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[ by Charles Cameron — if Rich Pickings was 35 and maybe concluded was 34, this would be 35 in what’s clearly an ongoing series, though a bit less intense than it was? ]
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A delirious conspiracist DoubleQuote:

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Miscellanea:

The art of the dodge is a time-honored Washington tradition ..

[W]e all know who tends to fare the worst when the pitchforks come out .. [from Bloomberg: Billionaire Hedge Fund..]

[for the arc collection*****, from They Had It Coming]

But even before the molting, never in my wildest imaginings had I dared to dream that the arc of the moral universe could describe a 90-degree angle and smite down mine enemies with such a hammer fist of fire and fury that even I have had a moment of thinking, Could this be a bit too much?

From Ford Foundation, for sludge collection*****]:

The urge to change the world is normally thwarted by a near-insurmountable barricade of obstacles: failure of imagination, failure of courage, bad governments, bad planning, incompetence, corruption, fecklessness, the laws of nations, the laws of physics, the weight of history, inertia of all sorts, psychological unsuitability on the part of the would-be changer, the resistance of people who would lose from the change, the resistance of people who would benefit from it, the seduction of activities other than world-changing, lack of practical knowledge, lack of political skill, and lack of money. Lack of money is a stubborn obstacle, but not as hopelessly unyielding as some of the others..

[From:The Church’s life-and-death struggle with Santa Muerte]

A Mexico City strFrom eet vendor explained the appeal of Santa Muerte to us by saying: “She understands us because she is a battleaxe like us.”

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Melber 4/10/2019:

… also warned Trump he would be boxed in a canypn ..

[Chuck Schumer] The majority, by taking yet another step to erode that legacy, risks turning this body [the Senate] into a Coliseum of zero-sum in-fighting

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All IN Chris Hayes:

The Justice Department is going to serve as the Roy Cohn for this administration, and that the Attorney General and his deputy are consiglieres rather than representatives of the people of the United States.

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Rachel Maddow:

DoubleQuote, Rachel?

11th Hour, Bryan Wms:

Frank Figliuzzi:

What he [Barr] did today by invoking the spying connection was, he threw what I would call a flash-bang into the room.

Anyone who has been involved or associated with tactical teams or the military will know a flash-bang grenade is designed to disorient and distract, with a flash of light and a loud noise, but it’s not made to take our personnel.

What he did today was to toss a flash-bang grenade into the room at the behest of the President..

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Odds:

Two fighting chyrons:

and:

We shall see — yesterday it was Bannon vs Francis — now Benedict XVI?

And a terrific DoubleQuote!

[ by Charles Cameron — beating the drum, dancing around, clapback, bracing, blocking, curve-ball, armed to the teeth, showdown, passion play, game-changing, end-game — and some appalling religious hate ]
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Quotes:

Rachel Maddow: that new curveball in the Manafort case coming up next — stay with us ..

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Chyrons, ok:

Prosecuting Trump:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC:

Then there’s this set of three horrific sub-captions, drawing distinctions between three major religions..

One on the National Emergency question:

And a game-changer screen-grab re Elizabeth Warren:

I chose these grabs for their wording, not their politics — bracing, clapback, massage, blocking, game-changing, hellscape — and those three stunning alt-right subtitles.

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Quotes, continued:

Ari Melber:
04/5 Rob Rosenstein was sort of dancing around it [indicting Trump] when he spoke about the normal rules for non_presidents, so to say..
We’re now in this interesting period of a kind of an end game ..
We’re in this interesting end-game, and everyone is thinking, Who’s going to do what?
07/8 David Frum: Special Prosecutors seek prosecutable offences. This js a drum I’ve been beating since early in 2017.. There is a real risk that in this highly legalistic culture, that we look to Bob Mueller to do things that it’s really up to Congress to do ..
08 Frum: We’re not at an ending, we’re at the beginning of the game ..
Rep Joe Neguse: We’re not at the end-game, we’re at the beginning ..
Ali Mystal: Southern District of New York is the bear of the Trump vs Leonardo DiCaprio and this time we’re not sure the bear is going to let him 29: go..
It’s Don Junior and Ivanka who, to my mind, are going to be the first people over the falls ..
32 [SDNY]: If they have to play a role in this passion play, I’d set them up to be the Avengers ..
41 Bernard-Henri Levy: there is a massive attack, today, onbthe very udsea of truth ..
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Hardball, Chris Matthews:
17 Charlie Sykes: That would be the smart play ..
53: he needs to be a little more strategic about this — time your hits, do them in the right way..
towards end: We could be looking at a showdown between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in New Hampshire .. This could be what amounts to an elimination contest between the two of them ..
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All In:
He thinks he’s Teflon Don ..
Why he holds his cards so close to the vest .. he has another hand to play ..
He had an opportunity to show his hand, and he didn’t show his hand ..
32: Republicans came to the table armed to the teeth ..
?40 Elizabeth Warren: We are going to play by some rules that are way past now ..
55 Neera Tanden: .. changed their calculus on this ..
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Singing: In short, in matters quasi-international and criminal / [?Kusmani?] is the model of a modern major-general..
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53: the big/?/great reveal ..

So here we can add dancing around, beating the drum, armed to the teeth, showdown, passion play, end-game ..

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Previous Metaphoric Snow posts:

One delicious ouroboros and miscellaneous chyrons &c

I have a huge dose of chyrons and a great ouroboros

It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons, ignore unless interested

It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons, ignore unless interested 2

It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons, ignore unless interested 3

It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons, ignore unless interested 4

It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons, ignore unless interested 5

It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons 6

It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons, ignore unless interested 7

It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons 8

It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons, ignore unless interested 9

Second Civil War? It’s snowing metaphoric chyrons 10

[ by Charles Cameron — balancing explanations — psychological, sociological, anthropological ]
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Carl Jung‘s definitions of enantiodromia read:

In the philosophy of Heraclitus it [enantiodromia] is used to designate the play of opposites in the course of events—the view that everything that exists turns into its opposite….

