Fighting The Fourth Reich

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-26-2017, 01:05 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: When a label fits, it is used. The NRA leaders are insane. You exaggerate as usual and claim I call anyone who disagrees with me on gun policy "insane." No, I called the NRA insane. The Nazis were insane, The Islamic State is insane, and the current NRA leaders belong in that category. And no, you can't change my mind on that. Don't even try (and you keep trying by comparing me to nitwits like kinser).

Well, to start with, both you and Kinser are extreme partisans.  You need to be compared.  To me, 'nitwit' is compatible with 'stupid'.  You're just proving my point.

I also see the old Nazi and current day ISIS as going more extreme tribal thinking.  If someone isn’t of one’s tribe, sure, throw them in a gas chamber, or commit an atrocity against them or perhaps two.  That, alas, is not insanity, a dysfunction, a taking of someone outside of his culture and peer group.  It’s part of the picture.  Many individuals or even whole cultures will behave abnormally according to the standards of a culture they don’t belong to.  ISIS has seen much of the worst of western civilization, and has come to fight wars by atrocity, by trying to make war so horrible that the other side will back down.  This seems their only option, so they take it.  They go all out with a form of ‘religious’ values.  Will I endorse these values?  No.  Hardly.  To me and many they are anathema.  Insane?  No.  They function quite well within their culture.  When a foreign power loads up with guns and explosives and wades into a region with intent to do culture shifting nation building, you had best understand the culture you are wading into.  Why do they hate you?  Why do they distrust what you are proclaiming about your values?  You should not just dismiss it with words like 'insane'.  You should not claim they are not of your tribe so you don't care.  You should make a genuine effort to understand.

The Nazi or jihadist notion of tribal morality is much more extreme than Kinser’s.  Oh, she’s not of my tribe.  Into the gas chamber.  I still don’t like tribal morality.  I feel it’s a step in the wrong direction, whether it’s Hitler’s degree or Kinser’s.  I do approve that Whig progress generally has moved western culture in the other direction.

The NRA?  That a rural culture. With professional police far away one wanting personal protection is understandable.  If you grew up with the founding father's ideals of rights, where they are heading is quite understandable.  Well, understandable to most.  To a partisan extremest with contradicting views, some will start throwing out worlds like ‘insane’.  No.  Again, the NRA leadership are perfectly rational citizens, acting quite functionally within their culture.  I see no reason to start throwing people into asylums.

It’s the extreme partisan wishing to protect a narrow way of looking at things by rejecting opposing thought that’s the problem.

And you aren’t likely to change my mind on that.