People of the Flame
Lee Smith at Tablet Magazine examines the militancy within idealism; the paradoxical desire for conflict among those who profess peace and the hidden desire for conquest among those who outwardly advocate brotherly love. There was and still is a tourist industry for those who seek to extinguish themselves in a world of absolutes they no longer find at home. One of the best known recent examples of a modern militant idealist is Rachel Corrie.
Working as an activist with the International Solidarity Movement, the then-23-year-old college student from Washington state was killed when she stood in the path of an Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer to protest against Palestinian home demolitions….
Groups like the International Solidarity Movement, then, act as a sort of tour agency for a particular kind of Western adventurer, searching for a level of raw political engagement and ideological commitment that simply doesn’t exist in the United States …
One way to understand Corrie’s story is as part of a longstanding tradition of adventurous, generous, and sometimes vain Western travelers to the Middle East. Among these crusading spirits, the most famous example is perhaps T.E. Lawrence, who saw in the band of Arab tribesmen and former Ottoman officers he led against the Turks an opportunity to serve the underdog and tie himself to a larger cause. Along the way it appears that Lawrence, embracing local customs and dress, recognized that the Arab Revolt also offered him a staging ground for a kind of charismatic search for the authentic self that had the flavor of salvation.
Smith believes Corrie’s hostility to Israel — and America — cannot be explained by simple anti-Semitism or reflexive anti-Americanism. There was about her a search for the arid extremities of experience, something she shared with many disaffected intellectuals in the West, who behave as if having abolished God from their existence they were bent on finding a substitute in people like Hassan Nasrallah.
I’ve written before about why so many Western intellectuals and journalists are attracted to the region’s hardest and bloodiest men—why the peace activists, NGO workers, and U.N. employees fill the bars of Beirut and Jerusalem where they advocate the positions of Hezbollah and Hamas over beer. It’s not enough, or even entirely accurate, to say that they’re anti-Israel, or anti-Semitic, since their positions also put them at odds with those segments of Arab societies that seek to embrace Western political norms.
Their complaint is precisely with their own liberal societies, which, from a safe distance, look dull and meaningless in comparison to the raw power politics of the region. These Westerners are bored of the mediocrity that Western societies breed. The Middle East, by contrast, is a place where winner takes all, enemies are vanquished, and people fight and die for their beliefs. Hassan Nasrallah fought the Israelis and lives to taunt them. Khaled Meshaal survived an assassination attempt. These men pay no attention to lobbies and competing constituencies but legislate by utterance, blood, and fire.
GK Chesteron thought that “when men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” Maybe he should have taken it further: when people no longer find it exciting to believe in Jesus, then there’s Xenu, Gaia and Hassan Nasrallah.
The attraction for the absolute was palpable in some pre-1914 intellectuals. They were bored with the certainties of order. They too mourned, though they professed to scoff, at the loss of faith but sought its replacement. They needed something to fill the emptiness expressed by Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
And what better source of excitement than the Great War? Unable to endure the ennui they sought fulfillment before strange gods — even the god of the incandescent and bloody combat. Rupert Brooke, who died of an infected mosquito bite in British service before the serious fighting had begun wrote these verses in October 1914. He expressed a kind of relief that war had come at last to bring high purpose to a world gone cold.
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
Brooke’s was the voice of a peacetime generation that had not yet had a bellyful of war. That was to change by 1916. Then they couldn’t get away from it fast enough. But this transitory exaltation might have been the state of Rachel Corrie’s thinking just before the Caterpillar D9 trundled over her.
Would she have been as enthusiastic if she had to live out the rest of her life in the squalor of the Arab world? Or was there in it something of the sense of transitory adventure that comes with knowing you can go back to 3 squares in a heated house? Who can say?
The difference between the two conditions was exemplified by Father Damien, who volunteered to work in the leper colony at Molokai at a time when the disease was incurable. He began each sermon with the words “dear bretheren” until the inevitable day when he started with the words “we lepers”. If you didn’t believe his sermons before, you would at least credit them with sincerity afterwards.
Sincerity requires the willingness to share in consequences. Perhaps one of the reasons that “supporters of Israel” can play so fast and loose with the security of the Jewish State lies in the existence of the Atlantic Ocean and the US Armed Forces; the belief that nothing really bad can happen to them by bending over backward for Israel’s enemies. Senator Chuck Schumer illustrated this vacillating attitude of support in a recent interview on television. Asked whether the administration regarded Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he said in effect: “I don’t know but why ask?”
