Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Alex Jacob
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Alex Jacob wrote:Dan wrote:

"The dialogue between Islam and Judaism already exists. Indeed, there's no real conflict between the two (aside from each necessarily thinking the other to be religiously misguided). The problem is that Zionism represents a significant departure from the classic relation the two have had because of its political and complex ethnic and cultural nature. The main problem is that many Muslims don't perceive Zionism as an expression of Judaism at all. Therefore, dialogue is difficult to achieve."

Where does this 'dialogue' exist? Jewish scholars and historians, at least of 30-40 years ago, pretty much dismiss the tenets of Mohammedanism, and they describe Mohammad himself as an illiterate drunk who robbed wealthy Jews to get his organization up and running. I am sure it is not entirely fair, but that is how the story goes. And what do they say about Jews? ;-)
I didn't mean a religious dialogue. Did you note that I said both sides necessarily see the other as religiously misguided? That can never change. What I meant was Jews and Muslims tend to get on ok unless there's a specific political disagreement of some kind. That is not true of Zionists, who represent a different kind of political and cultural momentum. The Jewish population in Iran, for example, whom are nominally if not in most cases openly anti-Zionist, get on quite well as far I can tell.

Of course, if anti-Zionist Jews decided that the messiah had arrived and contrived to create Eretz Yisrael, some shit might hit some fans, depending on how they went about it. If your overall point is that Muslims would oppose any manifestation of Judaic eschatology in relation to Eretz Yisrael, and that's where dialogue in necessary, then I'll agree with you, but add that it seems rather difficult given that Jews won't countenance any other reading of history but theirs (and the Muslims likewise).
It doesn't, in fact, really hinge on how Muslims 'perceive' Zionism, if by Zionism you mean Israel nationhood.
By Zionism I mean Zionism. i.e. the political movement by that name that emerged in 1800s Europe. I know Zionism exited in theory already and is attributable to Judaic eschatology in and of itself, but when I speak of Zionism I mean that specific movement with that title. The way many Muslims view that movement is complex because the movement - and its relationship to Jewry - is itself complex.
This is actually a big part of the point. The state of Israel, historically, begins in outright opposition to the will of Muslims. It is an audacious error of history, and an error that has to be corrected.
It's an audacious error of history that Jews didn't have their own state? Are you kidding?
And, dialogue to have any meaning, has to start from one core premise: Israel exists and will continue to exist. There is no negotiation about this. There, in that core, is the 'basic power principal' in operation. This is the core position of Israel and Jews that has to be accepted.
I don't think there's any question of the continued existence of Israel, regardless of the bellicose bullshit I mentioned. It's a done deal, even if the argument for it was mostly bollocks.
B'Tselem is nowhere near as unbiased and angelic as you may think.
Yeah, like I'd use a term like "angelic", like. <rolls eyes> I think it is an excellent and balanced resource, which is really to say most are simply not, so my judgement is relative and comparative.
Because these issues are so polarized, even among Israelis,
Yes, some Israelis want justice for Palestinians and the rest are aresholes.
it is always difficult to get to the bottom of things, yet I would certainly not dismiss them (B'Tselem). I called them today but their offices were closed. I'd like to see what they have to say for themselves.
About what? What do you want them to say that isn't on the website?

Btw, one of the reasons, indeed the most significant reason I seem to show contempt for the Jewish mentality, is not because of their "Jewishness", but because I have open contempt for any group that so strongly, so religiously identifies with a religious, ethnic, cultural or political history of any kind. That is, I can't stand that sort of mindless identification. It brings, and has wrought, nothing but ruination upon Man.

I'm happy to extend that contempt to any other group in this analysis.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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That's too stupid on too many levels to be funny.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Person 1 - "I'm going to live on this land!"
Person 2 - "No you're not! I'm going to live on this land!"
Person 3 - "Why can't everyone just get along!?"

The end.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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It can't be helped, Dan, that you have an afflicted sense of humor. Let's try another one.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Alex Jacob wrote:It can't be helped, Dan, that you have an afflicted sense of humor. Let's try another one.
Interesting.

