Regarding those destroyed CIA torture taps, the bipartisan chairs of the 9/11 Commission are not happy.
The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.
There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.
Via Glenn Greenwald, who has the essential context.
Sadly, Broderites like Richard Cohen cannot possibly react to this until they find or can credibly make up examples of Democrats torturing detainees, hiding the evidence and lying to investigating commissions about it.
***BIG Update***
Attorney General Mukasey has opened an investigation. Even better:
Mukasey named John Durham, a federal prosecutor in Connecticut, to oversee the case. Durham has a reputation as one of the nation’s most relentless prosecutors. He served as an outside prosecutor overseeing an investigation into the FBI’s use of mob informants in Boston and helped send several Connecticut public officials to prison.
Zifnab
Clinton tried to hide the stained blue dress!!!11!!oneoneelventyone!
Besides, if we let the Democrats on the 9/11 Commission Panel know about how we were torturing people, they’d just turn the information over to the terrorists. And what then?!
4tehlulz
TEH 5HI114REE’Z KAKLE IZ TORCHERENG US!! Y NOT TORCHER AL KIEDA U DH1MM1ECRATS?
/Village
Who wants to bet on who says basically this? Dowd? Cohen? Kurtz?
Face
I have a really, really strong feeling, that over the course of the next few years, we’ll discover a lot of things that the 9/11 Commission was never shown/told/explained.
Iceberg, meet tip.
gypsy howell
A sternly worded letter will be sent in short order.
Bob In Pacifica
Kerry’s acceptance speech. The one where he saluted. That was rather awkward and painful. Kerry’s speech caused me a slight discomfort which could be equated to torture by some tortured logic. If one uses tortured logic, then one could say that…
This is still a work in progress but I think that there’s going to be an equal sign coming up eventually.
gypsy howell
May I also add that someday those of us who believe that 9-11 was “an inside job” on some level or another will be vindicated, just like we have been vindicated on WMDs, Iraq and every single other issue on which we have been accused of Bush Derangement Syndrome for the last 7 years.
Not that it changes what’s happened of course.
TheFountainHead
Is it sad that at this point I find it really hard to muster the energy to get upset about this stuff? I mean, there are so many fronts on which to fight the Idiocracy, that I’m feeling worn thin. Perhaps that is the strategy now. “The more scandals we throw at them, the less likely thinking Americans are going to be able to adequately call us out on any of them!”
Chris
Yes, but as it says…
There obviously wasn’t, so what’s the problem? It’s not like anyone was tortured or anything, right? Get back to work safe, citizen.
myiq2xu
And the Village Idiots Said “Can I Get a Ho-Hum?”
Do you really expect the Broderites and the Dowdy types to do more than yawn at these revelations? Will our new AG do anything besides “look into” these allegations without ever charging anyone?
Will Nancy put impeachment back on the table?
You better sit down while you’re waiting.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
cleek
1. revelation
2. outrage
3. stonewalling
4. exasperation
5. forgetting
myiq2xu
Bill should have come clean. He would have avoided so much trouble that way.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
Wilfred
Wouldn’t it be more productive to speculate on the possible reasons why NOTHING has been done, nor will be, about any one of the numerous discrepancies, outrages etc. concerning TWAT since the Democrats have assumed leadership?
Chris
That was always the strategy, and you’re fully aware of it.
If you’re not the attention-whore Nader-type, then there are two things to do as a concerned patriot.
1.) Stay angry, and
2.) Discriminate against anyone who doesn’t show appropriate respect for the ideals you stand for.
That’s not a lot, and will drive us to civil war if taken too far… but that will be the minimum requirement in the future if we’re to get people back in line with the concept that “freedom is worth you dying for (you simple fat-ass housewife with 4 fugly kids)”
Honestly, I hope I’m not being too fanboyish here, but I honestly think an Obama presidency, even if only for 4 years, would put a severe dent in the Weimar conversation in this country.
May not agree with his politics, but at least he’ll change the topic over here.
Chris
Gypsy has a point. Even though it’s a dangerous, soul-consuming crock of muddled shit, all of this Bushing gives serious implied credibility to the wackos falsely seeing patterns in the noise.
We can even tack THAT on to the list of Bush’s failures.
(Yes, I just made up a new term “Bushing”. First day back from vacation. Can’t brain today. No say words meaning right.)