Yeah, why ask? What difference could it make? Debbie Wasserman-Schultz saw nothing inconsistent with lying for Palestine and being a staunch supporter of Israel. This may spring from the belief that it is in the long-term interest of Israel to be weaker so that it might be loved by its enemies. If you have to lie, so what? It’s just an innocent fib in a good cause.
It’s an attitude that requires a degree of detachment. You can’t be detached in Israel, with Quassam rockets raining down on your head. Barry Rubin notes that the current Democratic platform on Israel is one gigantic fraud. It is professes support for Israel when it in fact accomplishes the opposite. He writes:
For me, the most offensive passage is this one:
The President’s consistent support for Israel’s right to defend itself and his steadfast opposition to any attempt to delegitimize Israel on the world stage are further evidence of our enduring commitment to Israel’s security.
In fact, no president has done less about fighting the delegitimization of Israel by his own statements and actions than has Obama. And in some cases, especially regarding Gaza, he has not really supported Israel’s right to defend itself in practice. I will leave the Iran issue and U.S. behavior in the UN for your own evaluation regarding this point, but one could compile a long list of items in each case.
And we are back once again at the very place where Lee Smith begin. Asking ourselves why people who love humanity, who profess nonviolence and who yearn publicly for peace are in practice to be found siding with the worst murderers and thugs on the planet. Smith’s answer is that peace, humanity and love are in practice quite boring. As boring as doing a job day after day to build the world, support the kids and raise a family. What they want is stronger stuff. The thrill of victory, though not the agony of defeat. The ethos was captured perfectly in the fictional dialog between Batman and his butler, Alfred. The for some the world wasn’t about love, or even logic. It was about getting a buzz.
Bruce Wayne: Criminals aren’t complicated, Alfred. Just have to figure out what he’s after.
Alfred Pennyworth: With respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man that *you* don’t fully understand, either. A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.
Bruce Wayne: So why steal them?
Alfred Pennyworth: Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
The flames are so beautiful and besides, they’ll never reach me! And perhaps that’s modern spirituality for you.
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“Asking ourselves why people who love humanity, who profess nonviolence and who yearn publicly for peace are in practice to be found siding with the worst murderers and thugs on the planet.”
Perhaps it’s because they can’t think worth a damn.
The violence of the lambs. Maybe it will be decided the world is more interesting with Israelis in it.
Not only was there no ‘Rachel Corrie’, I doubt Israel has ever bulldozed one single home. The fable alone has almost the same effect, with lots of fringe benefits for the media to cash in on. People who care too much are having their time wasted worrying about nothing… perhaps deservedly, and by design.
Maybe he should have taken it further: when people no longer find it exciting to believe in Jesus, then there’s Xenu, Gaia and Hassan Nasrallah.
As a protestant Baha’i, I am deeply offended. Kabbalic Buddhatology respects each of those gods and more.
…in British service before the serious fighting…
Boredom? May be. It can be traced to many of pre-revolutionary intelligentsia in Russia, and to Shah educated intelligentsia in Iran. They are bored with existing society, and have a burning desire to change it “for the better”. Some of them perish in the revolutions they fomented, some end up in Gulags, or in prison. But humanity like a clockwork produces new generation of hyperactive idiots. I do not mind (actually salute) their self destruction. Unfortunately they destroy much more than that.
Is it wrong of me to think it is funny that someone that is not disabled stands in front of a D-9 going .0001 MPH until it runs over her? I guess she died for her belief that the driver would stop, and that is funny.
Do they wish to live the certainty of the fanatic vicariously? It seems to be a complementary hue to the vacillating analysis of the soft-headed of the species.
Maybe they want to see the world in Black and White.
I thought we were done with ‘crunchy’ Corrie. I got tossed off DU for offering to drive the bulldozer if there were any volunteers to emulate her.
Imagine that! Crunchy has to be the all time winner in the epic fail category.
Only 2 more shower days left at Penn state.
ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER COUNTRY
He was young, and lost, and unafraid of death, or so he said. Dirty, bearded, he stopped in for a drink, and I engaged him in conversation. When I asked why he fought for so unsavory a cause, he said
I have a life that’s mine to give
To do with as I please
From dust I came, to dust return
I’m but winemaker’s lees
So saying thus he turned to go
His ideals brave and strong
To die for causes he held dear
Yet could this man be wrong?