Tell me, the (waste?) basket is level, the mannequin is zig-zag (if you will) any reason why the double-triangle is at-an-angle? Thus, not really a symbol of Star of Da*id.

PS - Bill Clinton - "Last time I checked the Constitution" .. of the people, by the people, for the people..

And that Ivy League "urbane" dude taught Constitutional Law???

Can't wait (shudder-shudder) til Obama takes the Oath to Uphold the Constitution. (another Constitutional Law "scholar".

Ditto the vice-prez "plagarizer" Joe Biden .. another Constitutional "teacher".

Yup, the Shriners (Freemasons) are gonna have a field day when these Masonic clowns take over. (Triangles) circlets for all.

Thanks for voting for Obama, Alex. The educated elite holding the door to the cattlecars, boxcars.

First they came for the ...


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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Alex Jacob wrote:It can't be helped, Dan, that you have an afflicted sense of humor. Let's try another one.
I'll go off topic for a moment to lighten things up. Alex's link here reminds me of something I noticed when I lived in New York.

There are so many different groups in New York that the City often responds by targeting them in public ads and signs. For instance, there was a campaign to get people to stop littering. In the Upper East Side area (white, old money), the signs read "$100 Fine for Littering." In the Jewish Diamond District, the signs had a more lecturing, nagging tone: "Littering is Filthy and Selfish, so Don't Do it!" In Harlem, the public trash receptacles had signs on them that read "Slam Dunk it Here!"
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Tomas:

"Thanks for voting for Obama, Alex. The educated elite holding the door to the cattlecars, boxcars."

Well, first the good news. My mail-in ballot was never sent out, so I could never vote! So, in fact, 'I did not vote for Obama'. And that is what I told my friend K----- who, the day after the election, and after so much pre-election activity, came down with a light flu, which I christened her Holy Fevers.

I'll honestly be able to sport---that is if I return to the US and IF it is still standing---a bumper sticker saying: 'Hey, don't blame me, I didn't vote for him!'

Guiltless by Providential decree...

Was the hand of Hashem, Blessed Be His Name, involved in this? Was I---as one of the (pretty obvious) Righteous---saved from having my whole being and life trajectory tarnished by voting for this man who, though he has done nothing yet, has already been indicted and found guilty?

And what's the 'bad news'? Only that I will be back to comment in this most fascinating of threads...

May all your topics get privileged in permanent stick to the top of all your forums!
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Voting for Obama with your legs spread /\

Post by Tomas »

.



-Alex Jacob-
Tomas:

Yes Sir?




-earlier tomas rant
"Thanks for voting for Obama, Alex.


-Alex beams-
Well, first the good news.

-tomas-
One of my favorite versions of the Bible was, 'Good News for Modern Man.' (a rather well-written version King James spinoff). An easier read for mild dyslexics like me.




-Alex with his chin held high-
My mail-in ballot was never sent out, so I could never vote!

-tomas-
Lovely!




-Alex sports a trimmed-down Afro-
So, in fact, 'I did not vote for Obama'.

-tomas-
This doesn't bode well for you with a few of the forum-flunkies here .. there will be hell to pay (in the form of list sniping).




-Alex takes up the bottle-
And that is what I told my friend K----- who, the day after the election, and after so much pre-election activity, came down with a light flu, which I christened her Holy Fevers.

-tomas-
"christened" - hit her over the head with a bottle of champagne?




-Alex now professes innocence-
I'll honestly be able to sport---that is if I return to the US and IF it is still standing---a bumper sticker saying: 'Hey, don't blame me, I didn't vote for him!'

-tomas-
A remake of 'Night of the Living Dead' is what the USA is in store for. Obama's approval rating is up to 62% Don't know if Congress' is still at 13%.

Obamaniacs are enlightened, even on this Worldly Matters forum.

As Dan sez: "It makes the idiots on the left appear sane."




-Alex avows-
Guiltless by Providential decree...




