Domestic terrorism, brought to you by David Daleiden and His willing accomplices in the GOP:
As NBC reporting, source tells me PP shooting politically motivated. After being arrested suspect said to officers: "no more baby parts"
— Wesley Lowery (@WesleyLowery) November 28, 2015
Carly Fiorina, Cruz, and the rest of these assholes should have their asses nailed to the wall for aiding and abetting this shit.
Patricia Kayden
Unfortunately, Republicans rally around their own. They’ll find some way to blame Obama and liberals for this terrorist attack against Planned Parenthood. They are never in the wrong.
Mike J
Nobody wants to say this and nobody wants to shut down political institutions or anything, but you know, you understand it. A lot of people understand it. We’re going to have no choice.
NotMax
The benefits derived from years of fetal tissue research?
Satan’s work.
/RWNJ analysis
Mary G
@NotMax: This. I have always wondered how many of these people are benefitting from drugs developed by using lessons learned from that tissue.
Xenos
Hmmm… damages directly arising from defamatory statements, cause by a person who took knowingly false statements to be true?
Some deep pockets out there if the links are tight enough.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Xenos: Can that actually happen?
ETA: On a related note, though, if you can jail a teenager for tweets that encourage others to join ISIS…
Ah, who am I kidding. Who suffers here? Mostly women? Call me when it’s someone who matters.
Dolly Llama
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: Alan Grayson, your office is calling …
Trentrunner
They are all cowards:
If they TRULY thought that thousands of “babies” were being murdered every week, openly, throughout the U.S., they would be truly storming these murder sites and shutting them down.
But they don’t. They just ratchet the rhetoric and hope the easily armed mentally disturbed will do their dirty work for them.
They’re cowardly misogynist motherfuckers, and they need to be called out for what they are.
gogol's wife
Don’t hold your breath for anything to happen to Fiorina et al.
I thought things would change after Sandy Hook.
debbie
Hmm, Glenn Beck often uses the phrase “baby parts.” Can’t wait to hear what he has to say on Monday.
Felanius Kootea
Who is going to nail their asses to the wall? CNN? Fox News? MSNBC? Hillary? Bernie? O’Malley?
I donated to Planned Parenthood today. I wish I knew what else to do.
Patricia Kayden
@Trentrunner: They’ve passed laws in red states to effectively shut down abortion clinics. http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/abortion-and-the-decline-of-clinics
Patricia Kayden
@Trentrunner: Republicans have effectively shut down abortion clinics in red states via legislation so they’re doing much more than just hoping that some nutter will pick up a gun.
WereBear
Lysistrata. Now.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@gogol’s wife: Yep.
I wonder how far things would have to go for these people to finally be treated like the dangerous crackpot extremists they are. Probably too far to ever hope to rein them in. Instead of shooting up a Planned Parenthood clinic, they’d probably have to launch a coordinated attack on the CEOs of every major media company operating in the US, including Fox. It would have to affect our corporate propagandists directly.
(Of course I’m not advocating for that; I don’t want it to happen; it would be a very bad thing; and every other disclaimer I could possibly put here.)
Baud
@Felanius Kootea:
Sen. Udall of Colorado!
Oh wait. His pro-choice ads were too cheesy.
Grung_e_Gene
I demand planned parenthood apologize!
divF
This explains the shooter’s traveling to Colorado Springs to do the deed – counting on jury nullification so he can walk.
Ksmiami
@Felanius Kootea: the people aiding and abetting this crap need to see that we the people on the other side are just as angry as they are and ready to beat back against these bullies- I called them out on Facebook and I’m not a fri king afraid of these neanderthalish doughy misogynists and their fealty to a document written when people lived in tents and stone temples. Fu”” that and fu”” them with a rusty chainsaw
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Dolly Llama: As soon as he’s done drafting the papers for that Ted Cruz lawsuit of his.
Ella in NM
From what I can already gather this guy has been a ticking time bomb for decades. He should have been locked up long ago, had his guns confiscated and forcibly injected with anti-psychotic drugs on a monthly basis due to his repeatedly violent and paranoid behaviors.
Take someone like this and fill his head with not only more conspiracy based lies, but targets for his rage, and then allow him to buy guns, ammo and move freely about society.
Pretty soon, he is literally the demon incarnation of all the hate and misery and evil that underlies the sick, twisted, ugly American Right.
