Lady fairest ever seen
Was the bride he crowned his queen.
Pillowed on the marriage-bed,
Whispering to his soul, he said,
“Though a bridegroom never pressed
Dearer bosom to his breast,
Mortal flesh must come to clay:
Even this shall pass away.” – Theodore Tilton, “The King’s Ring”
Every year on the Day of the Dead I write about why the holiday exists, why it is necessary, and why ruining the quality of life in an attempt to increase its quantity is both foolish and ultimately futile. To those who have only started reading me this year, or who have only read a few selected pieces over a longer time, this might seem a strange topic for a harlot; one might expect death to be the farthest pole from my topic, except perhaps for mentioning it as an extreme manifestation of whore stigma or when paying my respects on December 17th. But in truth, it’s both predictable and appropriate on a personal, professional and philosophical level.
From a personal standpoint, I would probably have written often on this topic even had I never become a card-carrying prostitute; I was a strange, wild, moody Wednesday Addams of a child, born on Halloween night and fascinated with horror lore and imagery. Autumn was both my native season and the one in which I felt most comfortable, and I struggled with depression for over twenty years until at long last sex work helped me to get a handle on it. My favorite books, stories and even songs mostly tend to involve death or other melancholy elements, and just look at the stories I’ve published on this blog and in my book (or just the cover of the damned thing, for goddess’ sake!) So if you’ve read more than a handful of my (burnt) offerings and were still surprised that I sometimes think and write about death, you just haven’t been paying attention.
Professionally speaking, I must point out that whores often deal with the dark side of human nature. Fear and sex are inextricably intertwined, and men who have rape fantasies or other “bad” urges may seek out sex workers to help them explore these in a safe and non-judgmental space; others, unfortunately, may seek out unwilling sex workers for the same reason, and the only “safety” they seek is their own relative safety from legal consequences. Dominatrices and some fetish workers specialize in dealing with the darker aspects of human sexuality, and in criminalized, semi-criminalized and quasi-criminalized systems virtually all sex workers (especially those who work the street) are at a much greater risk of violence or even death than their domesticated amateur sisters. And nobody who is afraid of death, or who views it as an unpleasant subject improper for polite company, could do the work I do now; take a look at a few items in any of my TW3 columns and I think you’ll see what I mean.
It is no accident that sex workers are among the most dedicated worshippers of the Mexican death-goddess, Santa Muerte, and that many of the myths surrounding pagan whore-goddesses (who were sometimes war-goddesses as well) involved violence and death; even long before criminalization of sex work was the norm, it was recognized that sex itself comes from the same hidden parts of the human psyche as those less-pleasant things. Sex originates from the deepest wellsprings of life, but so does death; the latter is no less a biological process than the former. Sex brings new life into the world, but death sustains that life; every one of us (yes, even vegans) continues his existence at the expense of the other lives we consume every single day in order to keep our internal fires burning and repair our damaged or worn-out tissues with materials stolen from the dead. Not even plants are innocent of this colossal carnage; since some substances (such as phosphorus) are comparatively scarce, all life would soon grind to a halt were the constant supply of corpses to be choked off. Nor is sex itself all moonlight and love songs; in many species it’s a brutal, coercive affair, and even among humans it can never be purged of its bestial and terrifying aspects, no matter how much feminists and other puritans insist that it can. Sex and death are our constant reminders that for all our pretensions we are still animals; no wonder those uncomfortable with that fact try to disguise and sanitize both of them, to hide them from the children and speak about them in whispers, to bind them in legal codes and bury them under layers of ritual. But no matter how deeply we bury our sexualities they reassert themselves, and no matter how diligently we try to delay death, it will come when it will come. Both are impossible to ignore and impossible to prevent, and human society would be a lot better off if we learned to accept both as indisputable facts of material existence.
100% with you on this one Maggie.
