zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — more noise by far than reality, but still enough reality to be troubling — your opinions sought! ]
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Here’s the promised special chyron issue on the concept of a Second Civil War

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I’m featuring this quote from Nicolle Wallace first, because it suggests that Trump has already engendered a war — whereas the other materials I offer here will suggest that the war arises in response to Democratic actions against Trump — a difference in emphasis worth noting:

It’s a war. He permitted, he green-lit a war in this country around rce. And if you think about the most dangerous things he’s done, that might be it..

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Chyrons:

Rush Limbaugh:

You might even get away with saying that we are on the cusp of a second Civil War. Some of you might say that we are already into it, that it is already begun, however you characterize it though, we are under attack from within.

Chyrons again:

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That’s a whole lot of very-very-right and Trump-circle-right messaging about a Civil War, and that quote, I vote, and I buy guns, is chilling, with the example of Lt Hasson and his arsenal driving the point home. Another point about Hasson is that he stated his intention to have five such stashes of weaponry…

Fair enough, there are extremists putting together weapons stashes, some of them using them in infrequent but deadly terror operations. Fair enough, by no means everyone on the right, and by no means everyone who supports Second Amendment gun rights, is liable to join in any attempt at a civil war. But fair enough too, on the whole those on the right may well be better armed than those on the left

Fair enough again, many of those on the left have their grievances sharpened, much as many on the right do.. and grievances may in the end turn out to be the most significant of weapons, since they provide the motivation for mayhem, whether verbal or martial. And it should be admitted that threats and physical violence are intimately connected, and rhetoric can indeed incite to harm.

That’s my poor, off-the-cuff attempt to get some of the nuances of the situation stated, and no doubt some “on one side” would put their emphasis in some places and de-emphasize or deny others, and vice versa.. but my overall point would be something along these lines:

there’s enough rage simmering in the American body politic — and possibly in many other nations — for sporadic outbursts of violence and attempted civil war to occur — but at least in the States we are far from the full-blown CW2 that Rush Limbaugh seems to relish — and although I’ve heard the opinion expressed that Berkeley should be nuked, on the whole we don’t have the same sort of battle lines as were available (I think, being a Brit and no historian) in the North / South divide of CW!.

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Zen tweeted today:

I’m not certain that this is true or not. What I do know is that historically when radical movements fail or end- be it 19th C Narodniki or 20th C antiwar & 68’er protests – an inner core turns to extreme violence and terrorism (People’s Will, Baader-Meinhoff, Weathermen…) https://t.co/hH5vbGO9Sb

— mark safranski (@zenpundit) February 23, 2019

That fits with my impression. And Zen is a (or an) historian.

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As an Oxford man, though, I was impressed with the fact that the street named North Parade runs south of the street named South Parade in that city, and the explanation that during the English civil war, the Roundheads gathered at South Parade while the Royalists faced them at North Parade — a pleasant fantasy, according to Wiki and its footnotes.

But that was a lo-o-ong while ago..

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Opinions?

{ by Charles Cameron — dishes, grills, tightens gag, silences, burns, pretends, plays — a mixed bag — wait for the next post to drop! ]
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I’m hurrying through this post to get to the next, which will be a special chyron issue on the concept of a Second Civil War

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Gagging Stone chyrons:

Misc chyrons:

Mueller end-game chyrons:

And a couple of headers:

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Quotes:

Nicolle Wallace:

In Vietnam time he’s going to have his first day of meetings scheduled so far with Kim Jong Unon Wednesday. Wednesday night in Vietnam 9s going to be the morning here in Washington when Cohen is testifying, so if Trump is going to be paying attention to that Cohen testimony, he’s not going to be getting much sleep between his first night and meeting with Kim Jong Un and his second day of meetings with Kim Joh Un on Tuesday.

It could be quite a split screen moment for the President [in Vietnam when Cohen testifies

The New York Attorney is expected to charge Paul Manafort, seemingly check-mating him ..

