02-26-2017, 05:24 AM
I make comments about the ultimate fate (likely eternal damnation) of an unrepentant terrorist and we go off into a discussion of religion. The view that one of the delights of Heaven is ringside seats to see the torments of the Damned suggests something that would get very old very fast. If people do evil because of an organic disease for which they are partially (syphilis) culpable or are innocent (head injuries, congenital disorders), isn't a cure of such a disorder a solution What of parental abuse and neglect? Or exposure to environmental toxins?
Brainwashing is real. Racist causes like the Klan and Nazi cults may not be as sophisticated at brainwashing people as are the Unification Church or Scientology, but they are onto something. They offer some Ultimate Truth that can make a pathetic loser feel like a winner, that Jews are evil and that blacks are subhuman. Dylann Roof confronted people who had a more genuine truth, one that could have forced him to confront his own flaws of thought.
There are at least two very different worlds in the South. One is of white racists as oppressors and agents of oppression of blacks. People in that tradition are proud to be white, even if they have nothing else of which to be proud. Maybe it is because they have nothing worthy of wholesome pride, they seek an unwholesome pride -- pride in being white. (OK, I am proud of my ability to string together words into sentences and sentences into meaningful paragraphs. I am proud to have latched onto the wholesome part of my German heritage -- especially great German music -- while steering clear of antisemitism. Given a choice between Nazism and Judaism I would pick Judaism because I could keep my culture and my moral values. Can a Jew love Bach and hate Hitler? So can I!)
The other Southern heritage of the South is the black church, ordinarily a haven from the worst barbarity that white racists can do. The black church has been a place in which blacks have been able to exercise intellectual powers to resist oppression and to hone opposition to the likes of Theodore Bilbo and Bull Connor in their days and some pathetic losers like Dylann Roof in our time. In rare events white racists have violated the haven of the black church, as with the bombing of the Eighth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in the 1960s or with the outrage that Dylann Roof committed.
Sure, there are white Southerners like Jimmy Carter whose family may have profited from white supremacy in the past but have accepted the morality of the Southern black church as something to incorporate. Of course I congratulate them. But Dylann Roof latched onto a very sick culture and chose to infiltrate a healthy one -- with a firearm and ammunition.
Brainwashing is real. Racist causes like the Klan and Nazi cults may not be as sophisticated at brainwashing people as are the Unification Church or Scientology, but they are onto something. They offer some Ultimate Truth that can make a pathetic loser feel like a winner, that Jews are evil and that blacks are subhuman. Dylann Roof confronted people who had a more genuine truth, one that could have forced him to confront his own flaws of thought.
There are at least two very different worlds in the South. One is of white racists as oppressors and agents of oppression of blacks. People in that tradition are proud to be white, even if they have nothing else of which to be proud. Maybe it is because they have nothing worthy of wholesome pride, they seek an unwholesome pride -- pride in being white. (OK, I am proud of my ability to string together words into sentences and sentences into meaningful paragraphs. I am proud to have latched onto the wholesome part of my German heritage -- especially great German music -- while steering clear of antisemitism. Given a choice between Nazism and Judaism I would pick Judaism because I could keep my culture and my moral values. Can a Jew love Bach and hate Hitler? So can I!)
The other Southern heritage of the South is the black church, ordinarily a haven from the worst barbarity that white racists can do. The black church has been a place in which blacks have been able to exercise intellectual powers to resist oppression and to hone opposition to the likes of Theodore Bilbo and Bull Connor in their days and some pathetic losers like Dylann Roof in our time. In rare events white racists have violated the haven of the black church, as with the bombing of the Eighth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in the 1960s or with the outrage that Dylann Roof committed.
Sure, there are white Southerners like Jimmy Carter whose family may have profited from white supremacy in the past but have accepted the morality of the Southern black church as something to incorporate. Of course I congratulate them. But Dylann Roof latched onto a very sick culture and chose to infiltrate a healthy one -- with a firearm and ammunition.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.