There’s more to life than wine made lees
I said in quiet way
And not from dust have you appeared
As some would perhaps say
So now it’s God, he scoffed, amused
He’s long been dead and gone
I live my life till it is done
There is no second dawn
But what, I said, if it is true
That you and I have souls
And God is there for you to find
To show you men have roles
Beyond the empty daily strife
You find so dull and drear
He’s here, in flesh, if you but see
He speaks, if you but hear
A shadow world, he scoffed again
Sharp tales for boys and girls
A mix of fables brought to froth
A drink of bubbled swirls
He turned and left, I watched him go
A man borne on the tide
But we shall meet again one day
Upon the other side
Rachael stood int the path of tunnel exit closure operations — tunnels which crossed into Gaza and opened up underneath various homes — Luftkamp 13 style.
Beyond that, the IDF resolved to scrape a clear zone at the border.
Subsequently, no end of tunnels have been attempted by Hamas.
Countering operations have been so successful that Hamas has attempted a boat lift solution.
Ahhhh, “People of the Flame”. Pyromaniacs busily watching the old world burn while hosing gasoline on the fire in hopes that the conflagration will warm souls they don’t even believe exist.
…Reminds me that the original Fabian Society coat of arms depicted a pitch black empty-eyed wolf marching upright -like a werewolf- wrapped in the dead body of a sheep (or is it the Lamb?) as said goose-stepping werewolf in sheep’s clothing waves the Fabian banner emblazoned with the letters F.S.. They eventually changed their crest to one showing a slightly less obvious angry tortoise striking out (at nothing) with the caption; “When I Strike, I Strike Hard”.
Then there’s The Fabian Window. A stained glass work designed and commissioned by George Bernard Shaw, and rich with Fabian symbolism that one can see progressive folk acting upon even today.
The bastard children of elite devil spawn are always the same once you scratch past their various benevolent philosopher-king facades.
I get my meaning and values from God. I do not need to “find myself”. I do not need to find some cause to give my life meaning. I do not need to find something to fill the emptiness inside. I seek not the excitement and affirmation of the cause. Nor do I seek vices to numb the pain of the emptiness inside. These others embrace not God, so they go to seek some false god in His place.
“I am the Lord, thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
The punishment for this comes not on some far-off Judgment Day. It comes in this life. God’s punishments are built into us. Rachel Corrie died for violating the 1st Commandment, for pursuing some false god. She lived and died in that emptiness. The wages of sin.
Nobel prizewinner VS Naipul portrayed such people perfectly in THE BLACK POWER KILLINGS IN TRINIDAD:
“those who continue to simplify the world and reduce other men… to a cause, the people who substitute doctrine for knowledge and irritation for concern, the revolutionaries who visits centers of revolution with return air tickets, the hippies, the people who wish themselves on societies more fragile than their own, all those people who in the end do no more than celebrate their own security.”
Well, I’m with Alfred, basically, you can analyze this to a fare-thee-well, but it’s just a grab-bag of pathologies. More fun taxonomizing beetles.
The human beast – and evolutionary beasts in general – have this urge to diversity, which is often enough going to turn to an urge to perversity, or simply run off the rails entirely. Doesn’t nearly every kid need to rebel against their parents? Isn’t every rock band forced by convention, to be unconventional? Much more cannot be said without serious risk of overgeneralization. “Nucking futz” covers most of it. Regarding Israel, long traditions of anti-semitism and any opportunity to create new views of someone as scapegoat and other, are always there. US and western blindness, cowardice, and appeasement of the Palestinians, after all these years and events, is getting to be one for the books – while noting a strong and continuous element of these in Israel as well, and that is getting to be another one for the books.
Assuming anyone wants to write new books, or read them.
And the final one for the books is the EXTREME pathology of this Democratic campaign, which I have already noted and long remembered, is the ultimate perversion of Lakoffian linguistics, a constant cascade of lies so thick and fast you cannot refute one without eleven others being asserted to cover, and time (and patience) entirely insufficient to sort them *all* out. Compared to this, Goebbels was a piker.