-Alex & Sarah speak in tongues-
Was the hand of Hashem, Blessed Be His Name, involved in this? Was I---as one of the (pretty obvious) Righteous---saved from having my whole being and life trajectory tarnished by voting for this man who, though he has done nothing yet, has already been indicted and found guilty?

-tomas-
Another home run, now where is that coin from Jordan, The Kingdom of the Hashemites..? Got it on my last visit (in 1991) to Jordan, compliments of the Democratic Party.




-Alex sees (too) the hypocrisy of it all-
And what's the 'bad news'? Only that I will be back to comment in this most fascinating of threads...

May all your topics get privileged in permanent stick to the top of all your forums!

-tomas-
Ah, that's just a UFO up there /\

PS - Splashin' around in Obama's toilet bowl of holy water.

Hypocrisy - what a beautiful choice!

.
Last edited by Tomas on Sat Nov 22, 2008 8:58 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Tomas wrote:Hypocrisy - what a beautiful choice!
Good to see that you admit it.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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The Jews of Iran

"It is difficult to estimate the Jewish population on Iran, last counted in 1986 national census. Based on evidence of continuing decline, the 2001 estimate was reduced to 11,500." From Simple to Remember Judaism.

It is hard to get good information about the Jews of Iran. Obviously, given the contentious issues, they will play the role of a pawn in Iran's ideological struggles against the US and Israel, yet I just don't know if it would be possible to say that they 'get on quite well'.

Zionism, as I understand it (and there are different sorts of Zionism or different levels), is almost exclusively a movement toward nationalism. It is a rejection of the unwholesome condition of diaspora existence, and among many thing expresses a 'negation of the diaspora' and all the diaspora represents.

I don't know the specific figures, but I think the religious Jews who are anti-Zionist are in a pretty extreme minority. I think it is far more common that modern Jews have anti-Zionist views based on political sentiments and ideology.

"If your overall point is that Muslims would oppose any manifestation of Judaic eschatology in relation to Eretz Yisrael, and that's where dialogue in necessary, then I'll agree with you, but add that it seems rather difficult given that Jews won't countenance any other reading of history but theirs (and the Muslims likewise)."

No part of what I have been arguing has even considered messianic notions, if this messianism refers to some unknown, mysterious, grand event that will take place. But I think you are wrong in supposing that Jews cannot countenance various views on the subject---indeed all of history and ideology of the last 100 and more years gives ample evidence of the various ways that these ideas function.

Eretz Yisrael is a term that is in common usage and spans many different points of view.

"By Zionism I mean Zionism. i.e. the political movement by that name that emerged in 1800s Europe. I know Zionism exited in theory already and is attributable to Judaic eschatology in and of itself, but when I speak of Zionism I mean that specific movement with that title. The way many Muslims view that movement is complex because the movement - and its relationship to Jewry - is itself complex."

Zionism is by no means a singular term, it has many different levels. All of these different levels have exponents inside and outside of Israel.

"It's an audacious error of history that Jews didn't have their own state? Are you kidding?"

I wrote that in the eyes of most Arabs (Muslims) it was an audacious error of history that the State of Israel---however it is defined---got established in 1948. The original plan was to wipe it out. That this plan failed was a pretty severe blow to the pride of the Arab world, and amounted to an unforgivable error, and that is why I said 'audacious error of history'.

Got it? ;-)

"I don't think there's any question of the continued existence of Israel, regardless of the bellicose bullshit I mentioned. It's a done deal, even if the argument for it was mostly bollocks."

There are all sorts of facts and figures presented on the page Simple to Remember Judaism, and they may point more in directions that Diebert outlines. A sixty-year existence, considering the length of history, is nothing at all. In Jewish history there is no such thing as a 'done deal', and that is just a basic fact.

"Yes, some Israelis want justice for Palestinians and the rest are aresholes."

I think you are quite wrong here. I think most Israelis and most diaspora Jews would like peace and justice for Palestinians. I think, like Benjamin Netanyahu said in the video Blood & Tears, most Israelis believe or understand that what Palestinians want, and what most of the Arab world wants, is to replace Israel with a Palestinian state.