But what about your family? As a child I was practically a pariah in my clan for my allegedly morbid nature and black humour. Doubtless if I’d been born 20 years later I would have been medicated for it.
Oh, yes. As I’ve written on several occasions, my mother was actually afraid of me as a child; I have no doubt it contributed to the chilliness in the relationship which led to our eventual estrangement when I was 30.
Yeah, my Mum took it hard too, though I think she was more afraid of the stigma I drew than of me personally. One of my Dad’s (Catholic) sisters was convinced I’d attract death into the family with my attitude. Other than my little sister (who went on to become an army medic then a military PTSD counselor) my Mum’s father was the only one who was OK with it. I’ve since discovered that morbid obsessions and dark humour are Aboriginal cultural traits but they seem to have skipped a generation with my mother.
I’d imagine it would be worse in the US. It seems to me to be the Anglosphere country most in denial about death. Or is that just Hollywood?
Nope. Americans are the death-denyingest people who ever lived; they spend millions every year on machines to force cadavers to undergo biological functions, and even fight prolonged court battles to force others to pay for this obscenity. They invest tremendous funds, time and energy in futile efforts to preserve the dead past indefinitely. They collectively wring their hands over the normal extinction of maladapted or too-narrowly-adapted species. They even collectively imagine their country and form of government will exist forever.
Maggie, I hope you had both a happy birthday as well as Halloween. I’m sorry that I can’t get something from your Amazon wish now. I’m looking for a job and I have to save money.
As kids, birthdays were usually days centered around them where the lucky kids would receive presents and get to eat a cake afterwards. But as adults, birthdays became more and more reminders of mortality. Did the fact that the Day of the Dead or All Saints Day follow your birthday make you took the messages of the holiday more to heart?
{Shrugs} ¿Quién sabe?
Since we’re on the subject, and I’m sure you’ve come across Vodou practitioners…does Baron Samedi hold any particular importance in Louisiana?
I’ve never known any formal practitioners, but I would suspect the answer was “no”, because the factors which separate New Orleans from the rest of the US do not separate it from the rest of Afro-Caribbean culture.
These days I think NOLA’s VooDoo reputation is more hype for tourism than anything else. I know ZERO people who practice it.
Somewhat OT for Halloween Maggie–but this might interest you.
http://thelibertarianalliance.com/2014/11/01/sean-gabb-on-the-european-right/#comments
Ooh, he’s a nasty, racist, paranoiac POS, ain’t he? I half expected him to start quoting from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Libertarianism may be a broad church, but it sure is a tainted brand.
Exactly why Thaddeus Russell, Angela Keaton & I enjoyed appearing together at that conference last weekend. We’re all “libertarians” in the broad sense, but we all reject a lot of people who call themselves “libertarian”. See also my column for this coming Wednesday.
I was thinking of the “puritan” hypothesis element of Sean’s speech Maggie. It would explain a lot. You yourself inveigh daily against the very same thing.
I don’t see that much wrong with the speech. Sean has a patrician manner but is not a snob. I won’t even waste electrons defending him against PC crap about racism. He is correct that most of the founders of Cultural Marxism were Jews. He draws no conclusions from that and as a Libertarian I’m sure he intends none. Possibly he mentioned the fact simply because, like many others, myself included, he is sick of being told what speech is or is not acceptable. As for the rest –well he is correct about the poodle status of the UK at this time. But that is down to the UK political class.
I didn’t watch the video, but what that individual said or didn’t say, mean or didn’t mean has absolutely no effect on my opinion that many soi-disant libertarians are nothing of the kind.
He’s an idealistic fool. I read about half the article …
Maybe he should read the “Melian Dialogue” by Thucydides. The “strong vs. weak” paradigm is engrained into human nature – and any march toward a libertarian society that doesn’t take it into account is fatally flawed.
In short – you cannot replace something STRONG with something that is inherently weak. If you fail to take that into account – there will be some other group of humans that do not fail to account for it and will fill the vacuum.