TheFountainHead
I laughed a little desperate laugh when I read this. I’ve been angry for so long. I think we all have, and I think you’re right, Obama has, whether you agree with his politics or not, set himself out as the candidate who will change the tone if nothing else. For all of us who have been sort of in a bi-polar state of outrage and depression, a change in tone is medically necessary.
gypsy howell
I honestly think an Obama presidency will ensure that we never ever find out the truth behind any of the crap that’s been going on since 2000. “Let the healing begin” will be the first step to making sure that the wounds continue to fester and the cancer continues to spread.
SenderC
Without a doubt, Democrats will issue strong words of disapproval coupled with some first class tut-tutting, leading to thoughtful introspection and subsequent mea culpas by the miscreants.
Robert Johnston
Well, you have to be upset over this stuff, but it’s perfectly understandable not to be any more upset than you already were over everything else. This news is about as much of a surprise as the sun rising in the east. It’s just another example of members of the Bush administration and their lackeys believing that the rule of law does not apply to them; there’s no real qualitative difference with what’s come before.
I can’t think of anything short of literal cannibalism that would surprise me about the criminal nature of this administration, and even that wouldn’t really be any worse–just bigger on the yuck factor–than the torture, murder, and complete disregard for the law that we already know of.
gypsy howell
This statement would have a lot more credibility if every single thing that we BDSers had accused the Bush administration of hadn’t basically been proven true over the course of the last 7 years. Really, point to one thing Bush has done that that came out looking BETTER after the facts were brought to light.
Chris
That’s quite correct. But the answer to that was in your other post.
The first requirement is that we get people to understand again that we treat the Constitution like the king, not the President. The secondary target is finding and prosecuting the politicians disloyal to said document.
And if you ask me, the first goal is in reach, and the second will be like swimming laps in a tar-pit.
Keep your eye on the ball, and we’ll make it out of this.
myiq2xu
What exactly do you think Big Dick keeps in that “man-sized” safe?
I’ll bet you a buffalo nickel that the “safe” is refrigerated. That fire in Cheney’s office was probably caused when he was cooking up a snack.
Look up all the definitions of rendition (to render) and you’ll realize what His Supreme Excellency, Doctor, Field Marshal, Sith Lord, Vice-President for Life Richard B. Cheney really hungers for.
Let’s just say that he likes man-meat, but he isn’t gay.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
The Other Steve
Adolf Hitler did it, and as we all know, he was a Democrat.
Robert Johnston
Well, there’s trading Sosa, which looks better after the whole bat corking thing came to light and steroid users started being frowned upon.
As President though? Nothing. Which still doesn’t justify crazy 9/11 conspiracy theories. There’s no reason not to believe that Bush simply didn’t take terrorism seriously before 9/11 and then took advantage of 9/11 to instill fear in the population and make people compliant after the fact.
cleek
nothing is going to happen with this. nobody of any importance is going to lose their job. at best, one or two underling scapegoats will get canned.
the Dems just aren’t going to go after the president on issues of national security during an election year: after all this time, it’s clear that they don’t want anything to change (ie. they approve of Bush’s actions); and, they don’t want to run the risk of being painted as wanting to surrender to the enemy during a “time of war”.
nothing’s going to happen here. don’t waste your energy getting upset: it’s not your call.
Chris
I think you misunderstand me. I’m saying this helps Truthers, you’re saying I’m wrong; this helps Truthers.
My issue with conspiracy is rooted in mathematics and information science, not in defense of Bush. I assure you, if I ever defend Bush, you’ll be quickly sucked into the spawned black hole with the rest of the world before you get to respond.
And I take issue with any use of “BDS”. Show me the derangement of disliking Bush.
Dreggas
Now, now He had Monica swallow the evidence, the blue dress was just a spit stain.
gypsy howell
Chris, I subscribe to the idea that without punishment, there can be no deterrent. There will be no getting back to the Constitution if we let the bastards go on their merry way, continuing to infect our politics and discourse for another generation, just as letting the criminals off the hook in the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations only led to the same cast of unsavory and dangerous characters running our government a few decades later.
I do believe in the redeeming powers of a Nuremburg / Truth & Reconcilation kind of tribunal, where Americans are forced to face what we have allowed to happen in our names and where perpetrators be punished, disgraced and never allowed to darken our political doorstep again.
How else can we move on from this era except by learning the lessons of it? We aren’t going to learn those lessons by sweeping everything under the rug. We should know- we’ve tried that several times over the last 35 years, and it hasn’t worked out too well — each new incarnation of criminality has been more ghastly than the last.