I use the term enantiodromia for the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time. [CW 6, 708 & 709]

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There could hardly be a clearer set of instances of this individual psychological principle than this, as reported by David A Graham in the strong>Atlantic yesterday:

The Strange Cases of Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims
Three recent incidents seem to highlight a quirk of sociology.

More details:

Last fall, Arthur Wagner was part of something remarkable: His political party, the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland, entered the Bundestag, becoming the first far-right party in the body since the 1950s. This year, Wagner has done something even more [ .. ]remarkable: He has converted to Islam and left AfD.

Even stranger, Wagner is not the first person to leave a far-right, anti-Islam party in Europe and become a Muslim. Arnoud van Doorn, a member of Geert Wilders’s Dutch Freedom Party—which is another far-right, anti-Islam party—left it in 2011, converted to Islam in 2012, and soon after made hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca Muslims are obliged to make at least once in their lifetimes. And in 2014, Maxence Buttey, a local councillor for the National Front (FN), France’s analogous far-right party, converted to Islam and was suspended from the party committee.

In the United States, a grisly story made headlines last year when an 18-year-old former neo-Nazi in Tampa who said he had converted to Islam confessed to killing two (apparently still) neo-Nazi roommates, though that case is so grotesque, and the use of violence so far from mainstream Muslim practice, that it defies comparison to the European examples. (The suspect also shouted a nonsensical, non-Muslim phrase.)

In all cases, the shift from anti-Muslim to Muslim is counterintuitive.

The same article quotes friend JM Berger, commenting after the Charlotesville shootings —

The process and structure of radicalization and extremism are the same in different kinds of movements, even when the content of the extremist belief is different (such as with neo-Nazis and jihadists)

— all this as part of a sociological explanation of conversions to and from extremisms.

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The sociological explanations are well-represented by these paras:

There seem to be some people who are joiners, eager to become part of larger groups. Almost everyone will know someone like this, perhaps someone who is constantly searching for new social groups or joining new organizations, or perhaps even a spiritual seeker-type who flirts with a succession of faiths. The cliche about the “zeal of the convert” exists for a reason.

According to Michael Hogg’s uncertainty-identity theory, people seek to reduce questions about who they are, where they fit in the world, and how people view them. “One way to satisfy this motivation is to identify with a group (a team, an organization, a religion, an ethnicity, a nation, etc.) a process that not only defines and locates oneself in the social world but also prescribes how one should behave and how one should interact with others,” Hogg writes.

I don’t think these sociological explanations really conflict with Jung’s theory of enantiodromia, but the latter seems more exact – “turning into the opposite” rather than “showing a propensity for eextremes” — because in my view, Jung’s version hits the mark so exactly.

I’m too fatigued to fisk Graham’s article more extensively, but my main point is that enantiodromia is “closer in” than the sociological motive, focusing in the indiviual rather than the group.

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Issues of this kind crop up quite frequently. IMO we need some kind of useful understandings of the boundaries between anthropology and sociology, and of the complex relations of both with psychology.

[ by Charles Cameron — from a half-million-strong march to the hug of a victim’s father and an imam, Barcelona and Spain repond to terror with nobility and grace ]
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Telesur‘s headline read Nearly 500,000 March for Peace in Barcelona, and their subhead:

Marchers, on Saturday, displayed signs and banners with various slogans. Some read, “No to Islamophobia,” “The best response: Peace,” and “I’m not afraid.”

The march:

A makeshift shrine to those killed in the attack:

A monarch visits the survivors of terror:

NPR reports on the celebration of Mass in La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona:

Mass Held In Barcelona To Honor Victims Of Terror Attacks

Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia and other dignitaries attend a solemn Mass at Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia Basilica on Sunday for the victims of the terror attacks that killed 14 people and wounded over 120 in Barcelona, Spain.

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We remember the sacred magnificence of the ritual setting, Antonio Gaudi‘s Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, in which this Mass was offered:

And Spain’s considerable Moorish history, exemplified by the Mezquita of Cordoba:

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We witness the profound gesture of the father of the youngest victim, as reported by Daily Sabah, Europe:

Father of youngest victim of Spain attacks hugs imam in defiance of terror, Islamophobia

The father of the youngest victim of last week’s tragic terror attacks in Cambrils and Barcelona hugged a local imam in an emotional protest against terror and Islamophobia.

Xavier Martinez, who lost his three-year-old son Xavi in the attack on Las Ramblas avenue, embraced Spanish imam Driss Salym in the town of Rubi, near Barcelona on Friday. The video of the two hugging, defiantly showing unity and compassion, was widely shared on social media.

Here is the BBC’s video:

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Oof, the imam’s tears at the end of that clip.

Many cities have shown their resilience when attacked, and we are proud of them: Barcelona best of all.

[ by Charles Cameron — or, I suppose you could say, symmetry ]
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The Finsbury Park Mosque attacker drove a car into a crowd because he was disgusted by the Westminster Bridge attacker who drove a car into a crowd:

Ah well, bin Laden back in the day had a more sophisticated form of the same practice. As he put it in a speech to America::

And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children.

Sources:

SPLC, What We Know: Finsbury Park Attack

Telegraph, Westminster attack: Everything we know so far

Zenpundit, Close reading, Synoptic- and Sembl-style