So Ridiculous

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

This one in particular…

What a filthy human being he is. He couldn’t possibly care less, could he. All he cares about is what people say about him.

It’s not ridiculous. Race hatred is race hatred; xenophobia is xenophobia. Trump holds frequent rallies at which he spews both at a screaming audience, and that stuff is not inert. Trump absolutely is encouraging and fostering racist xenophobic rage, and that has effects. That doesn’t make the Christchurch slaughter all his fault, of course, but it sure as hell does make him blameworthy.

But he’s such a callous selfish narcissistic toad that he can’t pause to think about that for a second.

Comments

5 responses to “So Ridiculous”

  1. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    He probably also equates blame with him actually taking the gun and shooting up the place. Just talking, that’s all he’s done. Just tweeting. Just shouting. No collusion, no incitement, just saying what he thinks, what he believes is true, what his followers want to hear, what gets him cheers.

  2. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    Well, there were 3.6 million killed in the 10,000 days of the US-led Vietnam War 1965-75, which Captain Bonespurs, to his credit, stayed out of; though with a 99.99% chance that at the same time, he was cheering on the US intervention. My evidence? If he had done anything else, it would be all over the front pages today.

    But allow for a 0.001% chance that he was against the whole thing, but his critics have not learned about it.Yet.

    To get it all into perspective. The Christchurch massacre has shocked me, and it has shocked the world. It was bad enough, with 50 dead so far. But it pales into insignificance beside the casualties inflicted on the Vietnamese people in my own lifetime by the French and then the Nixon-Johnson-Kissinger American regimes in the period 1965-75. They were the real bloodthirsty shooters; but staying well out of range themselves, behind the biggest war machine ever assembled on the face of this Earth.

    The Vietnamese suffered the equivalent of 72 Christchurch massacres per day. For 10 years. And no significant perpetrator was ever brought to trial..

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties

  3. iknklast Avatar
    iknklast

    Omar, I’m not sure what you’re saying. Are you doing a Dear Muslima here? Because if not, it sure sounds like one. We shouldn’t be outraged here because there were more that died in Vietnam? But most of us here were outraged…and probably still are…about Vietnam, as well. That doesn’t limit our ability to be outraged again.

  4. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    iknklast:

    We shouldn’t be outraged here because there were more that died in Vietnam?

    I never said that, nor even hinted at it.

    An event like this commonly generates, not just comparisons, but copycats. (Utrecht? )

    I said “To get it all into perspective. The Christchurch massacre has shocked me, and it has shocked the world. It was bad enough, with 50 dead so far.”

    A suspect has been caught, and will be brought to trial in April. If you ask me, Jacinda Ardern the NZ Prime Minister has not put a foot wrong in this, (unlike Australian Senator Fraser Anning) and she has given the world a text-book example of crisis management.

    It is not just a matter of labelling, and what I said IMHO cannot be categorised as a ‘Dear Muslima’: the comment later regretted by its author, Richard Dawkins. Following his then line of reasoning, we would be unable to talk of things offensive, except for the very worst.

    I predict that there will be a trial in NZ, and the (apparently sole) perpetrator of this will be banged up for life. Does it detract from the seriousness of that to point out that perps of far worse, just in terms of body count, are out there today elsewhere in the world walking around free? After Vietnam?. After East Timor?

    I notice that the Australian Ambassador to Indonesia has been called in to receive a formal Indonesian protest over Senator Anning’s lamentable performance. The Ambassador will quite properly and sincerely agree, but I doubt he will point out to the Indonesian government that not one of the readily identifiable Indonesian generals responsible for the wholesale state terror in East Timor during that nation’s Indonesian occupation, in which about a third of that country’s 600,000 population were deliberately and intentionally killed by the Indonesian military, has ever been brought to justice.

    Not one of the bastards.

    The Indonesian foreign ministry has summoned the Australian ambassador in Jakarta to express strong condemnation of Australian senator Fraser’s Anning’s controversial response to the Christchurch massacre.

    In a meeting in the Indonesian capital on Monday, the Indonesian foreign affairs minister, Retno Marsudi, told Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia, Gary Quinlan, that Indonesia strongly denounced the Queensland senator’s comments.

    Hypocrites.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-18/fraser-anning-reacts-to-egg-christchurch-mosque-terrorism-attack/10910786

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/18/indonesia-summons-australian-ambassador-over-fraser-annings-christchurch-remarks

  5. Omar Avatar
    Omar

    Ardern has moulded a different consensus, demonstrating action, care, unity. Terrorism sees difference and wants to annihilate it. Ardern sees difference and wants to respect it, embrace it and connect with it. Here is an atheist showing that love will dismantle hate. This is leadership, this light she shines, guiding us though to a world where we see the best of us as well as the worst.

    – Suzanne Moore

    I heartily concur.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/18/jacinda-ardern-is-showing-the-world-what-real-leadership-is-sympathy-love-and-integrity

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