Psychologists would call it a word salad, but it’s a keyword-rich word salad, and y’know what it is, is a “Google” campaign, just a pile of focus-group approved keywords hung together without further concerns for rationality, truth, coherence, correspondence, necessity or possibility. Google works magically well on just such mapped associations. I guess word salad is the hyper-modern approach after all. It made Google rich, maybe it will make Obambus emperor.
We have professional psychiatrists in the BC who can comment on this. The attraction to the men of violence strikes me as a sexual dysfunction. Was Corrie associated with any episodes of sado-masochism? The prevalance of homosexuals in such movements is well documented. T.E. Lawrence prefered the arab in flowing robes to the jew in a cheap suit.
Check this out. On Topic if you dim the light and squint a little;
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/obamas-popularity-dips-underwater-for-romney-a-faint-favorability-bounce/
A poll by ABC/Wapo that showed Obama cratering after 2 days of the convention. Anyway the site has crashed. Grab your tin foil hats and strap them down tight.
Has the MSM decided to follow Newsweak? Who crashed the poll site? You know it wasn’t conservatives. Who will be next? CNN? Surly not BSNBC. Has ANY Presidential campaign ever cratered in the middle of the convention? Hot Dog! This will be fun.
Should we start a poll on the next rat to jump ship? Rahm got out of town pretty quick. Maybe he needed to blow a whistle in Chi Town?
Charlie don’t surf
#14 Josh
Compared to this, Goebbels was a piker.
Speaking of “Little Joe” (cue “Springtime for Hitler” from The Producers), you have noticed the references to Goebbels at the Dem freak show?
“Similarly, the chairman of the California Democratic Party earlier this week compared Republican tactics — and specifically Paul Ryan’s convention remarks — to the tactics of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
California Democratic chief John Burton made the remarks Monday in an interview with San Francisco station KCBS while in Charlotte, N.C.
‘They lie and they don’t care if people think they lie … Joseph Goebbels — the big lie, you keep repeating it,’ Burton said.
That was Goebbels, the big lie.’
Republicans quickly condemned the language. The California GOP called it ‘desperate, deranged rhetoric’ that Democrats were using to ‘distract’ voters from their ‘failed record.’
Burton later issued a statement claiming he didn’t actually call Republicans Nazis and noting he didn’t actually use the word ‘Nazi’ — though he made repeated references to Goebbels.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/05/third-democratic-party-official-reportedly-likens-republicans-to-nazis-at/
bftp @ 15: T.E. Lawrence prefered the arab in flowing robes to the jew in a cheap suit.
I assumed it had more to do with the goats. Still, one can argue for the point that one perversion is a gateway drug into others. Once you’re off the rails no telling where you go next, but back on the rails is not necessarily the most likely.
–
pac @ 17: you have noticed the references to Goebbels at the Dem freak show?
Oh yes, I posted on it … mm, last thread I guess, nope one before:
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/09/04/all-the-worlds-a-stage/#comment-217819
A generous view of lefty idealism is :
1) everyone wants to feel significant in some way
2) lefties spurn significant achievements they could make and the excitement available from being part of capitalism
3) to feel significant and energized they must attach themselves to some anti-capitalist, anti-western cause “that is bigger than themselves”.
4) in an application of sympathetic magic, the more badass the people they mimic or whose views they copy, the bigger the spell cast on the western lefty as some sort of vicarious thrill. The problem is that eventually the spell breaks and they find themselves in real trouble.
When we were young many of us shared similar feelings but grew away from them as reality intruded and kept us from coming to grief.
From the Talmud Qohelet Raba, 7:16
“Those who are kind to the cruel, will end up being cruel to the kind”
She is nothing new, there have been other Rachels. Too many to count. Most of them perished because of people like her.
The tomb of the biblical Rachel is what would we now call “contested” or something. It is one of those places on the edge of serious violence. This is a place important in Judaism especially for women. We can all remember the red wrist string bracelets made popular by Madonna et al a decade or so ago. Those are kabbalistic symbols attached to the tomb of Rachel. She is an icon of strength in adversity.
Rachel Corrie probably knew nothing much about her name. She was a cute California girl with…how could anyone harm that?
She was used up by her handlers and served them well.
One more time.
Do you want to make peace?
The Democrats took God out of their platform. I hear a burning bush appeared in the rose garden and Obama called the DNC and told them to say something nice about God and they did (actually, my ex-Governor did God the honor).
