There are only two sides, and you are on one or the other of them

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.

— Donald J. Trump

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the involvement of President of the United States in the evil of racism. The counter-protesters in Charlottesville lapsed into evil, to be sure. Meeting violence with violence, they handed their adversaries a huge victory. But their error does not make them the moral equivalent of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen. Seizing on their error to construct such an equivalence, as Donald Trump has done, is positively obscene. “Grab them by the pussy” pales in comparison.

263 thoughts on “There are only two sides, and you are on one or the other of them

  1. Michael Gerson, “Trump babbles in the face of tragedy“:

    Ultimately this was not merely the failure of rhetoric or context, but of moral judgment. The president could not bring himself initially to directly acknowledge the victims or distinguish between the instigators and the dead. He could not focus on the provocations of the side marching under a Nazi flag. Is this because he did not want to repudiate some of his strongest supporters? This would indicate that Trump views loyalty to himself as mitigation for nearly any crime or prejudice. Or is the president truly convinced of the moral equivalence of the sides in Charlottesville? This is to diagnose an ethical sickness for which there is no cure.

  2. The Daily Stormer (Nazi website):

    3:46 PM:

    Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us.

    He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate… on both sides!

    So he implied the antifa are haters.

    There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all.

    He said he loves us all.

    Also refused to answer a question about White Nationalists supporting him.

    No condemnation at all.

    When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room.

    Really, really good.

    God bless him.

    Later:

    8:29 PM:

    To those of you in Charlottesville, go out and enjoy yourselves.

    If you’re at a bar in a group, random girls will want to have sex with you. Because you’re the bad boys. The ultimate enemy of the state. Every girl on the planet wants your dick now.

    And to everyone, know this: we are now at war.

    And we are not going to back down.

    There will be more events. Soon. We are going to start doing this nonstop. Across the country. I’m going to arrange them myself. Others will too, I’m sure, but I’m telling you now: I am going to start arranging my own events. We are going to go bigger than Charlottesville. We are going to go huge.

    We are going to take over the country.

    This is what is going to happen, I am going to make sure it happens.

    We learned a lot today. And we are going to remember what we learned.

    This has only just begun.

    Emphasis in original.

  3. Ultimately this was not merely the failure of rhetoric or context, but of moral judgment. The president could not bring himself initially to directly acknowledge the victims or distinguish between the instigators and the dead. He could not focus on the provocations of the side marching under a Nazi flag. Is this because he did not want to repudiate some of his strongest supporters? This would indicate that Trump views loyalty to himself as mitigation for nearly any crime or prejudice. Or is the president truly convinced of the moral equivalence of the sides in Charlottesville? This is to diagnose an ethical sickness for which there is no cure.

    Definitely both.

  4. “Grab them by the pussy” pales in comparison.

    That’s a pretty sexist comment. Trumpesque even.

  5. Ultimately this was not merely the failure of rhetoric or context, but of moral judgment.

    In context, definitely both. The sentence is transitional. Here’s how the opinion piece opens:

    One of the difficult but primary duties of the modern presidency is to speak for the nation in times of tragedy. […] Not every president does this equally well. But none have been incapable. Until Donald Trump.

  6. Mung: It’s an Obama plot.

    It’s got to be. Fields’s mother’s name is Bloom, which is almost always a Jewish name. And he looks Jewish, too. I learned all of this at the Nazi site I linked to above, the Daily Storm. Also, Vanguard America, “The Face of American Fascism,” says he wasn’t a member, even though he marched with them, and carried one of their shields. All you had to do to get a shield was to show up. They made a mistake in laying themselves open to Jewish infiltrators. I’m sure that, in the future, they’ll look harder at men who show up, and refuse shields to those who look Jewish.

    [Oops, clicked before finishing. ETA:] “How George Soros is helping Obama Democrats buy their way back to power,” by Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

  7. Mung:

    OP: “Grab them by the pussy” pales in comparison.