Since the man is a classical scholar who taught himself both Latin and Greek I’m sure he probably read Thucydides in the original edition. I don’t know what you mean about strong/weak.
It requires zero common sense to be a classical scholar. As far as strong / weak …
“The strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
He ignores this – as most “hard core” libertarians do. They idealistically believe that they can create a libertarian paradise that does not exert influence over others not within their sphere. This is a fantasy – since, if you are not exerting influence over others – THEY are exerting influence (or worse – their WILL) over you.
He complains about American influence … yet what he proposes only replaces American influence with Russian … or Chinese influence over his affairs. American influence may not be ideal in this world – but it’s a damn sight more constrainable than Russian or Chinese authoritarian power.
A candid confession. Do you see much wrong with any form of frothing, racist drivel?
Examples of Gabb’s dogwhistling or outright racism:
“the American Government made none of the protests it would have made at the arrest and deportation of American citizens had they been in Budapest to call for the legalisation of homosexual marriage, or for higher welfare spending on the Gypsies.”
” we do not look kindly on the growth in our own land of alien and hostile enclaves. In short, we want our country back.”
“The more sinister commissars of political correctness do tend to be Jewish.”
“Racism and sexism and other “inappropriate speech and conduct” are the modern sins that a ruling class, itself morally pure, is not to be restrained in putting down” (note the scare quotes)
That’s a lot of racist apologia for such a short speech that’s not even supposed to be on the topic of race.
Funny that the list he quotes – “Gramsci and Adorno and Marcuse and Althusser and Foucault” – includes only one Jew then. But he probably thinks they were all Jewish. Anti-semites see Jews everywhere.
Mind you he also thinks Foucault was Marxist, perhaps because of his brief membership of a Marxist party in the early fifties after which he was a life-long anticommunist. I daresay Foucault’s libertarian credentials would crap all over Gabb’s. Foucault was a very vocal supporter of anticommunist movements in the Eastern Bloc. Gabb seems more concerned with the rights of people to poison themselves for the profit of tobacco companies (for whom he once worked) than with, say, the use of imprisonment and allegations of mental illness to oppress large sections of the population.
What is it with libertarians and cigarettes anyway? The Australian libertarian party is also largely funded by tobacco companies. It’s not as if people go to jail for smoking them. I think everyone fully supported the right of Ayn Rand to kill herself that way, though I’d have preferred she chose a quicker method and didn’t spend so much time denying their health effects.
Why do you consider that race baiting? He hasn’t mentioned a race.
“Alien and Hostile” – he’s almost certainly referring to MUSLIM enclaves within Western nations. “MUSLIM” is NOT a race.
Islam is not compatible with Western democracies and notions of classical liberalism. It is not compatible with libertarianism. It just isn’t. There is nothing “racist” in stating a fact.
Two Atheists against three idiots – and the Atheists completely dominate …
You don’t consider Jews or Gypsies to be racial classifications?
He makes several references to his support of UKIP – a party which opposes all non Anglo-Celtic migration to the UK, including from Africa and the Caribbean.
In any case, the bulk of organised Islamophobia in Britain is just old style racism rebranded – hence it’s popularity with the National Front and other white supremacist groups.
Cabrogal–boilerplate frothing Marxist tripe. When you get on your moral high horse just remember the millions dead because of socialist twaddle that you support and peddle. I don’t hate any race–but I recognise that the anti-racist crap peddled by the likes of you is thinly disguised anti-white hatred. I don’t want or intend to live in a country where my own culture and people have been destroyed by millions of alien and uninvited outsiders–with –in the case of the muslims– some very nasty habits as recent events in the UK have proved. I also support UKIP–which does not oppose small numbers of immigrants but intends to put a stop to the socialist policy of allowing millions of immigrants to swamp and ultimately reduce the native population to second class citizens in our own nation. To punish us for our wicked white ways. If any of the above makes me a racist–I accept the title with pride. The US Air Force should have bombed Berkeley in the 60s not Hanoi–the world would now be a much better place.