Dreggas
And which one will get the truth out huh? Hillary who’s got just as much invested in seeing it kept hidden? Edwards who only discovered populism when it was used as a campaign tool in ’04? I think the only one pissed off enough to really get the truth out is Dodd but he isn’t exactly in the running.
Few politicians would ever let the truth of anything come out even if they themselves knew it because it threatens them too.
Chris
FIXED.
This is the concept that conspiracy theorists have trouble processing. Just because Bush had motive to instill fear, and had a severe lack of ethos, does not immediately lead to writing up memos and plans on future evil action.
People unconsciously act on most motives, usually in simple increments. And as we’re all aware, Bush can only handle things in small increments.
Dreggas
I just say I do suffer from BDS, Bullshit Derangement Syndrome. After the past 7 years of bullshit I am tired of it and deranged.
Jen
O/T, quote found in the WaPo today I thought was weird/funny…
I can just picture Bill saying “Bosnia? It’s really dangerous in Bosnia. Send Hillary.” :)
Cyrus
Some blogger, I forget who (Josh Marshall? Ezra Klein?), put it well: “The thing I resent most about this administration is the way they make me feel like a conspiracy theorist.” Well, that might not be a direct quote, but anyways.
gypsy howell
And on that we can agree. As far as wacko 9-11 conspiracy theories go, there’s a long continuum between LIHOP and MIHOP, and I’m willing to bet that the truth is somewhere on that continuum. But I’d want that to be proven with evidence, which of course we will never be allowed to see. I don’t think you can categorically discount ALL of it as wacko when what we’re discussing at this very moment is evidence that seems to have been conveniently withheld from the 9-11 investigation. But I’m sure it was JUST the CIA torture tapes that were withheld. Yep. That’s believable.
But anyway I don’t want to further derail this thread into some kind of 9-11 conspiracy thread and seriously annoy our benevolent hosts, so let’s just leave it at that.
pharniel
*Chris Says*:
I almost exploded with a much longer version of this rant at the Captian the other day, because they were basically saying ‘doing whatever it takes to keep me safe is a/ok and just the price of freedom’ and I wanted to yell “you dieng randomly at home is the price of freedom you fuckstarted mancunt!”
fortunaly common sense won and i posted nothing, because it seriously wont’ get through.
but I was seriously annoyed after having to explain that concpet to my father just a day erlier.
gypsy howell
I know you’re right, but a girl can dream, can’t she?
(And believe me, I fear a Hillary presidency would be even more opaque than an Obama presidency. I just was responding to the idea that Obama can heal my wounds with bi-partisanship. He can’t.)
Chris
Intelligent arguments on the internets? not possible!
You’re correct on without punishment, there can be no deterrent.
But I’m sure, being a blog commenter, that you’re quickly becoming aware of the idea that most people, even people high-level enough to function on a computer, are fucking simple. And just as quickly as they can be made to fear, they can be directed to do good. I know we haven’t seen much of that lately, but Presidents used to direct people with clarity and high fidelity.
And what we’re all quickly becoming aware of with the political system at hand, is that perfect politics are too cumbersome to repair.
Create? Maybe. But are you ready to tear down the state and fight for a new one?
It’s reasonable to seek deterrent as a tool to patch the system and fence in the dumbasses running it. But it’s not very likely to happen, and it’s not the only solution.
You can argue with me on this, but I’m thinking that our desire for retribution is genetic, not invented, and we haven’t tested the concept of “moving past” serious crimes sufficiently.
What if we just said “No, people, you do THIS. Now.”, and we said it with enough momentum to push the torture-is-magical meme out of orbit? Maybe it’s more efficient. Maybe it’s speedier. Maybe it’s crap and reinforces the Bushies’ delusions.
But I’m not prepared to spend a shitload of effort on something that might not even work :/
libarbarian
Actually, there is a good reason – Manichean illusions are so simple and comforting.
I agree with Parker and Stone – 9/11 conspiracies are a government conspiracy … and Gypsy is clearly a rightwing hack shilling for the Bush administration.
cleek
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Chris
LOOK OVER THERE!!
/me steals hilarious phrase
Robert Johnston
I’ve got no issues with that as a clarification. Bush always wanted to invade Iraq and consciously saw 9/11 as a golden opportunity. In other ways he took less conscious advantage of it. What he didn’t do was what the truthers claim he did: plan 9/11 or purposely ignore specific good intelligence about it hoping it would happen (as opposed to generally ignoring nonspecific terrorism intelligence because he didn’t believe terrorism was an real issue).