I think that most Jews and most Israelis perceive that this is the basic position, or intention, even if it is not stated. Often, what is very directly stated by enemy groups of Israel is under-reported in the West. You could easily access dozens of videos with Nazi-like marches of Arabs and Palestinians where they swear by their blood to annihilate Israel. There is a video floating around, shot in Gaza I believe, where there is dancing in the streets and a jubilee celebration when some yeshiva kids were murdered. You would be hard-pressed to find anything comparable on the part of Jews or Israelis, but never in any degree comparable to the way it is done in these places, never as a social celebration.

You don't care to see these things---you close your eyes to them, or you justify them because you are so very concerned with 'justice'---but Israelis and Jews see them very, very clearly. They are haunted by these things, and what they represent, and what they bode.

'About what? What do you want them to say that isn't on the website?"

Anyone can present anything they want on a website. One gains even more insight into a platform or an orientation speaking directly to the participants, and asking them difficult questions. If they clam-up, if they will only speak from established 'talking points', one can assess all that. I spent at least some time in Left wing action committees and I know a little about a kind of psychology that operates there, and also 'image management'. The ideals of youth are wonderful---if it is tempered with a sobriety hard to come by.

"Btw, one of the reasons, indeed the most significant reason I seem to show contempt for the Jewish mentality, is not because of their "Jewishness", but because I have open contempt for any group that so strongly, so religiously identifies with a religious, ethnic, cultural or political history of any kind. That is, I can't stand that sort of mindless identification. It brings, and has wrought, nothing but ruination upon Man."

Personally, I am not at all convinced that you *really and truly* know yourself, and I certainly do not hide that you-plural---the famous QRS---are a suspicious group in many ways, with a suspicious philosophy and suspicious psychological underpinnings. Your links to Weininger and your sketchy interpretations of Nietzsche (with so many pitfalls and dangers that lurk there, given the relationship of these doctrines to National Socialism and fascism) is a red flag and was from the start. You could temper your voice here and become as glibly matter-of-fact as you like, as professional and wise as you wish to be seen, and none of this washes with me, friend.

As to 'identification with a religious, ethnic, cultural or political history of any kind', the nature of your 'philosophy' is one of outright divorce from the social world, isn't it? The beliefs you hold, about 'enlightenment', all seems to lead to a kind of atomization of the person, an ultimate abstraction in any sort of real way with all human concerns. You divorce yourselves from all of it, go on welfare, and do nothing except put up a website. Effectively, your relationship with the world and with life is rather attenuated wouldn't you say? You could never participate in anything because you have no connection to anything, not even to a relationship with the female of the species.

As to this 'mindless identification' you abhor---I am not sure what weight you suppose your opinion carries. I am reasonably sure that you have only the vagues ideas what Jewish 'identification' with their historical role or project means. You seem virtually ignorant of it, and in this you stand well on the outside of some of the most powerful ideas that have moulded culture, and which continue to do so.

I think I do understand something about 'you', I think I do grasp to what degree you are working to 'throw off a yoke' that had been placed on you. I think I understand that, and I think I understand why people are attracted to 'you' and to what is a 'movement' away from spiritual ideals that come from a Jewish source. One of the reasons, I suggest, that conversations always turn back to this theme (Jewishness, 'chosenness', etc., the Jew in the world today) is because, in a very real way, you are intimately bound to this problem. It is a problem that is playing itself out in you-plural. It has been and is very interesting to participate in 'all this' and, honestly, I have learned a great deal.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Alex Jacob wrote:It can't be helped, Dan, that you have an afflicted sense of humor. Let's try another one.
What can I say, I like my humour to be actually funny. I don't find the stupid or the pathetic (as in the second link), funny.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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brokenhead wrote:
Tomas wrote:Hypocrisy - what a beautiful choice!
Good to see that you admit it.
Good to see you're talking normal again.