I think your own words sum you up admirably Mr Ecks.
But you’re wrong about me.
I’ve never been a Marxist and have consistently fought against Marxist and Trostkyist infiltration of activist groups I’ve been in since the 1980s.
But people like you see class enemies under every bush don’t you?
Jews too, I daresay.
I see my enemies where they are. Marxist/trot–you are some kind of leftist to be as hot under the collar as you are about the PC piffle that you peddle.
My fathers family were a quarter Jewish, proud of it–and would have disdained the patronage of the likes of you.
I really can’t answer this because you are simply projecting what you THINK these people’s thought process and true motivations are. That’s usually where “liberal” arguments degenerate to. I like to debate facts – not what others THINK are in people’s minds that they do not know.
You can see the sort of people Gabb and UKIP are courting with their rhetoric here.
That’s what dogwhistling is. Establishing racist code phrases that everyone knows the meaning of but which can be denied when you’re put on the spot.
Standard socialist deceit. Define anyone who doesn’t accept their twaddle as evil and dash for the high ground of sanctimony. The fact that socialism has spilled so much blood that their moral high ground would need to be as high as Everest to be above the tideline of that blood is beside the point.
Wicked white people who are racists and homo/transgender/islami-phobic are the real evildoers.
They sure are where I come from.
Your summary of great crimes against humanity seems to have left out the biggest one of all, which happens to have been committed by white racial purists. Or are you a Holocaust denier like so many of your UKIP ilk?
UKIP has a tiny number of oddballs who may be Holocaust deniers. How many leftists deny the 200 million odd murders committed by socialism ?–well they don’t often deny them because they usually never ever mention them. And fascism is a socialist heresy founded by socialists. Mussolini-who coined the word- was for twenty years the Golden boy of Italian Marxism–not a rich white businessman or an entrepreneur (one of those that didn’t make it on their own) or even a banker. He was lionised by all manner of leftist scum in the early 20s esp the Fabians. Socialism has long supported both eugenics and mass murder. Read that puke George Bernard Shaw where he blows hard about wishing that “defectives” could be put out of their misery by “means of some humane gas”. His fellow socialist Adolf made that happen for him. I don’t see why killing for racial reasons is esp worse than equal opportunity murder. Altho’ that doesn’t cover the Chicoms–who aren’t white but are socialist and murdered about 100 million of their own people. Is that better than if they had killed people of another race?. Does that make them better people because they kept the slaughter in-house (altho’ China has many ethnic groups–perhaps they all look the same to socialism).
“They sure are where I come from” Yeah–you said it.
Boring.
There should be a correlate for Godwin’s Law that states how long an online discussion with a pig ignorant right winger can go on before he trots out the old canard about Hitler being a socialist. The fact is that as soon as Hitler gained rank in the Nazi Party he set about purging it of socialists – culminating in the slaughter of the Night of the Long Knives. A few years later he was rounding up all the socialists in German controlled territory and sending them to concentration camps.
Yep, Mussolini started out as a Marxist, as have a heck of a lot of other right wingers from Irving Kristol to Christopher Hitchens. That just shows how opportunistic authoritarians are. They’ll hitch their doctrines to any horse that seems to be galloping towards power and change horses when the wind changes.
I wonder how long you and Gabb will be calling yourselves ‘libertarian’ before you jump horses. Funny thing about so many self-described ‘libertarians’. Governments are such terrible, terrible things, but they quickly go crying to them when they want their property protected or brown skinned people kept off their street. And of course lots of them are apologists for untrammeled corporate power – even the ones who are too dumb to be getting paid off by big business for it.
No. I am an anti-racist and anti-fascist. And the reason I get hot under the collar about racism is because I’m black and know first hand what your ilk are capable of.
