a civil word for the right

greetings fellow appeasers.

at the invitation of cc i will be your guest posterchild for the next while. for those of you startled by change, by all means scroll on. before we get busy with the robbery, assault and bloggery, i'd like to say thanks to cc for the invite. there. that was me being civil. it won't always be that way. like the top of the page says, "About: Left-leaning, progressive snark from the general vicinity of Waterloo, Ontario." seems clear enough. you're welcome to sharpen your claws on my furniture but don't be shocked if my "tolerance" and "progressiveness" slip. i might even use bad words.

some twistings of thought would have us believe that a pleasant, intentional lie is superior to an ugly, provable truth, though truth is a slippery concept. while there are certain and objective truths, most things we call truth are actually beliefs. belief is chosen and one of the powers of belief is its ability to exist without evidence. it's a very human tendency. i know what i believe and what i suspect but your mileage may vary. evidence is no less susceptible to massaging in the social and political realms. there are endless sources of information available on any newsworthy topic. all of it skewed from the source through the various filters of media. a picture is worth a thousand words but the picture doesn't necessarily make those words true. right kate?

let's look at a few words, shall we?

civil is a troubling word. this sneaky term and its noun form have become very popular as the simpleton wing's defense against challenge. civil can describe politeness, established rights, internecine war and the sharp delineation between state and both the military and religious (as in civil marriages and do your fucking job marriage commissioners). in the larger sense, civil means of the people. recent visitors from the small dead trolls have invoked this civility talisman to deflect responses to their passive-aggresive snot flicking. like this little gem in the comments to this post, courtesy of an anthropomorphous ass:

"Eeyore said...
Wow. What unadulterated hate. An interesting glimpse into the heart of the beasts...though psychologists would probably find you much more interesting than I. And all this from the folks who like to think of themselves as "tolerant" and "progressive"."

unadulterated hate. gosh, that sounds pretty strong. i've reread the original post and the comment thread and while i expressed and read notes of disdain, distaste and disgust. i read no hate. at worst kate's defenders were called stupid, which upon review seems a perfectly fair and balanced response. but eeyore is playing all the cards in his hand by putting air quotes around tolerant and progressive. that my friends is the whole wad, shot into the triumphal tissue of current conservative discourse. this is a dim echo of the right wing ricochet. insult, dismiss, deflect and redefine. the left are hateful beasts, insane i tell you and they claim to be tolerant. haha and touche. though i don't doubt that psychologists would find me and mine more interesting, being curious, engaged, thoughtful and all together sexy.

let's revisit some shining examples of love, tolerance and progress, with the lowest common denominatrix herself (sorry. i don't link to slaughter porn, paste the link if you must). response to this piece of exploitive hate mongering brought the trolls this way. so let's see who is actually doing the hating, shall we? from the comments at:
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/2007_01.html

"They love death, pure and simple. After all the hugging and kissing about how lovely Islam is, after it is all stripped away, there's a huge death cult mentality that's alive and well in Islam. Any cult that advises it's members that the only way to achieve positive entrance to heaven is to die in Jihad...well, enough said. Baby Boomers......still laughing. Posted by: Pat"

"I considered titling this post "Dead Baby Before Picture" Posted by: Kate"

"This picture and some of the comments here make me ill. My heart breaks for a child who deserves a decent mother and father. Not the fucking ingrates it would appear he has. How do you even contemplate doing this to your child. Posted by: northbaytrapper"

"...they tell us the Muzzie vote wont go to the Conservatives because they feel they favor Israel, they can't have it both ways.
What an innocent little "Boomer", already getting groomed to fit the mold. They love their children so much they indoctrinate them with enough hate to motivate them to go off to martyrdom with a big boom for Allah. Posted by: Liz J"

"I'm starting to think that sterilization is the only answer. And don't give me the Hitler thinking stuff. Jews didn't strap on bombs to kill innocent people. Posted by: The Atheist Jew"

"This is so sad...but, I fear it is not the exception. What's really sad is that images like this make me feel less sympathetic when I hear that children have been killed in a Middle East bombing (be it US air-strikes or one of their own home-grown suicide bombers). It seems that these kids are headed for nothing but misery and pointless deaths anyway. These are the people that Libs and Layton want to make nice-and-cozy with. Meanwhile, if in Canada, a child is sent to their room, spanked, or made to do chores, they want your children to be removed from the hostile environment you present.
Posted by: brycema"

