No planes were involved in 9/11 (not a 9/11 thread...)

Some HERE on DU believe that. Go visit the dungeon.

So if someone comes to our site, sees such claims, is it fair/right/accurate if they go elsewhere and say "People on the left, and especially on DU, believe that there were no planes that crashed on 9/11"?

I keep seeing posts that the guy who did the shooting at the Holocaust Museum was a 'freeper' and posted on FR because some poster - 1 so far out of all the posts there over the years that I have seen mentioned here - used a link to something the shooter said. Something related more to Obama than anything else.

I am sorry, this just does not seem like critical thinking and analysis, something for which I value many here on DU for. It seems like knee jerk reactions and an attempt to make something out of nothing at all.

Do folks there foster hate - yes. Do they use broad brushes to paint whole groups, yes (and we...well we would NEVER do that. Especially when it came to Catholics, gun owners, smokers, etc and so on).

Yeah - we post all love and openness here, never posting anything that might be construed as hate towards a group we don't agree with or like. We have our own Israel/Palestine group where charges of antisemitism are never leveled.

----I am tired of blaming groups for the acts of INDIVIDUALS who do something. It excuses people and removes them from their responsibility and moves it onto someone else. Maybe because we don't really want to address the small problems that lead to bigger ones, maybe we just want there to be a simple solution (if we could just make a law where people could not say X we would not have Y).

In the end, we wind up believing that YOU and ME are so intellectually lacking that we cannot think for ourselves. Shut up people who say things that might lead us to kill others - because if someone says the right things we will just snap and go off.

Blame the freepers. Blame the muslims. Blame religion. Blame TV. Blame guns. Keep making new items to blame.

6 Billion people in the world of all faiths, political ideals, etc.

And it is the few who cause problems.

Go ahead and buy the line that there is something we can pin the blame on - or, go ahead and try to thank god for the good things that go on - either way you end up believing in something invisible, a simple construct of words and ideas.

A human being shot another one today. Millions others who believed similar to that person did not.

Either mental illness caused the issue or the ideals he held.

And if was the ideals, why didn't all the others who hold that ideal do the same?

"Either mental illness caused the issue or the ideals he held.

And if was the ideals, why didn't all the others who hold that ideal do the same?"


Frankly... because they didn't have the balls to do it.


Read the posts following Tiller's murder. Many of them were of the "I wish I would've had the courage to do it" variety.

I was beginning to wonder when people on here would start making sense again.

disgusting harmful comment to do it. You do not know how many are out there. Those people think they lost America and have nothing to lose and here comes some right wing idiot touting the garbage out there that is absolutely inciting violence.

But there is a point to be made, that if someone read one of his comments and did not say that it was wrong, they in the least would fit into the idea.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

So there even could be some question of did people stand up against hateful violent comments.

you asked
why didn't all the others who hold that ideal do the same

There are two reasons why many people do not do things that are illegal, some think it is immoral, some think they will get in trouble for it.

In an obvious case of violence against people, most people would think it is wrong. But there are some in the crazy group that do not see that. Just like Bush and Cheney did not see the breaking the laws against the use of torture as wrong.

For the group that can not see the wrongness of violence, the community at FR should make it clear that such action is wrong, and is not tolerated. If that is not done, some wonder about FR responsibility for actions of violence committed by its members.

All due respect, but murders and beatings of GLBT people are common place in the US. And I see very few on the liberal side who 'stand up against' that. In fact what I usually hear here is rationalizations and dismissals of the Phelps crowd. Reasons why GLBT people should not be equal are common to read on DU, they often mention 'God' by which they mean their own neurosis, just as the right wingers do.

And yes that includes of coarse the GLBT community. In my belief, all things should be treated with kindness, not judgement or anger. Of coarse I don't always live up to that standard, it goes with not being perfect.

But if I see someone, including someone in GLBT of coarse, treated wrongly, or being treated with meanness, I would hope I would stand up against meanness and violence.

And that is in part because of what I believe, Love your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. I do find it unfortunate that many people in many communities feel that people of faith treat them badly. Don't know what I can do about others actions though. Those are their choices, but hey, I can always say I love ya. :loveya: if there is something else that could be done with kindness and love, let me know.

I understand many people believe belief in God is a neurosis, many people also believe being gay is evil, many people even believe that if you are not in the same religion, then you are evil, some even think all religious people are crazy, not much I can do about what people choose to think, but I can choose what I think, so again.

God Bless, and :loveya: :)

Critical thinking not so much because employing the broad brush is easier. Kind of the same thing as freepers, but from the other side.

People just don't get that we are doing exactly the same thing the radical right is doing.



We justify it by saying that "we are on the right side". But at some point, these baseless attacks break down what makes us correct and we will become no better than the ones we attack so often.