Bush has murdered plenty of people as President; there’s no need to make up stories about him murdering thousands of people on 9/11 to make him look bad.
TenguPhule
At this point, maybe we could import some Canadian DOJ to do what the locals can’t.
Investigate, Prosecute and Convict.
The Other Steve
Once a Democrat is in office in 2009, I don’t care.
As far as I’m concerned we implement a program of debushification where we just forget the fool ever existed.
And that includes renaming the Houston airport.
Chris
Good try, but the arguments against conspiracy theories are based on the poor fidelity between the actual system the events occur in and the model of the system the observers record. Conspiracy theories aren’t out of control because the believers are fervent. Most people are fervent in what they do for a living. And they’re not out of control for lack of information, because we all operate on extremely shifty information.
They’re out of control from the same exact mechanism that causes the Bushies to believe torture functions as TV says it does.
Be angry, be driven, seek the answers, and impugn those that would interfere with the aforementioned. But don’t for a second think that Bush et al. are more powerful/nuanced/brilliant than the system they swim in with the rest of us :)
gypsy howell
Mmmmm… much as I’d love to believe this, I gotta disagree with you there. Fear is a much stronger motivator than altruism.
Wilfred
No they can’t. The other day I re-read The Apology of Socrates. After he loses the trial and is condemned to death, he says:
Socrates always wins the argument, but always loses the trial and always has to drink the hemlock.
We all face the same (metaphorical) choice every day.
Chris
It’s not about making up stories.
“Bush murdered thousands of people on 9/11” will be an unanswered topic forever, especially given the lack of transparency on what happened leading up to it. Conspiracy theorists aren’t bad people for demanding everything come to light.
It’s just a broken concept because they keep digging for “that guy” who explicitly crafted the situation that everyone witnessed, and there never is one. It’s just the failure of a neurological system that prefers discrete and boolean models but is existing in a stochastic, blended world.
They’re not making up a story (not at least, as a primary goal). They’re just having trouble resolving actuality with perception.
Dreggas
the fuckstarted manc#nt line should be added to the balloon juice lexicon along with lord of the stance, truly that was golden. That being said we really need to start a wiki…
Krista
If it’s bureaucrats that are involved, no problem. If it’s high-level government officials, they’ve proven to be just as slippery.
Ed Drone
“LIHOP and MIHOP”
Shto eta? Was ist das? Wuzzat?
All I can guess is “Let it hoppen / make it hoppen” (with “happen” spelled wrong), but I could be wrong — I probably am wrong.
Ed
Chris
Yet again, correct, but you’re missing me; I’m not talking about motivation. The people have too much damned energy on their own these days.
Everything I’ve observed since 2001 shows me that undirected people DO NOT create functional memes wholly of their own. Someone in a position of coordination (a leader-type) has to inject the populace with a host of proposed ideas and then wait for the wisdom of crowds to kill the weak ideas, fix the OK ones, and propagate the good ones.
As Limbaugh has demonstrated to me well: Garbage in, garbage out.
Chris
Wilfred, not sure how to respond to that…
I don’t see how Socrates has anything to do with the General Populace… maybe my response to Gypsy re: undirected populace covers this…
As far as I understood from my philosophy course, Socrates was at least an irritant in Athens, and possibly more… and Socrates always won the arguments because Plato’s records cleaned them so that they made sense…
I think you’re just trying to say that the people are hostile on average, but I don’t know how to disagree with you…
myiq2xu
I used to be on the emailing lists of some conservative relatives and every day they would forward me these urban fables where patriotic conservatives triumphed over pointy-headed libruls and evildoers.
These alleged “true stories” were impossible to verify (although Snopes disproved many of them) and seemed to have appeared magically out of thin air.
I’ve always suspected that these stories were not spontaneously generated out of nothing but were instead purposefully injected into teh internets by someone connected to the GOP. They were way too convienent and too one-sided to be true. I always wanted to spend time investigating and tracing these stories to their origins but never had the time.
s/ The Notorious myiq2xu
ThymeZone
LIHOP/MIHOP
Dreggas
Sounds not unlike a certain propaganda minister that represented a certain government in the 30’s and 40’s in or around the general vicinity of Austria, Hungary, and let us not forget POLAND.
That being said, it’s not too far off. People are like electrons and protons, they just hum and buzz with their own charges but have yet to be drawn together into clusters of atoms. It takes something to galvanize them and some attractant force to hold them together. Much like our galaxy is held together by the pull of the blackhole at the center so to do we need something to “rally ’round”.