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Can't we all just fu**ing get along?
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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No, we self evidently can't just get along. What the hell would getting along mean anyway?
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Man, you have way too much time on your hands.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Alex Jacob wrote:Personally, I am not at all convinced that you *really and truly* know yourself, and I certainly do not hide that you-plural---the famous QRS---are a suspicious group in many ways, with a suspicious philosophy and suspicious psychological underpinnings. Your links to Weininger and your sketchy interpretations of Nietzsche (with so many pitfalls and dangers that lurk there, given the relationship of these doctrines to National Socialism and fascism)[...]
What relationship? There's no more a relationship between Nietzsche and National Socialism as there is between Jesus and the Spanish Inquisition. You do know that Nietzsche detested National Socialism and indeed Antisemitism, right?
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Dan Rowden wrote:No, we self evidently can't just get along. What the hell would getting along mean anyway?
How about this:

Have we all become a bunch of anxious, depressed, sleep-deprived irritable stress-heads?

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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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No, just Alex.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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Alex Jacob wrote: Eretz Yisrael is a term that is in common usage and spans many different points of view.
Yeah, just like antisemitism and holocaust.

It's not impossible though, even for you, to get to the essence of a term and its history and then decide to use it properly. Actually that's where good dialog starts to happen. It's important to see how dialog does not result in anything if the terms are left floating in a sea of possible meanings and interpretations. The moment it becomes that fluent, it seizes to be term.

This actually would be the movement from the world of opinion to a degree of rationality or synthesis, essentially. Not a fault-proof process but necessary nevertheless.
I think, like Benjamin Netanyahu said in the video Blood & Tears, most Israelis believe or understand that what Palestinians want, and what most of the Arab world wants, is to replace Israel with a Palestinian state.
Since Palestine is a geographical area and no one disputes many Palestinians are direct descendants of people living there for ages, going back to the Jewish Kingdom, and possible once were Jews, it's actually a good idea to have one state based on the Land and its inhabitants only, or some federation like Israel-Palestina (as Bosnia -Herzegovina, Serbia-Montenegro).

The two state solution will always remain needlessly messy since the borders will run absurdly and the economies and societies are already way too much intertwined right now. Separating them would cause more problems than solve them, like East and West-Germany once found out.

Meet the Palestinian Seinfeld. Who knew?
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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"In the decades before Israel became a state "Avoda Ivrit" (Hebrew Labour) was a slogan and an ideology-especially for the Jews w/ European backgrounds & stereotypically were not in professions of manual labour. So they emphasised it was good for Jews to do farming, building, in other words "blue-collar" jobs, etc.-and they encouraged it with the slogan "Avoda Ivrit". But "Avoda Aravit", is a term that is disparaging and derogatory to Arabs-if some1 does a sh*t job, they say "Arab work".

Avoda Aravit
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

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I wrote: "Personally, I am not at all convinced that you *really and truly* know yourself, and I certainly do not hide that you-plural---the famous QRS---are a suspicious group in many ways, with a suspicious philosophy and suspicious psychological underpinnings. Your links to Weininger and your sketchy interpretations of Nietzsche (with so many pitfalls and dangers that lurk there, given the relationship of these doctrines to National Socialism and fascism)"[...]

Dan commented: "What relationship? There's no more a relationship between Nietzsche and National Socialism as there is between Jesus and the Spanish Inquisition. You do know that Nietzsche detested National Socialism and indeed Antisemitism, right?"

Your thinking here is not so good. There is next to nothing, if anything at at all, in the Gospels that should allow anything like the Spanish Inquisition. To come up with that sort of praxis (unless there is some other, misanthropic reading of the Gospels I am unaware of) you really have to be inventive. On the other hand, there are very many things in Nietzsche, as is quite well documented and more or less obvious, from which doctrines of Nazism and Hitlerism could be constructed: a transvaluation of all values; the sanctity of 'will to power'; the right and the duty of the strong to dominate; the sole right of great states to exist; the coming of the Ubermensch and some sort of Master-race that would assert its power. Nietzsche may well have abhorred the result (many 'decent Germans' also abhorred the result), but it is hard to deny---in retrospect---that these ways of thinking, and a sort of cold-hearted rejection of Christian and humanistic values and morals led fairly directly to the catastrophe of Nazism.