    That’s a pretty sexist comment. Trumpesque even.

    I wouldn’t have used the comparison as an intensifier if I hadn’t thought his “locker room talk” was pretty damned obscene.

    What I was actually thinking about, in all honesty, was the many form-over-substance evangelicals I know. In their paltry, rule-based judgment, obscenity is naughty words and female nipples slipping above the sheet.

    What has always struck me as most obscene about “Grab them by the pussy” was that it came from a 59-year-old father of two women.

  8. From my quotation of the Daily Storm above:

    If you’re at a bar in a group, random girls will want to have sex with you. Because you’re the bad boys. The ultimate enemy of the state. Every girl on the planet wants your dick now.

    “Grab them by the pussy” gave these guys a genital thrill. But what truly excited them was Trump, not the pussy. Their “manliness” and misogyny are consequences of repressed homosexuality.

    Inside every fascist, there’s a queen aching to get out. Destigmatize alt-sex, and there will be no more alt-right.

  9. Tom English: What has always struck me as most obscene about “Grab them by the pussy” was that it came from a 59-year-old father of two women.

    When the first reason you give for not hitting on your daughter is that you’re married, obscene seems not unexpected

  10. The most obscene thing I’ve ever heard, up close and personal, was in a gathering of folks at my home. It came in 1990, during the embargo of Iraq (prior to the invasion). Someone expressed concern for the innocents that would die in military action. And a devout Christian chimed in, “I think we had best let God sort things out.”

  11. Tom English: And a devout Christian chimed in, “I think we had best let God sort things out.”

    While I disagree that killing is the preferred way to bring that about, I do believe that God is just and will not “sort” in an unjust manner.

  12. Mung: While I disagree that killing is the preferred way to bring that about, I do believe that God is just and will not “sort” in an unjust manner.

    I don’t see how to believe that and to believe also that unsaved souls are condemned to eternal torment in hell. But I’m not going to put you on the spot, here in public. We can talk about it when I make my way to Seattle, bimeby. (There are several folks here who don’t like me liking you. But you know that I do on the whole, despite our differences.)

  13. Tom English: I don’t see how to believe that and to believe also that unsaved souls are condemned to eternal torment in hell.

    I’ve stated my position on hell here more than once. I do not believe in eternal torment. I do not believe that “the lake of fire” was ever intended to be taken literally.

    So there’s no conflict. IMO. 🙂

  14. “We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!” – Donald Trump *

    * Does not apply to hate against Muslim immigrants and minorities.
    “Grab them by the turban” pales in comparison.

    god love america and Donut Triumph!

  15. Tom English: But you know that I do on the whole, despite our differences.

    It’s mutual. We’ve found a way to talk to each other without all the rancor and insult.

  16. Mung: I’ve stated my position on hell here more than once. I do not believe in eternal torment. I do not believe that “the lake of fire” was ever intended to be taken literally.

    What about eternal souls? Where is Tom English’s soul going to go after death if there is no hell? His soul ain’t gonna go heaven along with Donut Triumph’s …right? Please say it ain’t so…

  17. Mung:
    Not gonna derail Tom’s thread. Start your own OP.

    Thank you! I can appreciate your concern about Tom’s well being of his OP but he brought up the subject of hell and eternal torment himself @ 17 just in case you missed that…

  18. Then I’ll let Tom decide whether he wants to get into a discussion about eternal souls.

    🙂

  19. Mung: I do not believe that “the lake of fire” was ever intended to be taken literally.

    Should have put a little smiley face

  20. Mung: I’ve stated my position on hell here more than once. I do not believe in eternal torment. I do not believe that “the lake of fire” was ever intended to be taken literally.

    It’s heartening to see that you have the courage to say so. I’ve known a few conservative Protestants who reject the notion that a merciful and just God has no alternative to salvation but damnation. Just a few. I don’t see it in the Bible. When I took courses in the Bible as an undergrad, I was amazed to learn how much of what I’d been taught came from the Bible wasn’t actually there. Scripture was very carefully parceled in Southern Baptist churches, even before the conservatives took over.