Also, Obama’s money bundlers called so he told the convention to say something nice in the platform about Jerusalem being the Capital of Israel (or maybe he heard it from the burning bush — OK, a pollster). So that became Obama’s opinion on the matter this morning, honest (what it is this evening, hard to say). They had to put that one to a vote. They needed two-thirds to pass. Sounded like a tie. They did it three times. Their voters never did get it right so they just declared the plank passed and past.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/09/05/jerusalem_and_god_get_booed_at_dem_convention.html
Back in the day, there was a novel called “Lady L”, by Romaine Gary… about a revolutionary, who totally loved humanity, but when it came to personal relationships, had a very cold heart. In this case, the ‘loved one’,,Lady L, arranged a very a propos revenge…
There seems to be a lot of childlessness, a lack of interest in family, among these nasty people. Didn’t someone somewhere ascribe England’s relatively peaceful 19th century reforms to the fact that the leading intellectuals of the time were also embedded in large families, with all the obligations that implies? Contemporary Russian intellectuals, on the other hand, tended to be separated from their families.
”Would she have been as enthusiastic if she had to live out the rest of her life in the squalor of the Arab world?”
From reading D’Souza’s books on Obama, O’s mother must have been much like Corrie and clearly was content to live it out (in Indonesia). She only returned to Hawaii dying of cancer. Her half-Indonesian daughter came with her and stayed ’til the end but O never visited.
Che-worship – My opinion of the start of this schism. A schism may or may not be intentionally promoted. The “intentional” question is the rub… Thar be dragons.
This reminds me of a line in a T.S Eliot poem, in which he disparages people “Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator.”
Well, now, perhaps my degree in mechanical engineering is showing, but “the perfect refrigerator” would be a pretty fine thing. And a noble thing, as well. Most of the food in the world, especially in poor countries, spoils before it can be eaten. A cheap reliable fridge, perhaps solar powered, would save untold lives and reduce misery.
But the T.S. Eliots of the world don’t know how to design one. Indeed, they no doubt think it beneath them to even to study how to do so.
And that’s how the “Corries” of the world look at it as well. They can’t fix anything so they may as well watch it burn. That way their own inadequacies will never come to light. If the Nazis hurry up and exterminate all those Jews, the Corries can never be criticized for not climbing in a Sherman tank and rescuing them.
They may stay abed and need not worry about holding their manhood cheap when anyone speaks who fought on Saint Crispin’s Day – if no one else fights.
I was reading a Kindle Ebook called “Adrian’s War” in it the author postulates that sociopaths have an advantage in uncivilized times and cultures and become leaders because they don’t hesitate to act in their own selfish interests. They are not so good for building and sustaining things though.
These sorts of people and the kinds of existence they live will, in time, corrode away the civilization that supports and tolerates them. The next consequence will be a war against such people.
But it will be a war which will be unlike any major war before, but one in which we see the foreshadowings now, against the Haqqani network, or Al Qaeda.
It will be a war of attrition, of continuous assasination, by RPV’s or drones. A real drone war.
They will usually be small things, and be able to kill the intended person. And then they will incinerate themselves or in some way leave no clue behind.
And then both sides will do it, and it will be like drug gangs drive by shootings gone wild and gone upscale. All sorts of socially prominent people will be involved, kill and be killing. Maybe most of us plebes will be left alone if we keep our silly political opinions to ourselves, but who knows these days. If someone hacks the voter rolls (entirely possible), people may be killed for their political affiliation.
So Rachel Corrie may be a historical anachronism, killed by a 30 ton bulldozer. In the future, in the next war (coming very soon, I think), people will be killed singly, by little drones. And this sort of thing will be very satisfying to the philophically pure, as it will be guiltless killing of their opponents, and satisfy their deep blood lust, without much gore and blood, unlike Flanders Fields.
Reminiscent of the backstory in the movie “Forbidden Planet”, where the noble and brilliant Crel killed themselves with their secret lusts and hates from the subconscious.
It might be a cheap shot, but perhaps Rachel Corrie had a kinship with Richard Cory.
I puzzled over the Robison poem throughout my highschool years; why would someone with everything kill himself? The best answer I’ve managed to come up with came from an uncle who had spent his life in the oil fields from the 1930s to mid 1970 and had live a hard life among hard men during hard times. He said; “People do what they are taught to do”.