I have nothing to defend here. I have never been associated with any authoritarian political movement whatsoever. I was briefly a member of the Australian Democrats in my teens – that’s it. In fact I have a long track record of both anti-authoritarian and anti-racist activism. And not with any groups backed by Big Tobacco or other corporate interests either.
You, on the other hand, are clearly a racist who supports a racist party and endorses speeches by racists. I think the historical record of racism and racists speaks for itself. There’s no doubting Hitler’s pedigree there.
When I read speeches by Farage or Hamilton it reminds me of this Monty Python sketch. Gabb is more of the same.
You are a set of slogans on legs. Your “anti-authoritarian” pose sits ill with the anti-white crap you peddle as “anti-racist”. You are black and so you know what “my ilk”–ie “white people” are capable of. What my ilk are capable of is shown by the members of my family and the many thousands of my countrymen who gave their lives to put down National Socialism –and not by talking it to death. I’m sure your sanctimonious verbal struggle far outweighs their sacrifice of course.
I must go now–time to pick up my latest pay-off from big Tobacco.
Nope. I am black so I know what your ilk – i.e. racists – are capable of.
The local WWII Honour Rolls have a heck of a lot of people with my surname on them and both sides of my family – including both my siblings – have extensive military service records but I don’t wank on as if that somehow makes me anti-fascist or anti-racist. It’s not something you inherit you know.
I’m anti-fascist and anti-racist because I’ve organised demos, directly lobbied parliament, supported the families of Aborigines killed by cops, given interviews in all forms of media, lectured at universities, written articles for journals, etc, etc on the subject.
What about you, Mr Ecks?
What do you do in the name of your political beliefs – other than wanking over a keyboard, trying to appropriate what your family members may have done and voting for racist troglodytes?
You may have done some good trying to comfort the bereaved. The rest of your antics are agit-prop, shouting in peoples faces to try and force your ideas about how others should live and what they should think and believe on to those who don’t want them. If such antics feed your fantasy that you are an heroic battler against injustice good luck to you. You are, in reality, merely another aggressive supporter of socialistic oppression and meddling in peoples lives.. As this debate is becoming progressively ( pun intended) more unpleasant and personal I do not intend to fill up any more space on Maggie’s blog. I hope you get the leftist paradise you dream of. There is no more powerful a curse than that as so many millions have discovered.
This is a reply to the comment two steps down the page as the reply button seems to have disappeared
Oh, I see.
Comforting people after the state has killed their loved one is OK but trying to change things so the state doesn’t kill them in the first place is “socialist oppression”.
Doubtless you are one of the slacktivists Hélder Câmara was referring to when he said “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.”
Except that NONE of your solutions would feed anyone. None of your solutions would solve any of the problems. There’s plenty of historical evidence that they’ve been tried and failed. So basically – this is just demagoguery on your part.
GIVE THAT MAN A CIGAR!
As I’ve said – this is where ALL leftist arguments degenerate too when they can’t debate the facts. IMPUGN MOTIVATIONS! Assign the worst characteristics to your logical opponent that you can – anything to get you away from losing the argument!!!
Paint a guy who condemns ISLAM as an ISLAMOPHOBE. Of course – who cares if the term “phobia” applies only medically to someone who’s terrified of something – and how could you assign that label to someone who’s voluntarily gone into combat against Islamofascists?
I condemn ISLAM. I do not condemn any race. I condemn a philosophy that degrades women. I condemn a philosophy that espouses the concept of world domination through HOLY WAR. I condemn a concept that immiserates homosexuals.
And NOTHING … NOTHING you can label me as will get you away from the fact that YOU ARE DEFENDING THIS CONCEPT AND ALL IT STANDS FOR.
“Sort of people” … “dogwhistles” … and all of these arguments rely on your ability to read people’s minds for their true motivations. Sorry, I doubt seriously your talents in that area.
How about I say this? I think you are a “sad sack” at heart and would oppose any system of government … I think you are destroyer and not a builder.