It’s not just democrat and republican either, it seems to me that more and more it’s AMERICAN in general. The country does need someone to rally around and channel the energy into righting these wrongs. Fear might be a stronger motivation than altruism, but most Americans tend to go for the altruistic feelings, or used to anyway.
Bombadil
OK, way off topic, but I’ve been away, I’m getting caught up, and there’s no open thread anywhere. Why has no one (especially John Cole) commented on the $4 million dollar law suit?
Robert Johnston
Well, given the ThymeZone link I’d say that any position more strongly worded than LLIHBNI (Likely, By Negligent Idiocy) just isn’t defendable.
srv
As someone who voted against GW four times, if he smuggled demolotions into the WTC and then made four airliners disappear, he is the most brilliant president ever.
Chris
To push further on that concept, “invent” really just means “create efficiently”. Limbaugh can invent these stories only because he’s got hundreds of thousands of propagators, thus making it efficient.
((As opposed to John Cole, who has 20 or so resident cockroaches in his closet, and nobody likes us anyways. So John has to get a real job.))
I wouldn’t say that someone in the GOP is cackling evilly. I think they still pull this out of their asses as well, they just happen to have the requisite multipliers that cause you to get hit violently in the face with their ass-product.
Chris
Dreggas, your Act of Godwin did not go unnoticed :)
Bombadil
Skip the question about the WVU law suit — moved to open thread which magically popped up while I was posting.
libarbarian
No – they are bad people for other reasons. Actually, calling them “bad” might be too much but there is something highly insulting when people tell you that what you saw with your own eyes didn’t happen, that you are a liar, or both, based on simplistic “pseudo-analysis” of a couple of photos.
I was one of hundreds, if not thousands, of eyewitnesses that saw the plane hit the Pentagon and who find it flabbergasting and insulting that morons who were no where near the scene are convincing other people that the building was hit by a cruise missile, and not a plane, based on an armchair analysis of a couple of photographs. It wasn’t filmed like the WTC attack was but there were no shortage of eyewitnesses whose testimony has been willfully ignored by the “truthers”
Given that the conspiracy theorists are still peddling at least 1 theory that I KNOW, not think but KNOW, is false then its harder to believe their analysis of things I do not know, like the structural integrity of the towers. Furthermore, the fact that they willfully right off the abundant eyewitnesses of this fact as “government employees and contractors” (this is DC and lots of people have “ties” to the government) and thereby imply that we are all lying and part of the conspiracy makes it hard to even consider them good people honestly looking for the truth.
Wilfred
The point of the Apology is the choice between being a philosopher or one of the mob – a human being capable of reason or a sentimentalist motivated and guided by his emotions. Most of the Dialogues are about this.
You said:
One lesson of the Apology (of History) is that this is nottrue, hence my mention of it. The only thing that can overcome fear is reason, another lesson, and since most Homelanders are force-fed cheap sentimentality, including fear, from birth, there is little reason to think that they will suddenly become ‘philosophers’.
Most Homelanders are cowardly little shits more than willing to kill off all the brown people on earth if that’s what it takes to ‘feel’ safe. Their ancestors killed Socrates for similar reasons.
srv
What libarbarian said. For a movement called “Truthers”, I’ve never found a single verifiable truth.
IMHO, being irrational does make you a bad person. Even Rush got over his Black Helicopter phase, and has very rational reasons for being a scumbag.
Chris
I’m sure those are only the arguments of the uber-solipsists AKA 40-year-olds living with mom. Most people are only arguing that how the planes got there was only possible by either an act of god or help from a large and capable apparatus. A compelling, but still weak, argument.
There’s something to be said for taking on people that challenge you on what you saw. The fact of the matter is: it’s just two people reading from the same reality by different media. Alas, being in line of sight of an event does not always constitute an information-rich picture, especially amidst violence. You’re actually on equal footing. And if you’re going to knock them off their self-constructed pedestal, you have to use the same exact argument: that what they’ve experienced looking at photos does not constitute a full picture.
You should take them on instead of getting angry. You’ll become more capable for it :)
ThymeZone
Well said. And just for the record, the ASCE report on the performance of the Pentagon in the event, along with ther exhaustive analysis of every aspect of the physical event and its effects on the building, the path and distribution of the airplane and its effects inside the building …. would prove the case even if nobody had seen it happen. Beyond any shadow of doubt.