    To this day, I enjoy reading the Bible. It’s not, for me, the “gotcha” thing it is for many atheists. It’s more a matter of figuring out what was going on around me when I was a kid, and figuring out what is going on with my family members now.

  21. Tom English: I was amazed to learn how much of what I’d been taught came from the Bible wasn’t actually there. Scripture was very carefully parceled in Southern Baptist churches, even before the conservatives took over.

    I suppose I was raised Southern Baptist. Certainly Baptist, and mostly in Texas at that. Either I was spared a lot of stuff or I didn’t pay the appropriate amount of attention. 🙂

  22. For those who don’t know me, I should clarify: I do not identify as an atheist. I don’t even know what god means. I suspect that makes me ignostic. But I don’t care enough to find out for sure. Perhaps that makes me apatheistic. Yawn.

  23. Mung: I suppose I was raised Southern Baptist. Certainly Baptist, and mostly in Texas at that. Either I was spared a lot of stuff or I didn’t pay the appropriate amount of attention.

    Prior to the Eighties, there were a few Southern Baptist congregations that were quite liberal. Louisville Baptist Theological Seminary was reputedly liberal. If I’d gone on to seminary, as I’d originally planned, that would have been the one.

    You’ve perhaps seen me mention that I am, ever so ironically, a native of Waco. The site of my first home is now on the Baylor campus. I spoke with one of the regents of Baylor on my fiftieth birthday. She called in response to my letter protesting the removal of the Evolutionary Informatics Lab website from the Baylor server.

    As for my sexist remark at the end of the OP, I was thrown out of Mississippi College (primarily) for writing in protest of gender discrimination at the school. I was saved by a bunch of students and faculty who protested my (and another student’s) expulsion. That was definitely a formative experience for me. I was conscious of “paying it forward” when I spoke up for Bob Marks at Baylor.

  24. Mung: Not gonna derail Tom’s thread.

    I may seem to have derailed my own thread. But the broader issue is what we regard as evil, and what we regard as acceptable differences. When we go too far in our response to the latter, we cannot respond appropriately to the former.

  25. Why is this left wing propaganda on a harmless origin forum/blog??
    I don’t pat attention to the news but this is a trivial event about some riot.
    Everybody defines their opponents as evil and HATING.
    Then everybody hates. Should you not hate evil people? Then its just an opinion of who is the bad guy.
    The bad guys are from the ethnic left wing side. The , white supremists/nazis, are tiny , tiny , numbers of people. Who represent nobody. The ethnic side represents millions of people who demand America be divided on identity TO THEIR ADVANTAGE.
    The democratic party is the party of these people.
    These things prove they are anti-WASP, anti-White, anti-male, anti-American.
    Its a result of hundreds of years of English people, purtan/Anglican, letting in non English people.
    those qwho are evil are those who do evil. You know the tree by the fruit.
    Its very, very, very, few people.
    However a segregationist conclusions rules in the hearts of the ethnics.
    They accuse and attack and hate the true Americans, yankee?southern etc, and this is a manisfestation.
    No more immigration and those who immigrated can be taken to court on a charge of rebellion and if found guilty revoke their citizenship.
    Yes Trump does a terrible job but he is from New York city and believes in segregation like all of them.
    It comes down to the real American MAN failing to enforce the contracts with immigrants/women and so the real American is a victim and things get out of hand.
    Take everyone to court.
    Yes the Nazi flag should be illegal, if it is flown as they say, but all non American flags, except the confederate flag, should be illegal.
    likewise here in Canada.
    Remember a house divided against itself will not stand. The bible says that.