See I read your mind! I have judged you as an individual and now I can dismiss you.
And my abilities to do this are just as valid as yours. 😀
Umm, you accuse me of ‘projecting’ what others think and in the next sentence tell me I’m a “liberal”?
Tell me you’re being deliberately ironic krulac. Coming from someone who projects all manner of evil into the pit of his own ignorance he calls “Islam” it’s gotta be irony, right? Either that or it’s an example of what ‘projection’ really means.
The facts about UKIP are very plain. They’re in the manifesto and campaign material.
I ‘think‘ Gabb means what he says with “The more sinister commissars of political correctness do tend to be Jewish.” In other words he either believes Jews to be inherently more politically ‘sinister’ than others or he finds them sinister by virtue of their Jewishness.
That’s racism krulac.
Quote it … if it’s there.
What UKIP has said is that it wants BRITAIN to have control of immigration and not the EU.
There is NOTHING racist in controlling immigration. That’s a fantasy you and other leftists invented in your minds.
I have heard UKIP express disapproval because their doors have been opened by the EU to unfettered immigration from Eastern Europe. Now … sit there and tell me that UKIP are racists against people who predominately belong to the same race most UKIP members do!
This is how utterly silly and non-serious that you are!
Not if he can back it up with facts.
For instance – I can tell you that there is a SERIOUS problem with out-of-wedlock births in the Black community.
Am I racist for pointing that out?
Which he can’t.
The only facts he cites is his five examples of prophets of cultural Marxism – one of whom was actually an anticommunist – of which only one was Jewish.
C’mon krulac. If you heard a RadFem pointing out that all the leaders of Nazism were men you’d know exactly where she was coming from, even though she’d be stating undeniable facts. But a UKIP supporter makes the unsubstantiated claim that the most ‘sinister’ of PC commissars are Jewish and you pretend it’s all above board.
In a short speech that supposedly had nothing to do with race he manages to take a swipe at Jews, Gypsies, socialists and homosexuals. If he’d added Jehovah’s Witnesses that would be concentration camp bingo. And you’re making the po-faced claim he wasn’t trying to appeal to a very specific and very unsavoury audience? Not even you could be that stupid krulac.
Racist dogwhistling is a pretty well established party political black op krulac. They run focus groups specifically to refine it.
Heads of political think tanks like Gabb would be exquisitely aware of it’s use and implementation and it comes through clear as a bell (excuse the mixed metaphor) in his speech.
But if we’re playing the mind reading game how about this one?
Krulac is afraid of what he doesn’t understand – which is a lot of stuff – and so can be easily manipulated via his fear and ignorance into knee-jerk phobic hate reactions by statist propaganda. Yesterday it was communism. Today it’s Islam. If the Pentagon thought it was a good idea to attack Bhutan, tomorrow it would be ‘Bhutanism’. He believes himself to be libertarian but is in fact a puppet of the very powers he thinks he opposes.
See! You got judgement and condemnation and demagoguery down pat!!
Good Job!
Now if you could only debate facts. Oh well … perhaps when you grow up! 😀
Also – I’ll take your support of Islam as evidence of your misogyny of women and support for the persecution of homosexuals. Also as your support for the murder of apostates – and, the domination of others through jihad.
Because THAT, my friend – is factually what you are supporting when you defend the concept of Islam. All this race-bait shit? That is a distraction on your part to draw attention away from your horrifying support of these concepts – which are well engrained in the Koran.
Thanks for going to so much trouble to spell out the depth and breadth of your ignorance of Islam krulac. I’d hate to have to project them (krulac definition).
Firstly I’d like to say you’ve surprised me again. Those Washington Post refs. And I had you pegged as a Fox News man. But as Chomsky and Hermann point out in Manufacturing Consent, it’s the liberal media who are the corporate and state propagandists par excellence, so it’s good to see that when you swig from the shit bottle you go straight for the top shelf.