Dolly Llama
@Baud: Alan Grayson. ETA: It’ll give his lawyers something to do while they wait and see if Cruz wins the nomination.
Baud
@Dolly Llama:
What about Grayson?
skerry
@Ella in NM: But CNN called him “an older gentleman.”
Mike J
Ted Cruz tweeted and, surprisingly, didn’t sound like an utter asshat:
Grung_e_Gene
@divF: I’m always surprised when these conservative domestic terrorists don’t declare themselves Obama loving proud ACORN members who ensured millions of illegals voted, so that the rightwing Internet can point and scream, ‘See! See! See!’
Baud
@Mike J:
Insurance against all the vile stuff he will say.
Frank Wilhoit
@Ella in NM: wrt this particular case it appears that you may well be right; but remember that IF the powers existed to treat Dear as you prescribe, those powers would not be used against the likes of him. They would be used against us.
debbie
@Mike J:
i disagree with your interpretation. Not a word from Cruz against shooting up a private property. Doubtless Ted thinks he’s threading a needle.
FoxinSocks
De-cloaking out of lurkerdom to ask a question that’s been bothering me: Where are the women in all this? Have you seen the survivor interviews? The only ones I’ve seen have been with men (Joan Motolinia was recounting his sister’s phone call, but still the press was interviewing him, not her).
Also, it’s telling that one of CNN’s first interviews was with an anti-PP GOP congressmen who had the temerity to talk about those fake videos while the shooter was still in the PP building.
I understand there’s patient confidentiality and such, but it’s striking how women have been erased from this so far.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Apparently, Alan Grayson is planning to challenge Ted Cruz’s eligibility to run for president, on the grounds that Ted was born in Canada ergo is not a citizen. It will certainly not work, since Ted’s mother was an American citizen; but it might succeed in putting some Republican voters off.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@FoxinSocks: Not surprising at all.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
I’m not necessarily against political stunts. But this one doesn’t seem all that well thought out.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@FoxinSocks: As I mentioned downstairs, in the TV clips I’ve seen, many of the people rescued had their faces blurred. Given the harassment (and worse) too many people even peripherally associated with Planned Parenthood have suffered, I’m not surprised that people there haven’t wanted to be shown, let alone interviewed yet.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cacti
Killed a cop and injured 5 more for Jesus and “life”.
But BLM is the real danger.
Smh.
Trakker
SCOTUS will be deciding whether 10 abortion clinics in the state of Texas is enough to satisfy the Constitution. If they say yes, then it means 10 gun shops in all of Texas is enough to satisfy the 2nd Amendment, right?
Mike J
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Look at what people do to women in the name of “ethics in gaming journalism.” I don’t blame anybody for not wanting to be made the public face of women’s healthcare.
James E Powell
@Amir Khalid:
I’m against it! I love political theater, but I don’t like childish stunts. Somebody ought to have a sit down with Grayson. He ought to be working to defeat the two Florida-based candidates. He’s got standing there.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@James E Powell: Alan Grayson involved in a childish stunt? I’m shocked.
JPL
That was also on NBCnews.
I blame Obama… See how easy it is.
currants
@WereBear: Not so sure of that. Just saw TNC on the topic, and I think he’s nailed it.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Numbskull escapade. We do not need an Orly Taitz of the left.
debbie
@FoxinSocks:
There was a couple interviewed on my local NBC affiliate’s 6pm news. Both said they felt safe, knowing the police outside were protecting them.
debbie
@currants:
Yes, loved what he had to say about that.
Starfish
@currants: He writes well, but I am not convinced. A sex strike on college campuses would not be about the rapists. It would be about the guys who surround the rapists and are attempting to be “impartial” and do not push back on their rapist friends or do not say anything to whoever is dating a rapist.
Though there is the 25% number for the number of women who experience some type of unwanted sexual advance. The number for the dudes doing this is about 5% so most of that 5% is left to do this repeatedly without any form of push back because either people do not know or people do not say anything.
jl
@JPL:
” the extent to which the “baby parts” remark played into any decision to target the Planned Parenthood office was not yet clear. ”
I don’t think the ‘extent to which’ is the relevant question. If Dear is like many of these mass murderers, he is confused and mentally unbalanced enough that it will be difficult to figure out his decision process, whatever that turns out to be. But where could he have get the image of ‘baby parts’ being churned ot of PP? Where other than Fiorina bald face outrageous lying and whole cloth making stuff up, and a lot of GOPers making shit up following a fraudulent video smear in a public partisan defamation and propaganda campaign run out of Congress on public money?
