Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

People are complicated. Love is not.

This fight is for everything.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This blog will pay for itself.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

This really is a full service blog.

We still have time to mess this up!

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

You are here: Home / Humorous / 2005- We Were So Young and Innocent

2005- We Were So Young and Innocent

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Remember this:

Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for “balance” by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons.

We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: “Sincerity is not enough.” We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it’s true doesn’t make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn’t mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone.

Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he’s pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee.

Signed- Brother Mallet of Forgiveness

Reader Interactions

21Comments

  5. 5.

    satby

    Had an unexpectedly good day at the market so donated to Postcard Patriots (and signed up to get some addresses). Now trying to find that request for help go-fund-me someone posted about a veteran a couple of days back. And not having much luck. Anyone remember what day that was?

  8. 8.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: many thanks.
    People here helped me with the late, much missed Biggie way back when and I like to pay it forward when I can.
    It’s appalling that basic survival can be a struggle for one of our vets in the richest country in the world. We owe them more.

  10. 10.

    tomdarga

    Just because your motives are pure doesn’t mean you are not doing harm.

    Of course, the person saying this is always the one insisting on being the ultimate arbiter of who and what is doing harm, what that harm entails, etc.

    They are usually self-interested and/or full of shit.

  11. 11.

    A Ghost To Most

    Ah, 2005. The Harriet Miers kerfuffle, Katrina and the genesis of the song which is my nym. The GOP was just proto-fascist then, instead of full-on christian fascist.

    Fuck them all to hell.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @tomdarga: Speaking only for myself, I am sick of people who “act with the purest of motives” because not only are they liars (nobody is pure), they usually are ignorant as hell of the realities. Or as my old man liked to say:

    “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

  14. 14.

    frosty

    Yes, of course I remember. Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason continues the jihad, albeit going incognito now.

  15. 15.

    tobie

    Man, Cole, that’s some Kurt-Vonnegut-level humor regarding the Unitarians. Now add a few affectionate jabs at the Society for Ethical Culture and you’ll be in Slaughterhouse Five-territory.

  16. 16.

    PhoenixRising

    You’re welcome, y’all.

    I Tweeted re @janet4OH , the retired union leader from the public schools I attended in small-town Ohio who is running against the awful Gym Jordan in OH-4.

    Cook updated OH-4 from solid R to likely R, polls show Janet Garrett breaking 42% of likely voters. So if we can push, pull & drag about 9500 unlikely voters…

  18. 18.

    tomdarga

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Obviously, intentions aren’t “magic” and there is wisdom in that quote.

    OTOH, I have gotten very sick of the modern habit of making often very tenuous/debatable and vague assertions of harm and then getting hostile to anyone who doesn’t immediately accept those assertions as true and act accordingly. Frequently these assertions are based on like “6 steps to Kevin Bacon”-style chains of causation. “You did A, which ‘normalizes’ idea B, which then cause people to do C, which in turn leads to D which is harmful. Therefore, it doesn’t matter why you did A because you are causing harm. Just admit it and apologize”. I’m just sick of this shit.

    The “intentions don’t matter” folks like to trot out the overly simplistic example of

    “if you step on someones foot, then your intentions don’t erase the harm you did and you should apologize even if you didn’t mean to do it”

    , which is all well and good. However, in practice, a better analogy for the way they actually act would be more like

    “if you throw a frisbee to a friend, but a sudden gust of wind blows off course, and a dog sees the frisbee and tries to chase it, and the dog bumps into someone’s legs which causes that person to lose their balance and step on someone else’s foot, then your intentions don’t erase the harm you did and you should apologize even if you didn’t mean to do it”

    which is ….. frankly batshit crazy to be honest.

  19. 19.

    Lodev Mirsi

    @satby: Thanks, satby, for bringing this guy’s case up. And thanks, Ozark for the link.
    Just sent what I could afford at the moment. This guy really needs a break.

  20. 20.

    Brother Holy Cruise Missile Of Mild Acceptance (Dreggas)

    Oh Yes, I remember, this is how I got this name. Those seem like the good old days…

  21. 21.

    hilzoy

    Google does not want to tell me what my Uitarian Jihad name was. I find this very annoying: what good is it if googling hilzoy “unitarian jihad” just comes up with a bunch of old blog posts that mention me and the jihad, but not MY post about it?

    Pout.

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