"That one picture is reason enough why we must win this War. If not for only our children’s future but theirs as well. From the maniacs of the world wide human death cult. That they feel this way about their children is disgusting. To bad we have our own slithering bunch ,with even less principle. Their day is about to be swallowed by events at last with information , allied with there own pig headedness. Plus I do sense a coming rebellion against this assault on life or its symbols. Usurped by these vultures.
That Socialists here would not even have a child, just an abortion to proclaim their fidelity to this adoration of murder. Which I see as two sides of the same coin. By similar mentalities employing different dogmas. Both are the enemies of civility & existence. The goals are the same . Utter control of individuals in all capacities by an elite.
This child represents the proud example by ant-life monsters, of future genocide, not growth or fecundity. Renewal is not a goal they share. What better way to corrupt the image of innocence. With which we as human beings associate with the new future? This is evil folks , plain & simple. Just my opinion Posted by: Revnant Dream"

"the best strategy remains to make it all MoM violence all the time. Get the Shia murdering the Sunni, the Arabs going after the Persians etc. Just like the Palestinians have been doing to each other in the name of Allah They hate each other so much it is quite easy to get them going at each other with knives, guns, bombs and anything else they can get their hands on. Help the Saudis get a nuke so they can have a go at the whack jobs in Iran idf they decide to not make electricity with all their peaceful nuclear technology They are too death loving to figure out they are being had. As long as they are blowing themselves back from their current 10th century mindset to the stone age and not bothering us, will anybody actually care ?? Posted by: Fred"

and it goes on and on and on until kate's disgraceful and dishonest exploitation of a child's picture was exposed. so iguess kate is now qualified to act as a stringer for the ap. sorry to inflict that storm of brane shite, but i want to be abundantly clear when it comes to issues of civility, tolerance and progressiveness. to say nothing of hate.

lunatics of the right. you are the characters who claimed to believe that invading a sovereign nation on faulty, cooked evidence was the right thing to do. you claimed it would be fast, fun, cheap and easy. you claimed to believe we would be welcomed as liberators. you believed you could simply install your political system like a fucking template over a vastly different people with rich and ancient cultures, that you are either blind to or simply don't comprehend. as each of your claimed beliefs proved false you just updated to newer, more vague claims and beliefs. never letting the facts get in the way of the mission.

here is your handiwork in the middle east, afghanistan after half a decade is failing and the taliban is resurgent. iraq is in chaos with hundreds and thousands dead and a nation in ruins. the door to your chosen truths and blind beliefs opened on a charnel house of misery and suffering. all of it for no better reason than smug ideology, ignorance and greed. only four years ago this was going to be your showcase democracy in the middle east. and now that every last plan and projection has failed, after every rationale, motive and cause has been debunked, after torture, terminal detainments, renditions and the desecration of our own freedoms, you just can't get enough. keep the gears of death grinding. it must be sad to live a life bereft of empathy. i've been called a hypocrite in these threads and yet the eeyores and syncrodoxes of the world don't see the cognitive disconnect between pretending to bestow freedom and insisting on controlling how it gets used. you want to free people from dictatorship, reform and remake entire nations and all the while, you distrust them, detest them and wish them harm. then you wonder why they hate you. you wonder why a growing number of people reject your words and ideas. and you question our tolerance. sweet mother of fuck.

tolerance is not a blank cheque. in general, we on the left are more tolerant. you, on the right are less tolerant. we accept that there are all sorts of people, from all sorts of places, with all kinds of different ideas and they want the same sorts of things that we do. you perceive the world as us or them, so screw them. we think the world will be better if we include more people rather than exclude them. we advocate for freedom and choice. you work to hobble freedom and restrict choice. we can tolerate a great many ideas and ideologies but we are not unwilling or incapable of fighting against ideas that cause harm. if your understanding of tolerance leads you to believe that you can call us hateful, deluded hypocrites, you had best be prepared to support your allegations. because we will correct you, with all of the civility you deserve.