JPL
OT… Chris Murphy’s tweet is priceless
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: So Rep. Grayson is our Orly?
JPL
@jl: It will be interesting if anyone on the Sunday shows asks a Republican about the tragedy. There was one police officer killed and several injured. My feeling is Dear is an angry white guy who listened to much talk radio.
John and Lindsay are going to be on Face the Nation, so we’ll see.
currants
@Starfish: Yes, but unless I misunderstand your comment (“It would be about the guys who surround the rapists and are attempting to be “impartial” and do not push back on their rapist friends or do not say anything to whoever is dating a rapist.”), that’s where TNC is exactly right.
(Emphasis mine):
Oatler.
@JPL: Maybe Chuck Todd will ask Rich Lowry and Newt Gingrich what their take on it is.
RaflW
When Marco Rubio said it was OK to ignore laws, and that Roe v. Wade is ‘current law, not settled law’ he was playing right into shit like this. Maybe most won’t point a finger at him, but I do. Glad to see I’m not alone in that.
jl
@JPL: Dickerson will probably ask in a concerned voice whether maybe uncivil Democratic push back against the false GOP smears is the real problem. That guy has. IMHO opinion, proven himself to be just as big a hack and Schieffer, but with less finesse.
Heliopause
Either he’s a nut or a terrorist. Either way somebody’s going to have to explain how he got his hands on an AK-47.
Silly me, what was I thinking. This is America, nobody has to explain anything.
jl
@RaflW: I remember reading some opinion headline that since their presidential primary campaign got under way, the whole GOP has devolved into a hate group. I thought quite a bit of truth to that. The list of who they hate is so long, is the only complicating factor, since it includes the majority of the US public by now.
Patricia Kayden
@Amir Khalid: Why do you think it would put any Republican voters off? It wouldn’t put me off if Republicans attacked one of the Democratic Presidential candidates. It would probably make me like them more since I’m not going to let my political enemies tell me who to vote for.
JPL
@jl: I wonder who will be first to blame Planned Parenthood.
Maybe Rich Lowery..
Starfish
@currants: By just focusing on institutions instead of the individual dude laughing at rape jokes, it absolves the students of responsibility and agency in these situations.
gogol's wife
@JPL:
Love my senator!
jl
HRC, O’Mally and Sanders all calling out the GOP for creating an environment of public debate that encourages violence, using the PP shooting as an example. Good for them. Have some real candidates this time who don’t goody two shoes around in the vain hope that will keep thugs from coming around to beat them up.
The shooting at Planned Parenthood put GOP 2016 hopefuls in a ‘politically uncomfortable’ position
“I strongly support Planned Parenthood and the work it’s doing. I hope people realize that bitter rhetoric can have unintended consequences,” Sanders wrote.
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/the-shooting-at-planned-parenthood-put-gop-2016-203438711.html
Edit: was thinking of the Dems Gore and Kerry in my comment.
GoBlue72
So where are the voices of moderation arguing that we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions, facts aren’t all in, etc?
Somebody shoots up a PP, burden of proof is on those arguing that maybe it’s not terrorism.
brettvk
@jl: I’ve listened to Dickerson in the past on Slate’s political podcast, where he’s been hacking for years. He’s just the sort of complacent Broderoid who’s given a network Sunday morning gig.
Starfish
@GoBlue72: There are a lot of them on Twitter. During the shooting, there were a lot of “facts are not all in” people arguing that maybe the target was the bank next door AFTER the police posted on their Twitter that there was a shooter in the Planned Parenthood.
And now they have switched to “how do we know why he did this?”
Baud
@Starfish:
There’s was that MRA guy who killed a bunch of women in southern California. He made a video where he talks about his hatred of women, and some people still were perplexed at his motive.
Ella in NM
@skerry:
OMFG say this is a joke
Adam L Silverman
@Heliopause: from what I’ve just read in the updates they haven’t released information about the type of weapons he used. From the description of one of the victims it is clearly semi-automatic. Law enforcement has also indicated that his list of arrests for misdemeanors would not have prevented him from passing the background check for a firearm purchase.