Some completely lack any rational consistent thought ie murder of people we like is terrorism; murder of those we disagree with may be a crime and is an isolated incident or mental illness. No one on DU feels sorry for the murderer of the doctor nor should they but the guy who murdered the recruiter isn't innocent because he disagree with the Iraq War. Both people are murderers who practiced acts of terrorism on innocent victims.

Hmm but we must guard very vigilantly against bogus equivalency arguments with regards to what is considered 'extreme.'

As though our "extremists" are every bit as homocidal and dangerous. But wait, we let the media decide who a liberal extremist is... so we the right leaning corporate media is allowed to write off Greenpeace by cancelling them out with Eric Rudolph. Code pink gets written off as the liberal equivalent of 'the minutemen.'

I mean there is a difference here isn't there?

accuracy in posting is always important.

Well said.

Sid

It's an allowed (Strawman) 9/11 thread...

the false equivalencies.

as writing post after post about how you're going to hunt down and murder liberals, abortion doctors, Muslims, Jews, blacks, President Obama, Michael Moore, and anyone else who you deem evil. Isn't it?

guy who drives around in a bumper sticker covered truck with guns in the rack. Some fucking bushbot who can't frame a single clear thought. All repubs are such retards. ALL OF THEM. And you, you moran.

Thank you. I think the same almost every time I land here. So much judgment, so much hate, actually. So much bigotry and self-righteousness, though not me, of course ;-).

I do love DU.

There's also lots of great information and thinking. Many of us, I think, weed through the posts to find ones that are substantive, at least from our own points of view.

I may have laid it on a bit thick, but I do believe the way right wing, Christian republicans are attacked as one big group on DU can be every bit as bigoted as how they speak of us as one big group, which we most certainly are not!

During the election I referred many people to DU and most later commented on the language and the depiction of all republicans as idiot tools.

Now lets all be moderate-centrists and try to placate the right wing as much as possible.

Seriously how about a bit more substance and lot less concern-troll fluff.

More than one person or group can share the blame -- and more than one person or group can bear responsibility (responsibility and blame are not the same thing, although related).

There are crazies out there. There are violent people. They are to blame for their actions.

However, there are groups and individuals who egg them on. There are people, who should know better, who capitalize on the crazy beliefs and behavior of the individual who acts. And, they too bear some of the responsibility and some of the blame. Had these people -- who know better -- acted as some kind of a brake, perhaps the crazy individual might not have acted.

There is this insane belief floating around that Obama was not born as a US citizen. There are a handful of people who ordinarily would believe that. If you had a media that took the position that this was nonsense, it wouldn't make the crazies go away, but it would marginalize them. However, when you have a media that flogs that issue day and night -- relentlessly -- it not only validates the beliefs of the crazy person, but instills in them the megalomaniacal notion that if they act they can save the country.

So, I reject your notion that this was the act of one person and one person only and no one else bears any responsibility. That's just not how it works.

There are thousands - THOUSANDS - out there with his mindset that, given the actual cajones or the correct Limbaugh program being aired will go maim or kill a Jew, an immigrant, a gay, a person of color.

who chooses to belong to that group. There aren't any good, decent Klansmen or Nazi skinheads as far as I'm concerned. And when one of them intimidates, injures or murders someone because of the beliefs that were molded by their respective groups, I do blame the group as a whole (although the person who actually pulled the trigger gets a special place in hell in my book).

And Free Republic is starting down that road. There are plenty of conservatives that just aren't informed/aware/educated/involved/evolved enough to fully understand why they are so misguided in their beliefs. But those aren't the people that join Free Republic. Freepers are the rabid ones, the ones who are involved and are taking the time to discuss their hatred at length, listen to Rush or watch Fox News for hours, etc. If one of them is imbalanced already and takes all the hatespeech a step further to commit violence, I certainly can understand why the group as a whole bears some responsibility for whipping that person up into a frenzy.

To me that's what separates it from the idea of "blaming Muslims" or "blaming TV". Blaming Muslims for the acts of a few lumps everyone from the most humble, devout Muslim grandmother to Osama bin Laden together. Blaming TV disregards the fact that people (especially parents) have tons of programming choices that are educational, fun, benign, etc, along with the choice to turn it off. I don't blame each and every conservative out there for the acts of a few, but a conservative group that allows and encourages hate speech and violent diatribes is a different story. Having wacky conspiracy theories about 9/11 just doesn't compare to the kind of violent, hateful crap that is allowed to stand at FR every day, or is only removed when the member actually follows through on his threats.

Democrats get no credit, but only Pelosi? If one individual from a street gang like Bloods or Crips or Hell's Angels does something illegal it in no way reflects upon the gang? I don't buy your argument in the whole although to a small degree I do agree with you in that often too wide a brush is used in placing blame or guilt, some of the example you listed for instance.