Rachel Corrie was taught that the “West” was hopelessly corrupt, probably by some fair haired bearded college prof who believed the West was corrupt primarily because it did not properly appreciate some one as brilliant as himself.
There was a “Twilight Zone” episode with Donald Pleasence who played an old retiring teacher, despairing that his lifetime of teaching young men had accomplished nothing. The ghosts of his students appear and recount the ways his lessons shaped and drove their lives.
If Rachel appeared to her teachers what would she tell them?
What would all the Rachels say to the generation of fools that seem to have taken over our schools?
That could be said of the 19th century’s nihilists, and even of that generation of “Progressives” who were willing to compromise with them. But why not allow that the 21th Century nihilist is the true believer that progressivism has wrought?
In a world where it has become common to hear people say (and even seen sometimes in comments here) the dreadful phrase “There are too many people in the world,” why not recognize that the current crop of nihilists (some who are sitting in power) are willing to concede they too might be consumed by the flames?
Moral codes, even non-Christian ones like theirs, still recognize martyrs. They may sanctify their actions and consider themselves martyrs. “Fewer people will save the world; I’ll die for that belief.” Rachel Corrie may not have subscribed to that, but those who sanctify her death surely have made of her a martyr of their population reduction religious-like zeal.
Until I hear politicians fighting against that “religious” indoctrination and not compromising with it (let alone fostering it), there is good reason to suppose they too are nihilists.
As for the rest of us, our submitting to political correctness codes via self-censorship is political cowardice. Damned is the “Christian” or “Jew” who doesn’t confront them and challenge their paradigm shifted belief.
Re. #26 toadold – Sociopaths have an advantage in supposedly civilised societies, too. They just have to use different methods. In the “civilised” West, the effective method is to become a banker or other financier. Or politician, of course.
I remember sitting there with ruck and duffel bag packed, waiting to be called in for the Rodney King riots.
One of the local TV channel reporters was at the Parker Center, covering what had started as a peaceful protest by what appeared to be mostly suburban participants. Gang members started showing up. As the protest escalated towards violence, the reporter (female) grew visibly more excited. She was flushed and breathing hard. After a while, I grew almost too embarrassed to watch. I almost felt that I had walked in on some intimate moment.
I and many others spent the next three weeks cleaning up the aftermath of really just a day or two of orgiastic release. I can only thank God that I didn’t have to endure the four years plus spent dealing with the fallout of August 1914.
They shoulda gave her an eye-patch.
Fletcher Christian @30:
I think John Corzine may hit the trifecta.
A few months ago there was a video of an interesting exchange at a White House press conference between a woman (I believe from a Jewish newspaper) and Jay Carney. She asked, rather simply, “What is the capital of Israel?” There were various attempted dodges, something like “Our position hasn’t changed.” “What is the position that hasn’t changed?” “You know what our position is.” back and forth. At some point another journalist (from WND)jumped in asking Carney to just answer the question, sick of the dodges. The spokesperson for President Obama refused to say what the capital of Israel is. The answer is easy, but for them, the answer is incredibly complicated.
There is no way Chuck Schumer doesn’t know what the Obama administration’s position is, there is also no way Schumer can admit that position and still support Obama without demonstrating his own hypocracy.
stevesmith hit the jackpot @19 with:
When we were young many of us shared similar feelings but grew away from them as reality intruded and kept us from coming to grief.
Problem 1: The “people of the flame” bask in their pathology and sneer at the rest of us because we, as they see it, never actualized. They cannot see that their pathology is a juvenile phase that most every adult was able to defeat on his way up.
Problem 2: Once upon a time, the conditions that stunted people’s souls and condemned them to that pathology were available only to the very rich or to sociopaths who could support themselves with crime. The modern welfare state has made idleness–the mother of pathological nihilism–available to everyone regardless of station.
6. Forgotten Man
Is it wrong of me to think it is funny that someone that is not disabled stands in front of a D-9 going .0001 MPH until it runs over her? I guess she died for her belief that the driver would stop, and that is funny.
It’s also wrong and in poor taste to refer to her as “St. Pancake,” but that term stuck because of the widespread ridicule and cynicism of people like Corrie. Someone else above (#23 Gordon) mentioned that Obam’a absentee mom had similar traits. Both women were ridiculous people, period.