If it was an AK or AK variant, they do make them in semi-auto for purchase.
Adam L Silverman
@Ella in NM: nope
Elie
@NotMax:
Sadly, NONE of Colorado’s clinics participate with that is my understanding. It is CA and WA clinics and not even all of those.
The dude looks and has the lifestyle patterns (taciturn recluse) consistent with paranoid schizophrenic. Not a diagnosis and who cares anyway. Another willing soldier egged on by people who theoretically are sane and law abiding people running for significant office leading our government. Yep, take matters into your own hands and kill innocent people uninvolved with executing the program.
I have to pray and keep my head screwed on straight through here. I am very very angry and upset but I know that the best strategy for my sanity and wellbeing is to stay cool and balanced and to help PP financially and through other advocacy. Still — I am mightily upset…..
PaulW
@Trentrunner:
Agreed.
The wingnut absolutists know if they go all in, they lose the majority of Americans who support abortion in cases of rape, incest, health of the mother. (this is why the Clinton position of “safe legal and rare” was/is the only political stance the Democrats can take). So they want to take it all down piece by piece, with a restriction there, and intimidation tactics here.
It is far past time the majority of Americans recognize the “pro-fetus” crowd for what they REALLY are: a group of self-serving judgmental assholes who want to play their game of “Better Than Thou” over everyone else (why else stand around threatening doctors and nurses, and why else enjoy themselves calling women sluts and whores and murderers?).
Brachiator
@jl:
Have GOP spokesholes already popped up to accuse HRC and company of “irresponsible” accusations in blaming the Republicans for any of this? Because they will.
Other Republicans will fall back on the idea that they are defending babies, and that Planned Parenthood needs to go.
At this point in the American Civil War of Ideas, nobody on either side is backing down. This tragedy even gives the pro-life presidential Republicans a chance to peek out from underneath Trump’s shadow and try to get some Sunday talk show traction.
RaflW
I’m going to rant just a bit:
Why is the term “shooter” being used so much? Silverman does it in his post below this one, as has just about every headline I’ve seen.
WTF is the reason no one says “killer” or “murderer” or suchlike? He killed three people, fercrissake. He’s not just a shooter. He’s a shoot-to-kill-er. I feel like the term shooter has some weird magical language juju that is meant to sanitize the situation.
This situation should not be sanitized!
FFS.
RaflW
@Elie: I’m not aiming this at you individually, but the people carrying out lawful medical care at PP are also innocent people. Just sayin’, probably obvious. But I’m feeling rather tender about language this evening.
ETA: I think I misread you a tad, Elie, so again, I’m just putting this as a general comment that came to mind reading your comment, not as a critique of your phrasing.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@RaflW: I think because everyone was calling him that before any of his victims died.
Elie
@RaflW:
Got it and your point is well taken.. I was sloppy in my comment and totally agree that the clinic personnel are innocent. I too have been a member of (not PP) but such clinic personnel involved with pregnancy terminations and other sensitive care… I am a total advocate but see how the wormy logic creeps in to the words of even the most well intended?
Adam L Silverman
@RaflW: I think I used shooter, perpetrator, and attacker. All of those are accurate. If you want, apparently so too is killer or murderer. There’s no agenda here that I know of, at least I don’t have one, of not trying to accurately describe the guy. There are several very good descriptors that can be used. There are also two additional things that need to be kept in mind: 1) he’s innocent until proven guilty, so technically we should have alleged modifying all of the terms above and 2) no actual word choice is going to make this better or make it go away or make anyone less dead or injured.
ruemara
I know his mom. I wonder if the locals are going to start asking some uncomfortable questions about how David got this way.
RaflW
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks.
It’s the repetition, particularly in headline after headline, across networks and media, that has my radar up. When a black man shoots in any urban crime that gets reported, is “shooter” the #1 most common headline term to refer to him?
I think it isn’t but I’m going on emotional recall, not any statistical analysis.
Mnemosyne
@RaflW:
In a weird way, Elie’s remark and your response reminds me of the murders at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin that happened because the killer thought they were Muslims. Like, really, asshole, you couldn’t even be bothered to do basic research and figure out if you were murdering the “right” people?
(“Right” is in scare quotes because obviously there is no right group of people to murder. But it is weirdly more disturbing sometimes when people get murdered because of a mistake.)