And of course the “truthers” just ignore or distort these findings completely, asking you to believe the branfarts of morons over the carefully assembled fact-based analysis of the country’s best civil engineers.
But the thing about the truthers is, they don’t care what the truth is. Their game is all about themselves. They are the internet equivalent of graffiti artists, people who spray paint stuff on the sides of buildings. They have no real interest the truth at all, never have.
What they’ve taught us is what I will call the Pierre Salinger Rule: You can spread any lie, if it’s big enough.
Of course, they are just doing what their putative targets, the Bush administration, does every day. The two deserve each other.
Chris
ahh… that’s what you were going for.
My counterargument to that is most people have varied abilities to reason, including numerous weltanschauungs, and all of the discrepancies between people is why we give our organizers extra power (they become “leaders”) so that they may establish some communications with higher fidelity. I’m pretty sure that’s certainly capable of stemming some of the natural fear that people feel, and I’m certain that it’s more efficient that teaching everyone how to view and process reality properly.
I’m essentially saying that it would be more efficient to direct people — while were in trouble — rather than patiently teach them. I’m all for the latter, despite my lack of hope for it.
Leisureguy
Well, at least the Right is consistent: remember Roman Hruska (“the Defender of the Strong”) saying that there should be a mediocre person on the Supreme Court because mediocrity deserved a voice. And, of course, we now have Clarence Thomas.
Chris
Conspiracy Theory is not about lying. It’s about the model having a black hole somewhere. Literally, a “singularity”.
Everything that a theorist operates on is functionally correct, even if it seems nutty to you, until contrary evidence comes out. A normal person would be forced to evaluate even the basic concept that someone doing his job somewhere came up with a contrary answer. A theorist however has already validated a rule that says that super-capable operatives are creating the contrary information, therefore positive contrary information cannot exist.
Without that rule, a theorist would just be a weird guy with a weird meme, and the meme would die off in the sandblaster of critical thought. But since that rule creates a perfect mechanism, a “singularity”, critical thought is unusually disabled.
ThymeZone
Also, of all orgs, Popular Mechanics magazine has done a superb job of rounding up the “theories” and presenting concise versions of the debunkings.
It’s excellent work.
srv
You could convert an evangelical to an evolutionist before you could ever get a truther to come up with a theory as to why WTC “was taken down”.
2000 years from now, there will be a religion based on WTC7.
ThymeZone
I hope it’s for architects. That was a weird building with really questionable structural features (the truss over the power substation supporting the middle of the building, for example).
4tehlulz
Hopefully, it will include a commandment against “value engineering”.
Chris
Aaaaactualy… if you’re talking about a fundamentalist evangelical, they have the same problem. Their singularity is the rule that data contrary to the congregation’s teachings are directed and managed by Satan.
However, this doesn’t easily constitute a singularity because fundamentalists tend to live in isolated communities of information. Therefore their worldview is actually correct for their informational environment. It only becomes a problem when they start voting for our president or throwing bibles at the school board.
A regular evangelical, on the other hand, probably not the case. But their problem is usually a misunderstanding of Evolution and its support, not a strictly ideological opposition.
lysias
If these detainees were tortured, that severely undermines the credibility of their testimony. And, as I understand it, their testimony was basically the source for all the 9/11 Commission Report had to say about the operational details of 9/11.
Asti
Seems to me that’s exactly why it will become a religion in the future, and they will have schisms based on the LIHOP/MIHOP belief systems.
Oh, the more things change, the more they stay the same, huh?
lysias
In fact, the desire to get testimony that would support the official version of what happened on 9/11 may have been the principal reason the torture started.
After all, torture is not a very good way of getting accurate information. But it is a good way to get people to testify what the torturers want.
Asti
I thought their sole problem was belief that humans evolved from monkeys? They vehemently oppose the idea that their ancestors could have had tails and hair all over their bodies, despite the existence of the coccyx bone and fine hair all over OUR bodies.
Chris
That’s their argument, yes. But it’s a valid argument to say “Not from monkeys, from something else” as long as they’re still attempting to find evidence and engage the common reality.
It’s when they stop playing by the universally-fair rules of empirical science and start disqualifying fossils, that they become a problem, per se.
Asti
It’s also a great way to fool the public, and gain votes in an election (2004) because most people really don’t do any research, they only rely on what tellyvision tells them.
Chris
Sorry, fixed.
Asti
But their “something else” is a whole lot more unbelievable.
