's about losing as little as possible."

Kaleberg commenting at ginandtacos

no. 483

"He who wants a rose must respect the thorn."

Persian Proverb

no. 482

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

G. B. Shaw 

no. 481

"Boy, if I didn't want to regret, I wouldn't volunteer to be in charge of kids."

Daven in Something Positive

no. 480

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

John Galbraith (1908 - 2006)



Pretty sure I've posted this before, but it's a good one, so...

no. 479

"Every conviction of error is a violence done to the mind, inasmuch as the forcible eradication of a prejudice must be attended with a painful sensation. The blind man is happy in his blindness, and the ignorant content with his ignorance. The wisest of men has somewhere told us that the increase of wisdom is the increase of sorrow."

- Francis Hopkinson

no. 478

"Today is the sort of day where the Sun only comes up to humiliate you."

- Chuck Palahniuk

no. 477

TAKEN FROM "HOW TO BE MAN" WRITTEN BY KAJIWARA IKKI SOMETIME DURING THE 60'S:

Rule. 1
Never create superficial work.
Pour your blood into the ink.

Rule. 2
Never chase after popularity, which is transcient as a flower.
Dig deep in the earth and pull down the roots.

Rule. 3
No matter how much status you attain, you must never have regrets.
If the choice is between peace and the storm, choose the storm.

Rule. 4
If you should fail, never cry.
Study your failure and let it give birth to succcess.

Rule. 5
Even if you obey the previous rules, never think you alone are right.
Learn from everything and everyone around you.


A well known shonen author, the reference can be found in Bakuman manga chapter 5 page 16-17

no. 476

"Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue." 

François de La Rochefoucauld

no. 475

"Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." 

Jacob Bronowski

no. 474

"the truth is like poetry, and most people fucking hate poetry"

Unknown

no. 473

"* In the chit-chat of the checkup, as I lay back in the chair with the suction tube in my mouth, he asked: “What are you majoring in at college?” When I replied that I was majoring in philosophy, he said: “What are you going to do with that?” 
“Think,” I replied."

By David Silbersweig, in The Washington Post, December 24, 2015

no. 472

"it quickly becomes clear that your party is so focused on born again Christians that you have forgotten those of us who were born once and got it right the first time."

Helen @ "Margaret and Helen" talking about the Republican Party

no. 471

"The mouth is the basis for calamity" 

Japanese saying

no. 470

"The GOP is so lacking in anything like a legitimate moral center that the most immoral asshole in the room is going to be your standard bearer. Congratulations on nearly eight years of delegitimizing the presidency and several decades of saying that government itself is bad. You've finally gotten your perfect candidate."

The Rude Pundit, "Note to Republican Voters Post-New Hampshire: Are You Really This Dumb?", Feb 10, 2016

Make that, "perfect president".

no. 469

"Oh, he had been rascally drunk occasionally, but while it had looked a good idea at the time, it never looked quite the same later on when you woke up"

Terry Pratchett in "Dodger"

no. 468

"This is good for a man because responsibilities are the anvil on which a man is forged."

Terry Pratchett in "Dodger"