Adam L Silverman
@RaflW: I got you. Please remember, I’m not a journalist. I try to be careful with my language as a professional thing. The last thing I want to do is use a turn of phrase in something I write up that provides someone else with a justification to do something I had not intended to suggest/recommend.
Brachiator
@currants:
TNC is tiresomely gaseous here, and hopelessly literal minded. Spike Lee may have been half serious in suggesting that a sex strike would have some effect in the real world, but he should have just shut up and let the film speak for itself.
And the original “Lysistrata” is a comedy, and there is not one iota of evidence that anyone ever considered it to be a prescription for social change. The play is even closer to a satyr play than Old Comedy, with suggestions that some characters would be in costumes sporting huge erections as male desperation mounted. And the character Reconciliation would be a parody of a sex goddess. This ain’t no chaste study of sexual politics.
Villago Delenda Est
Of course, they won’t be, because IOKIYAR. The MSM is worthless. Tumbrels for the lot of them.
Baud
@ruemara:
That’s so freaky. What’s she like?
Calouste
@Amir Khalid: It’s slightly more complicated than that. The law in this regard has changed a number of times over the years and under some circumstances (depending on the time the mother had lived in the US, marital status, and possibly something else)children born to American mothers outside the US were not automatically granted American citizenship at birth.
I don’t think that applies to Cruz’s mother though, so he is an American citizen, but if Grayson wants to use it as a tactical ploy to put Cruz’s father in the limelight, who’s an even bigger nut job than Cruz himself, that might have value.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@ruemara: @Baud: Seconding Baud’s question, assuming you feel comfortable sharing more info.
Wag
@Baud:
And he lost. Which really sucked.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: Not only that, but considering the enforced bisexuality of the Lycurgun laws among the Spartiates it wouldn’t have done any good anyway…
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
Seems like a waste of time. I don’t see that it would put any Republican voters off.
@Calouste:
Is Cruz’ father running for anything? Why would his nuttiness have anything to do with or reflect on the son?
Dirty tricks ain’t what they used to be.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
True enough. On the other hand, one of Lysistrata’s chief allies is a Spartan woman, Lampito. There is a sly satire here on Athenian and Spartan alliances. And Spartan women had a reputation for independence, promiscuity and an ability to control their husbands.
cintibud
Found this interesting comment on FB from a boating friend:
It turns out that my psycho next door neighbor who I called the cops on for stalking me last year was actually a psycho. Please don’t ever let him out of jail
This was below a picture of the PP shooter.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: They were, really, the most emancipated of all women in Greece at the time. They could own property, compete in athletic competitions – or have the horses they owned do so, and speak their minds in public. They were also free to chose their own mates, even if they were married, in order to produce new generations of Spartiates. Between the constant warfare and the enforced bisexuality, Sparta had a population replacement problem.
Brachiator
@efgoldman:
So, ultimately, it’s about Ted, not his father.
And how many Republicans know what a dominionist might be, or even how to spell it? Dominionist? Isn’t that a game you play with domino tiles?
And when they find out what being a dominionist is all about, most Republicans will probably be on board with that. “Hell, yeah, America is a Chris tian nation for Chris tian people!” Intolerant nativism is all the rage now, and only Democrats run to their fainting couches when loyalty oaths and religious tests and hell even relocation camps are mentioned by GOP candidates as being vital to the nation’s survival.
We really do seem to be flirting with fascism. I wonder whether a GOP contender would actually have the temerity to pull the trigger on full on American despotism.
Another Holocene Human
Troy Newman should be “Radical Cleric Troy Newman” or “Extremist Cleric Troy Newman” every time his name pops up in the media.
J R in WV
This is hard to believe, but here it is:
There are actually Republicans running for president who do not believe in the part of the constitution that says there shall be no religious test for office of the United States. Who do not believe that the 1st Amendment to the constitution protects people who are not conservative christians.
Making a point about Cruz’s father’s religion, which he founded and uses to make a living, and which Ted Cruz presumably also believes in, makes the point that these folks don’t believe in the same America that most of us (I hope!) believe in, and have believed in for many decades.