Chris
Only to you, from the education you received. Their education is diametrically opposed to yours, so “God created it, bible says it, I believe it” is handled well by their preordained neural configuration.
The only thing that will bring us together is engaging in reality together and playing nice with each other. And then we’ll find out who’s right.
Zifnab
Which is the fundamental problem. The creationist “theory” rests entirely on The Bible as evidence, to hell with the contrary. This literal interpretation also leads to a great deal of other ridiculousness, like the dismissal of carbon dating and some wild theories about how erosion works (in order to explain how The Flood shaped the world).
Our next generation of engineers, pharmacists, and architects have the backbone of their careers thrown into question because someone needs to “prove” that people road Dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden 6000 years ago.
That’s why this ID/Creationist garbage is so bad.
Chris
I know the evangelicals can make you want to punch something — I’m with you on that — but you still have to allow them an opening position. They’ve chosen: the bible has useful information to some degree.
Everything following that is the bible being tested by reality. We’ve easily disproven that the world was created in a literal 7 days, but we’ve got nothing on “an intelligence is fundamentally behind what exists now on Earth”. Right now, you can tell a sane evangelical from an insane one based on how they reconcile their book with reality. If they choose the book’s literal content over reality, they’re goners. If discount large swaths of real information outside of the empirical rule set, then they’re stupid.
But otherwise, go easy on them. If they say “I understand you’ve found these data, but I’m not sure what that means for me specifically”, then they’re doing just fine. They don’t have to jump on the bandwagon. They just have to let us know that they see what we see and they haven’t been tripping on mescaline the whole time.
libarbarian
1) I think Robert Altemeyer was dead on when he said (paraphrase) “Fundamentalists do not believe in the contents of the Bible, they believe things ABOUT the Bible”. The LAST thing they do is take it literally – they interpret as much as everyone else. when they say they take it “litterally” they just mean “my interpretation is right”. Thats it.
2) While most secular people accept that the bible should not be taken literally, they mistakenly accept the assertion of the fundamentalists that it was intended to be taken that way. Wrong! The biggest irony is that the authors of the Bible often did not mean or want for their work to be taken literally. In these cases a literal reading is not just factually wrong but theologically incorrect and therefore un-Christian.
For example, both Mark and John give precise times for Jesus’s death but they disagree. Mark says he dies at 9am on Passover. John says he dies at Noon on the day before the passover. Furthermore, the source of this disagreement is NOT “confusion”, accident, or mistake – it is a DELIBERATE CHOICE BY JOHN TO CHANGE THE TIME OF HIS DEATH FROM THAT IN MARK!!
Atheists/Agns
libarbarian
REDO with correct formatting:
1) I think Robert Altemeyer was dead on when he said (paraphrase) “Fundamentalists do not believe in the contents of the Bible, they believe things ABOUT the Bible”. The LAST thing they do is take it literally – they interpret as much as everyone else. when they say they take it “litterally” they just mean “my interpretation is right”. Thats it.
2) While most secular people accept that the bible should not be taken literally, they mistakenly accept the assertion of the fundamentalists that it was intended to be taken that way. Wrong! The biggest irony is that the authors of the Bible often did not mean or want for their work to be taken literally. In these cases a literal reading is not just factually wrong but theologically incorrect and therefore un-Christian.
For example, both Mark and John give precise times for Jesus’s death but they disagree. Mark says he dies at 9am on Passover. John says he dies at Noon on the day before the passover. Furthermore, the source of this disagreement is NOT “confusion”, accident, or mistake – it is a DELIBERATE CHOICE BY JOHN TO CHANGE THE TIME OF HIS DEATH FROM THAT IN MARK!! John is the only Gospel that calls Jesus the “Lamb of God” and the time of death given by John is the exact time that the Passover lambs were traditionally slaughtered in the Temple for the passover meal at sundown. John deliberately changed the time of Jesus’s death to emphasize the metaphor of Jesus as the Sacrificial Lamb of God. He simply didn’t care if it was factually correct. He probably knew it wasn’t. His care was to make a theological point and NOT to present the “facts”. Reading John as a literal history OBSCURES, rather than illuminates, the REAL message of his gospel.
It doesn’t help us to remain ignorant of the Bible and therefore allow these morons, who often don’t know jack shit about even their own religion, to spread lies like “The Bible was meant to be taken literally” unchallenged. By doing that, Atheists and Agnostics allow Fundies to maintain the charade that, whether factually “right” or “wrong”, they represent the kind of Biblical interpretation intended by the “original christians”. THEY DO NOT!