Secondly I’d like to complement you on your religious scholarship. Doubtless you have read The Quran and are not merely parroting the pundits who take isolated passages out of context. And as such a diligent scholar you would also be aware that there is very little in the Quran that is not merely a rehash of what is in The Torah and The Bible.
But if you have somehow missed out on all of the enlightening instructions in the Bible as to how to deal with homosexuals, how disobedient teenagers should be killed, what should be done to people who eat shellfish or when it is appropriate to sell your wife into slavery I’m sure there are many fundamentalist preachers in your neck of the woods who would be happy to fill the gaps in your studies. If they’re not too busy hate picketing gay funerals, exorcising children to death or taking pot shots at abortion clinicians that is. Indeed, America is such a fine upstanding Christian country that Washington even seems to have based much of it’s foreign policy on Jesus’ call to jihad in Luke 19:27.
Thanks for setting me straight about Muslim oppression of women. The fact that so many Muslim women insist they aren’t oppressed and that the Western media must search far and wide to find a handful of examples who admit they are just proves they’ve internalised their oppression. I’m sure your observations on the topic are just as valuable as those of the ‘rescuers’ who keep us informed about the oppression of sex workers.
It must be very disappointing to you that your offer to show your bravery by going to Muslim countries to kill the people living there was rejected. I can see now that proves you couldn’t possibly be Islamophobic. After all, who’s ever heard of a desire to attack being motivated by fear? I’m sure rattlesnakes only bite because they hate our freedoms. Such as that great American freedom to slaughter whoever sets up their stupid country on top of oil that rightly belongs to Exxon and Texaco.
But not to worry. I’ve heard there’s a backwards and barbaric fundamentalist country somewhere between Canada and Mexico where many states still have laws persecuting homosexuals even though they have been determined to be unconstitutional. They don’t actually execute them there and I’ve heard they’ve even stopped inflicting forced psychosurgery to ‘cure’ them now but there’s still plenty of local religious vigilantes who take it upon themselves to bash them – sometimes to death.
So if you are still keen to go on a Crusade against religious extremists you can save your airfare by choosing from your doubtless fine selection of personal firearms and heading off down to the local church where I’m sure you’ll find all the action you could want. Try to choose a day when a wedding is being held. I’m told the USAF has determined that wedding parties are really just fronts for militant religious extremism and should be bombed at every opportunity.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01/64-percent-of-muslims-in-egypt-and-pakistan-support-the-death-penalty-for-leaving-islam/
I’m SUCH a racist!! 😀
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/02/24/here-are-the-10-countries-where-homosexuality-may-be-punished-by-death/
Look at the map at the bottom and tell me now, just how “horrible” western civilization is!
Is it some kind of accident that most of these countries where homosexuality can be punished by death are ISLAMIC?
When you defend the concept of Islam – this is what you are defending and your dog-and-pony hat tricks to attempt to distract people with shouts of RACISM!!! Will never drown out this basic fact.
cabrogal:
Indeed. Though that seems to be the case with most ideologies that are “worthy” of the name, whether it’s Christianity, Islam, Feminism, Communism, or Libertarianism. Seems also that a common thread in the more problematic sections of most if not all is the tendency to dogmatism, to the certain, though unevidenced, belief that the ideology is categorically true in all its tenets – much easier of course with the first two as “Gawd” itself is the putative guarantor of its validity.
But equally problematic is the tendency of some of the saner proponents of each to a “my country/ideology, right or wrong”, to a tendency to bend the truth and the facts to comport with the ideology. For instance, and quite apropos, I nearly fell out of my chair on reading this exchange in an interview of Maggie by Reason which highlights that in the context of the “Rescue Industry”:
Why I think it important for the even saner proponents to challenge the exaggerations and the dogmatism of their brethren – particularly as their criticisms are more likely to find their mark.
Agree with all you say.