So just on freedom of religion, Cruz is not an American. Most of the rest of the constitution, Cruz is not an American. I don’t care where he was born, his parents citizenship, on his beliefs, not an American.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
I don’t know that the bisexuality was a problem, since Spartan men were expected to marry and have children (and I am not sure that enforced female bisexuality was a big deal). But despite the fervid admiration of people like Victor Hanson, the Spartans were doomed in the long run. Warfare inevitably reduced their population, even if they were victors, and since only pure Spartans could be, well, Spartans, they could never increase their population fast enough to maintain their society.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: It was on the male side. Apparently the conditioning that started with the agogee and continued in the warrior company supper clubs/barracks worked a little too well. If you read Thucydides closely he makes it pretty clear that Alciabides impregnated one of the two queens of Sparta because her husband couldn’t or wouldn’t during his stint as a defector there.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@cintibud: Last year? So the woman who got the restraining order on him in SC wasn’t the only one?
Brachiator
@efgoldman:
Why? Again, I’m just not seeing that anything about Ted’s father is all that meaningful. You can ask about Ted’s beliefs and influences, but apart from that who cares? Do we need to look up his mother’s skirts as well?
Is there anyone who doesn’t know this?
But I will give you this. It’s said, and some data seems to confirm, that the average person doesn’t follow the presidential campaign until later, closer to the primaries. But I think that even those who have not been paying attention will be able to form accurate impressions of the candidates.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Wow, talk about dining-ins gone wrong.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Sort of… It was intended to happen. Lycurgus thought he could build better esprit de corps and loyalty within each Spartiate unit if every senior Spartiate was intimately involved with a younger one. The supper clubs, perhaps better described as Spartiate military messes, were intended to support this by keeping the Spartiates in the presence of their comrades, who were also their lovers.
Its unclear if this worked too well or if there was some other reason like infertility issues, that was effecting producing replacement generations. But when combined with battlefield loses, as well as those who didn’t survive the agogee (initial training), it was a real problem for the Spartiates. Especially as they were keeping significant numbers of Greeks in enforced slavery as Heliots. So the need for warriors for both internal defense to keep the slaves enslaved and to fight externally created a huge manpower concern.
And try explaining all of this to a bunch of lieutenant colonels and colonels or Navy equivalents when covering Thucydides at the war college… Cause that was always a fun discussion.
cintibud
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Apparently not, but I don’t have any more details at this time.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
Again, I don’t know that the bisexuality of Sparta or the variations of homosexuality in Athens and other Greek city states would have been an impediment to reproduction.
I love Thucydides, but some of his conclusions are speculation based on cultural stereotypes of Spartans as much as information (and I would love to know how he cultivated sources of the closed, somewhat paranoid Spartan society). It’s clear that Alciabides’ actions were seen as a perfidious violation of the rules of hospitality. He was a mixture of Aaron Burr and Benedict Arnold and a few other traitorous types thrown in, with the seductive charm of a Lord Byron. Reproductive failure due to bisexuality is possible, I guess, but highly unlikely.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman:
I swear that I am not laughing at you, but, damn, I am laughing. What years were you teaching this? Just wondering if my cohort was the group you were tormenting.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: I don’t disagree. But its a fun mental exercise to play with in a comment thread.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I was assigned to the Army War College as the Cultural Advisor from 2010-2014. After my first year, and observing that a lot of the students were having trouble with the context in which Thucydides is writing – that of ancient Athens and Sparta, I wrote a cultural preparation of those two city-states. I did address it in the structures and institutions sections for Sparta. I tried to be as dry as possible with the section so as not to freak anyone out.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m cackling, at the very idea of covering Thucydides at the war college. I don’t care what years it was taught, I’d pay for a time machine to go back and listen to those discussions, and truth be told, to watch the faces too.
Brachiator
@efgoldman:
But here’s the thing. People were stupidly afraid that JFK’s supposed allegiance to the pope would overrule his loyalty to America. This was fed by anti-Catholic bigotry.
There are many Republicans who believe that there is total compatibility between almost all varieties of Protestantism and the Constitution, or that the threat of commies, Mooslims, gays, Latinos and other non-Americans is so great that only a deeper adherence to religion can save the Republic.
So while JFK had to explain how his religion would not influence the way he’d govern, Ted Cruz, Rubio, Carson are exciting their core supporters by openly declaring that their religion definitely will influence the way they’d govern, and getting applauded for it.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
Yep.