Contrary to the unjustified belief of most Atheists and Agnostics that the Bible was written by semi-literate shepards, it was actually written by the most educated elements of the society at the time – and it it chalk full of complex symbolism, puns & plays on words, metaphors and “secret” meanings. These reflect the intentions of the authors, and hence the “true” fundamentals, of the Bible. Literalism, otoh, obscures and destroys these fundamentals. End of Fucking Story!
Chris
Certainly could fit with in the model that I’ve seen demonstrated so far.
If they could blatantly fuck up on the meaning of “theory”, they might as well go for broke and take a shit all over “literal”.
Maybe they’ll shoot for the moon and fuck up the meaning of the Constitut — oh wait they have! “Christian nation”.
Impressive, those guys.
Zifnab
When they do that, that’s fine. When they stick disclaimers in textbooks claiming “Fossil Data May Be Closer To The Present Than It Appears!”, the problems re-emerge. You are assuming a pacifist belief system when, in fact, the guys causing all the trouble are incredibly pro-active.
I’ve got no problem with a person who believes in witches until said person begins conducting witch hunts. That’s what a great deal of this fundie legislation is – a witch hunt. Government money spent to persecute the innocent and protect us from the non-existent.
Chris
I have the sinking feeling libarbarian is yelling at me…
Anyways, I couldn’t let this slip:
It’ll never be the end of the story. There will always be more for us to find out :)
Don’t say it, because if you can close off debate, so can the losers, and we need them to stick around, or they’ll go off and come up with more abominations like “Condoms don’t work” and “Global warming is anti-Christian”
HyperIon
i had forgotten him. but google is my friend so see how his greatness has been memorialized:
Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center
Chris
I’m not assuming anything. Remember, my preznit is one of the more cancerous fundies out there.
I’m just throwing water on the flame where it starts to light the pants-legs of the good non-scientists on fire. We need them to find the fundie meatsacks and defib their crania.
I’m also extremely defensive of anyone that faithfully participates in reality, even if they don’t live up to my preferred standards.
libarbarian
I do have a habit of lots of ALLCAPS and bold text. It’s mostly because I write like I speak and I use them as a substitute for verbal EmPhAsIs.
Sorry.
Punchy
92 friggin responses, and no one made a single Larry Craig crack using Tim’s egregious typo?
You guys are slipping. Slipping, I say.
Dreggas
Honestly I’d be more comfortable believing they WERE tripping on mescaline the whole time, it would go a long way to explaining Revelation after all… Of course there is a history about the inclusion of THAT book as well.
Dreggas
Spectator I: I think it was “Blessed are the cheesemakers”.
Mrs. Gregory: Aha, what’s so special about the cheesemakers?
Gregory: Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.
– once again proving that Monty Python’s life of brian provides many answers to these age old questions.
Chris
The John that wrote Revelations was a nut living alone, in the desert, recording his stale inner visions.
There are people like that on the street. They write everything on cardboard, in sharpie, nary a complete sentence.
They don’t bother me either.
myiq2xu
A “pacifist male” is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described “pacifists” are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger – Robert Anson Heinlein
To which I say “Arrrr!”
libarbarian
Man, I keep finding layers in that film.
Remember the scene when Brian, a “blind prophet” who doesn’t know what he is doing or how to get out of the mess he is in, is in a pit when one of his followers says “I was blind but now I see” and falls into the pit with him.
Well, Jesus said “And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit”.
I wonder if the MP crew did that on purpose….
Dreggas
Yup, and the answer to your question is yup. The Python crew knew darn well what they were doing and picked apart every portion of that and left it in many pieces, much like the stones at the stoning, laying around on the ground.
Tim F.
Bloggers and late night comics (while we still had those) ran the Larry Craig joke into the ground, through the Earth’s gravitational center, back out of a wheat field in southeastern China and onward into space. We killed the funny.
Asti
Patmos must be a HUGE island to contain a desert. ;)
Asti
I got news for you, the pit is not real.
Asti
Yes, which made his story of a true story regarding a savior of the world totally enigmatic and highly doubtful, but, they all did that in their own respective ways. On top of that, you have some great information on the contents of the Bible, but, I could show you some things in there that would curl your hair.
Chris
I fail. I dunno where I got it into my head that he was in a desert. Maybe I was thinking of the dead sea scrolls.
Asti
John the Baptizer spent a lot of time hanging out in the desert. Lots of people get the two mixed up. ;)
It’s a common mistake, don’t feel bad.