But a problem with anti-authoritarian ideologies in general and libertarianism in particular is that they tend to attract people with very immature notions of what ‘freedom’ means. Even relatively sophisticated libertarians seem to have a poor grasp of the economic roots of power and it’s inevitable abuse. To the simple-minded ones such as UKIP freedom primarily means getting authorities off the backs of them and people like them so they can more easily do over people who aren’t like them.
I think the Ulster band, Stiff Little Fingers summed up that kind of British libertarianism pretty well in their song Fly the Flag, though they could equally have been prophesying UKIP with White Noise. (Oh, and for the sake of Americans reading this blog I should probably mention SLF are being ironic in these two songs.)
To some extent I think that goes with the territory of being young: “one can forgive the young for everything except their youth”.
But interesting perspectives on the UKIP, and probably of some validity, particularly “freedom primarily means getting authorities off the backs of them and people like them so they can more easily do over people who aren’t like them.” Reminds me of a passage from Stephen Pinker’s The Blank Slate that I quoted at some length in another comment on one of Maggie’s other posts (here). It described in some detail some riots in Montreal some 50 years ago that followed from a police strike, the inevitable though expected consequence – at least in hindsight – being massive amounts of looting along with a murder or two. While I can sympathize with Maggie’s “the system needs to be burned to the ground”, particularly given that there is some evidence that America is a “degenerate empire” if not a “failed state”, I think that badly discounts the contributions of the less corrupt elements of various police forces in keeping the lid on.
I guess one question there is whether the corruption and violence suppressed by police is as serious and widespread as the corruption and violence engendered by police. And I don’t just mean the stuff they perpetrate but also the escalation of violence by others in response to police violence and the amount of extra crime carried out just to finance police corruption.
But as well as that I can’t help thinking that surges in crime during police strikes, etc, are at least partly due to the suppression of normal ‘self-policing’ by communities that is caused by the presence of police. I don’t mean vigilantism or ‘neighbourhood watching’ so much as what my former colleague Eva Cox calls ‘social capital’, the organic tendency of communities to engage in mutual self support when not subject to external oppression, individualist/competitive/materialist propaganda and divide and rule tactics.
Given the centuries of being told that without external authority human societies degenerate into dog-eat-dog mob rule it then raises the question of how to get there from here. It seems unlikely to be possible in societies divided by large disparities in wealth or by physical or social segregation.
I’m with Krulac on pretty much everything in this thread — and I’m surprised that Maggie hasn’t yet pulled the plug on both Mr Ecks and Cabrogal.
Cabrogal’s been a regular visitor here for a very long time, and while he sometimes does stray outside the bounds of strict propriety during heated discussions, the same could be said of Krulac and many other readers. As I discuss in this coming Thursday’s column, I’m willing to give people a lot more slack once I get to know and trust them.
Of course the Christian legend is that all this is the result of the fall. From that perspective – not that I’m demanding it be adopted by you or anyone else, just understood a little – there’s always a tension between life, death, carnal desire and sin in general. We somehow have to reject all sin and evil while realizing that we can’t actually do that so long as we live this life. This is both a difficult idea and at the same time fairly basic.
Personally, I would avoid the worship of “death-goddesses”, though. But that’s about as close as I’ll come to being preachy over here. At least intentionally preachy, anyway.
Maybe you should try it and see.
BTW, a poem by Swami Vivekananda to The Great Mother of Time and Death is the most read post on my blog, so there seems to be a lot of us about. Several hundred million in India alone I suspect.
First of all, Happy Birthday Maggie, and many happy returns.
If you’re smart, you make your peace with the Reaper early, because then you can live your life more fully. It doesn’t eliminate all of your baggage, but it helps.
“Seasons don’t fear the Reaper,
nor do the wind, the sun or the rain–”
Besides, the Buddhists may be right, and this all may be an illusion.
[…] (Cross-posted from The Honest Courtesan) […]