Heidi Przybyla: Islamic terrorism is more promoted in oress releases by the Department of Justice than these incidence of home grown white nationalist domestic terrorists ..

Eugene Robinson: When the reality is exactly the opposite; the reality is exactly the opposite, the real threat is from white nationalist hoke grown terrorists..

It’s a cult of personality ..

Ari Melber, The Beat:

We’ve talked about staying in lanes ..

Hardball, Chris Matthews:

04 I think once Paul Manafort left the Trump campaign, there were all these questions about him specifically, so I think he was a little bit radioactive ..
08 Kristof: I don’t know if the sentencing memo is going to connect those dots for us ..
NK: the dots are all over ..
Manafort has been double-dealing*** with the prosecutor ..
Noah Rothstein: The President will be just one dot in those many dots ..
He might just be a bit-player*** ..
[57: chyron or clip: kamikaze: ]

All In, Chris Hayes:

Was there any talk about this [??] during the Nixon days? I wonder whether this is a strategy that has been worked out before, or war-gamed before..
Elie Mystal: Southern District of New York is coming at Trump like syphilis. It’s going to make him crazy, and it’s never going away ..
Rutger Bregman at Davos: It feels like I’m in a fire-fighters’ conference, and no-one’s allowed to talk about water ..

[ by Charles Cameron — auditioning, pledging, pitching, animated by animus, focusing fire, kicking, lashing, assault, shocked, strike, slammer ]]
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Headers:

First, some ouroboroi (serpents that bite their own tails):

This strikes me as a negative ouroboros —

— the point here is that the serpent snaps at its tail and misses:

Next, a fairly plausible ourob — the newspaper is reporting on a suit against itself. There’s a frame-switch here, between headline and paper, which is why I call it “plausible”:

And this one — can we call it an ourob? Trunp, after all, is part of reality, so in this case it’s a part raging at its own whole:

If, as I keepm arguing, ouroboroi are often markers of significant content — not always, but opften enough — it’s worth testing the boundaries of what constitutes an ourob. And simply getting practice= in identifying them.

What do you think?

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Quotes:

Writing in Inside the London tech scene’s frantic plan to stop Brexit of tech folk in Britain,

these people eventually congealed into an unofficial pro-Remain guerrilla operation, determined to use their skills to make the Brexit train stall before it goes flying over the white cliffs of Dover.

the group’s “numer” or leading light is quoted as saying:

MTP: Bernie Sanders is flexing his fundraising muscles ..
m39 one-to-one ..

Ari Melber 2/20/2019: We love to speculate about this [timing of Mueller release ] because it’s uniquely high drama ..

Hardball: Bernie Sanders comes fast out of the gate with his fundraising
It’s kicking it into Dan Coats’ court ..
We don’t know whether Joe Biden or Beto O’Rourke who are auditioning for the role of Hamlet, when they’re finally going to decide what to do ..
There’s so many wild cards out there on the Democratic side, and to some extent on the Trump side of the equation ..

All In, Chris Hayes:
CH to McCabe: What do you say to the basic idea that there’s these people inside the FBI, you among them, who just don’t like the guy [DJT], didn’t like the guy from the jump. and were animated by animus essentially in the actions you took ..
Enemy of the people .. these very loaded terms ..
The President calling you out, Fox News focusing its fire on you ..
Dan Coats is the latest one to be sort of in the cross hairs with this President ..
We still don’t know about Wikileaks ..
Clint Watts: The belief has always been that should Wikileaks ever go down, that day or the next day there would be an unbelievable release of material. It’s always been thought that they’re on an information timebomb ..

Morning Joe 2/21/2019 We should be shocked that we’re not more shocked ..

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Chyrons

CNN Situation Room 5pm m59 2/20/2019 chyroon NATO

MTP chyron NYT Enemy of the People

And a George Mason ouroboros:

We weren’t always so ready to label far-right extremists domestic terrorists, but now it’s happening ..