Jung said Nietzsche was a dangerous elixor that could only be drunk by a very 'mature' person and it seems to be true.

The work of Nietzsche y'all seem to admire the most---Zarathustra---is such a strangulation of values of decency---all in the stage-dress of a prophetic theatre heralding the emergence of a new race of men, new lords of life, and all the rest.

While Nietzsche, as we all know, did not write anti-Semitic tracts and in his way defended Jews, he presents all the core prejudices and interpretations of Judaism and of Jews. From Nietzsche and the Nazis by Crane Brinton:

"Yet most of the stock of professional anti-Semitism is represented in Nietzsche: the Jews are intellectuals with a grievance, hence destroyers of what makes for stability in society; they run the press and the stock-exchange, to the disadvantage of the slower-witted but more honest and healthy Gentiles; they are parasites, decadents; they are responsible for the three great evils of modern civilization---Christianity, Democracy, Marxism."

The lines that are traced between Nietzsche, his era, and the 2 German wars is clear, straight and bold. There is effectively no way to conceal that or to alter it. It is also very true that many intellectuals and artists ('aesthetes' as you are fond of saying) have discovered in Nietzsche many different and creative alternatives, it is quite stupid do fail to grasp that Nietzsche---still in the fascistic sense---is a kind of dynamite one has to be very careful with.

I do not say that I think you are fascists, I only say that there is something suspect in your general philosophy that is difficult to put one's finger on. Also, though you do not give voice to outright neo-fascistic dogma, there are numerous examples on this very forum of people who, under the influence of Weininger or Nietzsche and who knows who else, have expressed such distorted views and have never, to my knowledge, been contested by any of you. Neil, whose nickname I forgot, was exactly one of those, and so was Faust. Leyla is a minor version as well, but a more or less open Jew-hater.
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Alex Jacob wrote:Your thinking here is not so good. There is next to nothing, if anything at at all, in the Gospels that should allow anything like the Spanish Inquisition.
Nonsense, Jesus acted as centerpart of the faith that was examined by this Inquisition. The gospels of course being just as well "a dangerous elixor that could only be drunk by a very 'mature' person". As all writing that is infused with wisdom, it has to be, it should distrub, lift up, confuse, condemn, break away - by its very function. Before it gets cushioned by the powers that be.
there are very many things in Nietzsche, as is quite well documented and more or less obvious, from which doctrines of Nazism and Hitlerism could be constructed: a transvaluation of all values; the sanctity of 'will to power'; the right and the duty of the strong to dominate; the sole right of great states to exist; the coming of the Ubermensch and some sort of Master-race that would assert its power.
But Nazism is mainly based on the older and more widely spread and respected Social Darwinism which gained momentum in the 19th century. Nietzsche just incorporated this, as many thinkers of his time did, and gave his own interpretation and criticism on it.

There's just no way you can forge a link between Nietzsche's anti-nationalist, anti-racist, anti-German stance and the Nazi core thinking. The "will to power" when applied politicaly could just as well relate to Julius Ceasar, Napoleon and Kaiser Wilhelm. Or the ancient Greek.
-that these ways of thinking, and a sort of cold-hearted rejection of Christian and humanistic values and morals led fairly directly to the catastrophe of Nazism.
But Nietzsche explained in detail what would lead to this catastrophy using the ideas of a rising nihilism, smallness of spirit and the rise of populist philosophies. He never 'rejected' but witnessed a decline, a moral bankrupcy. A decline seen by many, including Hitler, who did receive some inspiration from Nietzsche of course, more as an afterthought and propaganda piece though.