Adam L Silverman
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): We dealt with it at a higher level of abstraction than most places. We were specifically interested in having the students kick the concepts around in regards to issues of strategy. It was always the first three days of the Theory of War and Strategy core course and it was kicked off by a lecture given by one of the faculty, and a good friend, who had a subspecialty in ancient Greece.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: My commissioning cohort would have probably gone through AWC a year of two before you got there.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Here’s how I worded it in the cultural prep:
One of the most interesting socio-cultural aspects of Spartan during the era of the Peloponnesian War is the very clear connection between the Spartan social, political, economic, military, and sexual institutions and Spartan understanding of their identity in addition to how they fit into the world of ancient Greece and how that world should be understood and ordered. The Sparta of the Peloponnesian War, and the Spartiate identity of the time rooted in equality for citizens, military fitness, and austerity, is the direct result of the institutional reforms put into place to achieve the Lycurgun reforms. Newborns were judged whether they were fit to survive by the Spartan elders and those males that were deemed so were separated from their families at age seven and placed in harsh and austere military training. If they survived into their twenties, they were then required to acquire membership in all male dining clubs that served as a soldier’s mess, barracks, fighting cadre, and surrogate family with older members required to mentor younger ones. This mentoring, mandated by the Lycurgun reforms, extended to governance of the sexual relations among members making the mentoring much more intimate than the term would normally imply.3 Life for the Spartiate was organized around one’s dining club and the men that one would have to fight, and possibly die, beside.
3 Sexual relations between mentors and mentees in the gentlemen’s clubs was mandated under Spartan law, while a primacy was placed on heterosexual relations between married Spartiates in order to replace young males who died in training and warriors who were killed in battle. Adultery was also sanctioned and accepted, if the spouses were informed and the affairs produced healthy male offspring that fit within the Spartan ideal.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Another Holocene Human: I haven’t seen any spellcasting ability, and I don’t know of a cleric archetype that gives that up, so I’m guessing that he’s more likely a Lawful Evil rogue.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Okay, my first two years we were still getting folks out of sequence – had brigade command before they arrived or had been delayed because they were considered so good at what they did that they were needed elsewhere. I had four or five students like that my first two years there. One got his stars, one who should have got yanked from the command list to do a special assignment, because he is, perhaps, the best senior O6 in his MOS. Unfortunately he was never placed back onto the command list, and because he came to us out of sequence/late, then got yanked again, he’ll retire soon. And he was one of the ones you wanted to make general officer.
Fortunately, right before GEN Casey retired he changed the rules: no one gets brigade command or equivalent until/unless they’ve attended the war college.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I have friends who went there. They would would be uncomfortable at the very least at this discussion. It amuses me. Being a known liberal as an army officer creates some discomfort.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m pretty sure a lot of seminars probably didn’t even try to cover it or address it. One of the things we gave our students in my seminar was the link to the Bethany Hughes documentary on Athens and Sparta and recommended the students watch it before coming to class. She deals with it extensively.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: General culture and societal norms as a part of military structure is something that probably gets short shrift except among specialists.
NotMax
@Adam L. Silverman
No lube at the PX?
“Gonna need two volunteers today for show and tell….This will be on the final exam.”
:)
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Its why I was recruited. While the Army still asserts that its vitally important, the funding all went away with the sequester. The second Commandant I was assigned to there took it seriously enough to request a permanent addition to his TDA to institutionalize my position. Unfortunately the sequester meant that its sitting on someone’s desk in DC and will likely never happen. I was the last real cultural advisor the Army had. I had been recruited and vetted based on my cultural work for the Army – basically I was handed off from one program to another. As the SES I reported to on the TRADOC side emailed me in JAN 2014: “we’re farther behind now than when GEN Wallace (TRADOC Commander before GEN Dempsey) issued his guidance.” My Boss was arguing that I needed to remain so that there was someone who knew what needed to be done when the Army realized it had to have this capability again. He was making progress, but the sequester was a game changer.
And what’s funny is that the entire new Engagement Warfighting Function and the Army Capstone concept of Operational Adaptability both have to be built on a foundation of cultural expertise. I’ve still got plenty of demand signal, but no one has funding to actually pay me to do the work. So I’m a consultant/contractor these days.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: That’s just evil. I like it!
Also gives new meaning to the idea of a tabletop exercise.
The Republic of Stupity
@JPL:
Gee… like that’s never happened before…
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Don’t even talk about sand tables.