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Okay, Ari Melber and the Roger Stone trial:

Roger Stone’s very well known effort to turn serious proceedings into a baroque theater of the absurd .. **

— both kicking myself and pledging “epic fight” — twofer!

Ari: Quite a performance. This is the reality part. Stone was doing the reality show part. We’re in the reality part today ..

Nick Ackerman: In a way, this is like baseball: the third strike and he’s off to the slammer ..

Rogow (defense): It’s indefensible ..

NA: If she’s put into place at the time a full gaga order, he would have gone directly to jail, do not stop Go, do not collect $200 ..

AM: This is his last, last strike as she puts it ..

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And that’s my last stroke for the day.

[ by Charles Cameron — calling Hasson a “domestic terrorist” is a good first step, noting that he’s fulfilling Breivik’s hope that his manifesto will train others is a second, and checking out his religious ideas would be a third ]
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I’ve seen a fair amount of coverage of Lt. Hasson as a domestic terrorist, focusing on his weaponry, his target database, and his dream of killing “almost every last person on the earth” — but nothing taking explicit note of his views on religion.

The New York Times reported him as saying:

Please send me your violence that I may unleash it onto their heads. Guide my hate to make a lasting impression on this world. So be it.

That phrasing struck me as strange, being the only part of his writings addressed to a second party. In context, however, it seems likelynto be a form of prayer — it is immediately preceded by one of the very few religious references in the document:

Gun rights people will never rise, need religious to stand up.

Coming immediately after that, it strikes me that “Please send me your violence .. Guide my hate ..” certainly could and perhaps should be read as prayers. Their address to a second party seems like a tell to me.

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The only other religious reference I saw in Hasson’s writings as the court provided them followed immediately on the question, “Who and how to provoke???” And reads:

New idea this weekend, R/E orthodox as a way to influence?

I take that to be a reference to Russian / Eastern Orthodoxy. Other meanings for “R/E” I’ve seen include “Real Estate”, “Retained Earnings” and “Revolutionary/Evolutionary” — none of which make any sense in the context followed by “orthodox”.

Further, Hasson thought of Russia as a resistant to the values he despised, writing:

Looking to Russia with hopeful eyes or any land that despises the west’s liberalism. Exclusive of course the muslim scum. Who rightfully despise the west’s liberal degeneracy….

It seems to me he likely shares Anders Breivik’s general “cultural Christianity” if not Christianity itself — and given the well-documented closeness of Putin and Patriarch Kirill, and their general joint approach melding religious and patriotic ideation, and indeed Church and State together, it would make sense that Hasson “Looking to Russia with hopeful eyes” would include his viewing Orthodoxy, at least in its Russian form, as a bulwark against “the west’s liberal degeneracy”.

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I checked with Anders Breivik’s Manifesto, which Hasson studied with care, following many of Breivik’s instructions, and didn’t find any suggestion that Orthodoxy was Breivik’s preferred form of Christianity for the purposes of resisting degeneracy. In fact his instructions for citizens of his revised western culture include the section title, “Convert to Christianity (Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant)”, with the further explanation:

Every individual is to accept baptism, the ritual act by which one is admitted to membership of the Christian Church, as a member of the particular Church in which the baptism is administered.

Orthodoxy is named in that section title before Catholicism and Protestantism, but I don’t think that proves much of anything. In another section, describing the origin of the St George cross as a Templar emblem, Breivik writes:

Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Roman Catholic Church, Anglican Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Eastern Catholic Churches.

— a pretty comprehensive list of “high” churches – but not one that prioritizes one over the others.

I’d also note that Hasson briefly references with approval the writings of Eric Rudolph, the anti-abortion activist and Olympic Park bomber, who described his faith thus:

I was born a Catholic, and with forgiveness I hope to die one.

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All in all, there’s not much in the court papers of a religious nature, but the one real hint we have seems to point to Putin and the Patriarch as powerful allies in his white supremacist fight.