The War came and went, but Nietzsche's vision still stands and the afterwar evolution of statism and dumbing down only demonstrates the correctness of his views. Hitlerism is far from over. Or as the late Jacques Ellul wrote in The victory of Hitler:
Jacques Ellul wrote:But this seems clear, that there is no point to using political or technological means to curb this movement. Before this tide that destroys all spiritual value and man himself by forging his golden chains, he can only draw up men who, because they will be it fully, will not let themselves be absorbed by this civilization, to bow down to this slavery. But how can men in their weakness and sin resist and protect their own destiny in tomorrow’s hive of activity?
In the face of this tide that destroys all spiritual value and man himself, he can only draw up the Man. “Here is the Man.”
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Alex Jacob
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Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

Post by Alex Jacob »

Do mine eyes deceive me? A whole flock of 'Jesus Radicals'?!? Diebert, Deibert, what has come over you? There seems to be a connect between the 2 poles of the mind and the brain indeed floats! You really have mastered Aesop Rock...

william cavanaugh
linda damico
jacques ellul
richard gregg
stanley hauerwas
george hunsinger
jean laserre
martin luther king jr.
carolyn marvin
david mccarthy matzko
john milbank
charles tilly
leo tolstoy
john howard yoder

[From Ellul's 'Money & Power']

"Rich or poor, we all face the problem of money. But is money chiefly a personal problem, how we use our own resources? Or a societal problem, how we organize the economy? Jacques Ellul exposes the folly of a purely societal approach---whether communism, collectivism, socialism or capitalism---and argues for individual responsibility. Money, he says, is not neutral, something we can use as we like. Instead it is a powerful agent that sets itself against God's kingdom. Tracing the scriptural attitudes toward wealth from Old Testament sacramentalism through New Testament renunciation, he challenges Christians to live by the law of grace and not by the law of the marketplace."

Diebert---is this the new you?

Let us recite a Psalm together.
_________________________________________________________

You wrote:

"Nonsense, Jesus acted as centerpart of the faith that was examined by this Inquisition. The gospels of course being just as well "a dangerous elixir that could only be drunk by a very 'mature' person". As all writing that is infused with wisdom, it has to be, it should disturb, lift up, confuse, condemn, break away - by its very function. Before it gets cushioned by the powers that be."

Obviously, the Torches of Revelation still burn weak in you, but I'll help you out some. 'Jesus' in no way acted...in any sense in the activities of the Inquisition which seemed to have everything to do with mind-control and very little to do with conduct (i.e. Christ-like conduct). No part of all that had anything to do with the teachings of Jesus, nor the nature of his words or deeds as recorded in the Gospels.

But a great part of what Nietzsche explored---the ideas presented and the furious way they were presented---were easy to assimilate into fascistic doctrines. This was done almost immediately by the likes of HL Mencken or GB Shaw. Nietzsche himself may have meant this or that---who can definitively decide?---but it cannot be denied that for a great many his meaning was extremely clear, and had to do with knocking over a code of ethics and giving way to a more open Will to Power unfettered by anachronistic Roman impositions.

You are being quite unreasonable here, Diebert. But a few hours on the rack will cure your problem. The Truth is there for all to see but some need a little push (or pull as the case may be...)
Ni ange, ni bête
Leyla Shen
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Location: Flippen-well AUSTRALIA

Re: Barack Obama, next president of the U.S.?

Post by Leyla Shen »

I don’t hate Jews. I am an open critic of Israel which, obviously, includes criticism of Jews and Judaism. I think they’re stupid mostly because, unlike any other religious group, they don’t even know that their personal identifier is religious. Consequently, any criticism of this results in the usual, indiscriminate “anti-semitic” charge:
Yacob wrote:Leyla is a minor version as well, but a more or less open Jew-hater.
Despite the accuser’s complete inability to argue the reasons with clarity:
Yacob wrote:I do not say that I think you are fascists, I only say that there is something suspect in your general philosophy that is difficult to put one's finger on.
A “something suspect” that is “difficult to put one’s finger on” being wholly the result of the critic’s and not the accuser’s unreason, naturally...

You don’t know what you’re talking about, so anyone who says anything you don’t like and cannot coherently argue against is, of course, an anti-semite.

Oh, how your ignorance invigorates me... :)
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