  26. There’s nothing funny about “Strange Fruits.”

    A bit more of the personal stuff: I taught at Jackson State University (95 percent African-American undergrad population) for a couple years, and quickly grew to love my students. In the beginning, I felt like a sore white thumb sticking out, as I walked across campus. I’d see kids looking at me, and wouldn’t be able to read them. But they invariably broke into a smile, and said, “Hey, how are you!?” There was much more to it than manners. The students, for all the racism they had suffered in Mississippi, understood that they could not respond in kind. This isn’t a theory of mine. It’s something that was discussed from time to time.

    The students at J-State were more like me than those I’d taught at other schools. Most of them, like me, came from the lower-middle class. Most of them, like me, were the first in their families to go to college. It was a big deal for them, and they really wanted to learn. Students like that are a joy to work with. I had them in my office for 15-20 hours a week. (I had a lot of other stuff to do, and it made for a very long week. It didn’t bother me in the least.)

    An Indian (Asian) professor once said to me, “We’re all color-blind around here.” And I have to say, it was pretty close to the truth.

    When I was working on a proposal for a huge multi-institutional project ($25 million line item in the federal budget), with another institution in the lead, one of the main concerns of the president, when I met with him, was that Jackson State might be included as the token minority institution. I had to convince him that we actually would be able to contribute as indicated in the proposal. He was adamant that we were not going to take a cut of the action, simply to enable the other schools to get their funding. It was not at all easy to get him to approve the proposal.

    Now, I should explain that I didn’t really want to go to Jackson State University. My ex had said that she would be moving back to Mississippi with our son. I interviewed also at an elite liberal arts school in Jackson, Millsaps College, but didn’t get the job. So I took what I could get. That’s really how I felt about it. Jackson State is, to be sure, a fourth-tier institution. I had no idea I would love the students as I did. (I did not love the entrenched mid-level administration, but that’s another story.) Why did I leave? My ex decided to stay in Texas, and I moved back to be with my son.

    Robert Byers, my sincere response to you is that you don’t know jack about the aspirations and attitudes of African Americans. I can’t say that my students and colleagues violated my expectations, because I truly did not know what to expect. Let’s say that I was amazed by their understanding that they had to be part of the solution to the problem of racism, and that they could not treat others as they’d been treated. And I’m telling you, almost all of them treated me, a middle-aged white man, fabulously well, with no apparent calculation. It’s hard to believe that such a culture would emerge in the midst of the worst racism in the country. But I saw it for myself. I had the privilege of seeing it for myself.

  27. I didn’t vote for Trump, I’m an immigrant, I’m not white, I think Nazi’s and white supremacists are scary and evil.

    But….BLM is cop-hating group and Antifa is actually a facist group that says they are anti-facist. Antifa are hypocrites:

    http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/08/05/antifa-protesters-closest-thing-nazi-brownshirts-dinesh-dsouza

    And since this is such a pro-Darwin blog:

    On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection and **the Preservation of Favored Races** by Charles Darwin

    and

    “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

  28. Among the counter-protestors is the so-called Antifa group (a hypocritical title):

    http://narrative-collapse.com/2017/03/31/armed-kurdish-antifa-group-declares-global-war-on-capitalism/

    Antifa is a loose network of Marxist gangs in Europe and North America who advocate the use of violence to suppress the speech of conservatives. There have been a large number of high-profile Antifa mob attacks on Trump supporters over the past year. Despite their pro-violent stance, high-profile liberal foundations like the SPLC continue to publicly support Antifa.

    Below is a photo of some Antifa thugs that are also loosely affiliated with the Antifa group in Charlottesville that got attacked by a white supremacist:

  29. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was in Charlottesville, a college town. Here they are at Dartmouth University:

    Eyes Wide Open at the Protest

    Black-clad protesters gathered in front of Dartmouth Hall, forming a crowd roughly one hundred fifty strong. Ostensibly there to denounce the removal of shirts from a display in Collis, the Black Lives Matter collective began to sing songs and chant their eponymous catchphrase. Not content to merely demonstrate there for the night, the band descended from their high-water mark to march into Baker-Berry Library.

    “F*** you, you filthy white f***s!” “F*** you and your comfort!” “F*** you, you racist s***!”