The Republic of Stupity
@efgoldman: I drove past the scene the next day… in the south bound lane of 580… Williams’ pick up truck was still sitting on the shoulder, along with the 1st two CHP cruisers on the scene… bullet holes everywhere and 15 or 18 shotguns lined up in the guard rail, taken from the troopers who had used them in the shoot out…
Rather surreal…
The Republic of Stupity
@efgoldman: That’s actually a good question… from appearances, they did fire off a shite load of rounds and didn’t kill Williams.
The shoot out took place near an exit ramp on the westbound lanes… and no, no one else got hit… traffic must have been going by in both directions… “Look Daddy, a SHOOT OUT!”
I was w/ a friend about 5 minutes further south from there, just off 580, when it happened… we knew something pretty significant was happening from all the sirens… they just kept coming and coming…
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: ouch!
jl
@Brachiator:
” At this point in the American Civil War of Ideas ”
The GOP is going to have to up its game for this to qualify as an American Civil War of Ideas. I don’t see how making stuff up out of whole cloth, and repeating bald face lies over and over again can be a respectable side in a real civil war of ideas.
burnspbesq
I said earlier today that I was glad I wasn’t the prosecutor who would have to pick a jury for this guy’s trial, because half the population of El Paso County would probably like to give him a medal. Nothing I’ve heard as the day has unfolded has changed my mind, even a little bit.
sempronia
Adam, are you still monitoring this thread? A couple threads back, you commented that law enforcement might not be calling the PP shooting terrorism because they are aware that calling it so can make it harder to get a conviction, and that there is some official report that address this. FP post about this, please?
Darkrose
@efgoldman:
Carson can’t find Vermont on a map.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
A late aside… This sounds very interesting.
It’s funny that in studying Thucydides from high school through college, instructors would discuss him in the context of history, literature, and political science. I can’t recall anyone who mentioned him in the context of contemporary use as part of Army War College curricula, especially in the context of Spartan military culture. There was a nod to the idea that Alexander the Great might pop up in discussions of battle strategy and tactics, but Sparta would mainly be used as an example of a totalitarian society to be contrasted with Athenian democracy.
PJ
@Adam L Silverman: If I recall correctly, her husband (one of the Kings) was off fighting at the time, which gave the charming Alcibiades all of the opportunity he needed to “spread his influence.”
In addition to their peculiar customs, and their xenophobia and insularity, which prevented inter-marriage with other Greeks or barbarians, the Spartans also suffered from severe earthquakes which killed many of the Spartiates. Periodic Helot uprisings also probably carried off many Spartiates in addition to the frequent warfare with their neighbors.
Adam L Silverman
@sempronia: I’m not aware of any official report, just a hunch. I referenced a research project, funded by the NIJ, called the American Terrorism Project that empirically studied the outcomes of court cases dealing with terrorism in the US. One of the conclusions was that it was harder to get convictions when the defendants were white and Christian, which was the modal cultural markers for Americans. A lot of the study was done pre 9-11.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: Its also taught at West Point, and I’d assume the other service academies, as well as at Command and General Staff. Each level of professional military education approaches it a bit differently.
We spent time discussing the different approaches to national power. Sparta relied on Landpower, while Athens Sea Power. We also used it to frame later discussions of great power behavior. So we showed the clip from the Royal Shakespeare Company of the Melian Dialogue. Unfortunately we only ever had three days – so a total of nine hours – to kick it around.
Brachiator
@jl:
I never said that the competing ideas had to be valid, reasonable, based on facts. There is an increasing divide between conservative and liberal values. Conservatives not only believe that they are right, but that their values, their morality, and their patriotism is under attack by traitors and others intent on subverting real American values. And the Republicans have purged moderates from their ranks, which makes it even harder for any common interests to be agreed upon. So what option is left but a battle for hearts and minds?
sempronia
@Adam L Silverman: ah, thanks.
Dmbeaster
@debbie: Also not a word about attending events hosted by a preacher advocating homosexuals be killed. The dotted line between advocacy and actual terrorism is short for Cruz.
Paul in KY
@RaflW: Agree! POS, cowardly murderer is what he should be called.
Paul in KY
@Adam L Silverman: This is the internet, Adam, not a judicial chamber.
Paul in KY
@J R in WV: Agree, wholeheartedly!