    These shouted epithets were the first indication that many students had of the coming storm. The sign-wielding, obscenity-shouting protesters proceeded through the usually quiet backwaters of the library. They surged first through first-floor Berry, then up the stairs to the normally undisturbed floors of the building, before coming back down to the ground floor of Novack.

    Throngs of protesters converged around fellow students who had not joined in their long march. They confronted students who bore “symbols of oppression”: “gangster hats” and Beats-brand headphones. The flood of demonstrators self-consciously overstepped every boundary, opening the doors of study spaces with students reviewing for exams. Those who tried to close their doors were harassed further. One student abandoned the study room and ran out of the library. The protesters followed her out of the library, shouting obscenities the whole way.

    Students who refused to listen to or join their outbursts were shouted down. “Stand the f*** up!” “You filthy racist white piece of s***!” Men and women alike were pushed and shoved by the group. “If we can’t have it, shut it down!” they cried. Another woman was pinned to a wall by protesters who unleashed their insults, shouting “filthy white b****!” in her face.

  30. https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=8831

    ‘Antifa’ group openly promotes violence, vandalism at Clemson

    •Posters promoting violence against “fascism” and advertising a group called “Upstate **Antifa**” were found littered across Clemson University’s campus over the weekend.

    The group’s Facebook page is replete with endorsements of political violence and property destruction** in the name of fighting “fascism,” but some students claim the label is being applied to anyone with conservative beliefs

  31. stcordova: But….BLM is cop-hating group and Antifa is actually a facist group that says they are anti-facist. Antifa are hypocrites:

    Got it, Nazis are bad but at least they aren’t liberals

  32. stcordova: Below is a photo of some Antifa thugs that are also loosely affiliated with the Antifa group in Charlottesville that got attacked by a white supremacist:

    “The International Freedom Battalion (Turkish: Enternasyonalist Özgürlük Taburu, Kurdish: Tabûra Azadî ya Înternasyonal‎, Arabic: تابور الحرية العالمي‎‎), commonly abbreviated as IFB or EÖT, is an armed group consisting of leftist foreign fighters fighting for the People’s Protection Units in the Syrian Civil War in support of the Rojava Revolution and against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.[3][4] The formation of the International Freedom Battalion was announced on 10 June 2015 in Serê Kaniyê (Ras al-Ayn).[5][6] Inspiration for the group came from the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. The political ideologies of the fighters include Marxism–Leninism, Hoxhaism, Maoism, and anarchism.”

    Geez Sal, do you believe this stuff?

  33. Tom English:

    But their error does not make them the moral equivalent of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen.

    BLMers at Dartmouth:

    “F*** you, you filthy white f***s!” “F*** you and your comfort!” “F*** you, you racist s***!”

    You don’t see the irony of a BLMer calling someone white a racist right after they called the a “filthy white f***”?

    How about Antifa:
    http://www.jookos.com/2017/06/05/antifa-goons-assault-elderly-woman-laugh-yesterdays-free-speech-march-portland/

    The leftist terrorist group, Antifa, has once again reared their ugly head and exposed their true agenda! Which is ‘silence anybody who disagrees with you, including elderly women’…

    Watch as the leftist goons launch an assault when an elderly woman attempts to walk through their crowd in order to get to the other side of the street.

    At one point the elderly lady pulls out her cell phone in order to film exactly what is going on and is subsequently pushed to the ground and laughed at.

    And Tom, this is not moral equivalency claim:

    bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.

    If Antifa and BLM commit less violence and bigotry than the KKK and Klansman and white nationalists, is still violence and bigotry, and thus it is from one of the many sides. Someone as brilliant as you should be able to see this wasn’t a claim of moral equivalency.

    As a non-white, I wouldn’t feel comfortable (in fact I’d be outraged) seeing BLM guys in masks abusing young girls, pinning them to the wall and shouting insults at them just because she is white. The question is rather moot about immoral equivalence of a BLM vs. the KKK in that case, that’s just plain wrong.

  34. From Wiki:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistische_Aktion

    Antifaschistische Aktion, Antifascistische Aktie, Antifascist Action or Antifascistisk Aktion — abbreviated as Antifa (German/Dutch/English) or AFA (Scandinavian) — is a far-left, extra-parliamentary, anti-fascist network in Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Australia, Canada, the UK and the United States of America whose stated goal is to “smash fascism in all its forms”.[1]

    “”smash fascism in all its forms”.[1] ” reminds me of Sunni islamic terrorists trying to smash Shiite Islamic terrorists.

  35. Nazis are bad but at least they aren’t liberals

    Left-wingers have Nazi totalitarian roots, but like Antifa, they won’t admit their totalitarian hypocrisy.

    The neo-nazi’s and the Antifa are remind me of sects of the muslim terrorists fighting each other, or like Hitler fighting Stalin, or the Iran Iraq war.

  36. stcordova,

    But Sal, what about this gathering of the Community of United Nationalists for Trump Supporters (C.UN.T.S.) in Mississippi this week, they look pretty scary too.

  37. stcordova:
    Left-wingers have Nazi totalitarian roots, but like Antifa, they won’t admit their totalitarian hypocrisy.

    So those polo wearing dumbasses who hate Jews, were liberals?

    The neo-nazi’s and the Antifa are remind me of sects of the muslim terrorists fighting each other, or like Hitler fighting Stalin, or the Iran Iraq war.

    My guess Hilter and Stalin caren’t not one bit about ideology beyond its use to manipulate the population.

  38. stcordova: And Tom, this is not moral equivalency claim:

    bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.

    The alt right thought it was and that was the point

  39. So those polo wearing dumbasses who hate Jews, were liberals?

    Actually I was thinking of “liberal” those who promote Hajib fashions for women like Ramsea Odeh:

    http://nypost.com/2017/02/25/the-next-womens-march-is-co-organized-by-a-terrorist/

    Meet the terrorist behind the next women’s march

    The document was co-authored by, among others, Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a convicted terrorist. Odeh, a Palestinian, was convicted in Israel in 1970 for her part in two terrorist bombings, one of which killed two students while they were shopping for groceries. She spent 10 years in prison for her crimes. She then managed to become a US citizen in 2004 by lying about her past (great detective work, INS: Next time, use Google) but was subsequently convicted, in 2014, of immigration fraud for the falsehoods. However, she won the right to a new trial (set for this spring) by claiming she had been suffering from PTSD at the time she lied on her application. Oh, and in her time as a citizen, she worked for a while as an ObamaCare navigator.

    Rasmea Yousef Odeh spent 10 years in prison for her part in two terrorist bombings.AP

    You can see why she’s a hero to the left. Another co-author, Angela Davis, is a Stalinist professor and longtime supporter of the Black Panthers. Davis is best known for being acquitted in a 1972 trial after three guns she bought were used in a courtroom shootout that resulted in the death of a judge. She celebrated by going to Cuba.

    A third co-author, Tithi Bhattacharya, praised Maoism in an essay for the International Socialist Review, noting that Maoists are “on the terrorist list of the US State Department, Canada, and the European Union,” which she called an indication that “Maoists are back in the news and by all accounts they are fighting against all the right people.” You know you’re dealing with extremism when someone admits to hating Canada.

  40. stcordova:
    Hey Phoodoo,

    Here is a real left-winger feminist for you viewing pleasure:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHKmYCCX4_w

    Yes I’m sure she’s a horrible person, with her being overweight and yelling. And whatever social and political viewpoints she considers herself aligned with must surely be bunk given her unattractiveness.

    There are no fat and obnoxious right-wingers, we all know that.

  41. stcordova: Actually I was thinking of “liberal” those who promote Hajib fashions for women like Ramsea Odeh:

    You keep changing the subject, are the kkk neonazis ,Steve Bannon liberals?

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