Reflections From a Murky Pond

Here in the Civilized World we’re repeatedly inundated by calls to not offend the Muslims, especially not to openly mock their cult or their cult’s prophet. This normally reoccurs whenever the Muslims respond to being offended with savage violence such as their Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Offended Muslims

Let us for a moment set aside the cowardly basis for these apologetics and calls for censorship and focus upon the core idea of the Muslims’ offense at such things. After all, the Dhimmis and Oikophobes who demand that we show respect for Islam and not mock the cult, its prophet, or adherents do have a point. Doing so greatly and dramatically offends the Muslims and goads a significant number of them to violence.

Consider This:

If the Muslims are that offended by such mockery that they have to resort to violence and/or lawfare to assuage their outrage, they have no business living in the Civilized World with its freedoms and pluralism. Simply and bluntly put, the Muslims are unfit for the West just as the West is unfit for the Muslims.

Tags: Charlie Hebdo | Civilization | Cultural Mores | Cultural Norms | Cultural Relativism | Culture | Culture War | Dhimmitude | Hate | Islam | Islamists | Islamophobia | Muhammad | Multiculturism | Muslims | Offensive | Politics | Religion | Society | Violence

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2015 at 9:17 am and is filed under Politics, Religion, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The Cola Wars have been raging since the 1980s, with Coca-Cola and Pepsi targeting each other in advertisement after advertisement. Given that there were billions of dollars on the line it wasn’t too surprising how vicious the Cola War became for a while. Even so, some of us were surprised and a little concerned about the war over cold drinks “going hot” when, in 1989, PepsiCo purchased: 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer from the Soviets.

NOTE: The fleet’s purchase, along with PepsiCo being the US distributor for Stolichnaya was part of a countertrade arrangement that allowed Pepsi to be sold in the Soviet Union.

The fleet was nearly immediately sold for scrap. Interestingly, however, for a short period of time PepsiCo had the 7th largest submarine fleet in the world. 😯

Shortly after that the Cola Wars calmed down a bit. Now, however, Coca-Cola has changed the war by politicizing it and bringing America as whole into the conflict. They did this with their 2014 Super Bowl commercial, “It’s Beautiful.”

Some love it, others loath it. Few have no opinion about it. Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” almost seems more battle anthem than marketing. Perhaps never before has a simple television commercial so divided a population.

Americans v. Liberals

Whether they intended to do or not, Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl commercial directly pit Americans and Liberals against each other. Americans have, at least, some discomfort with- and qualms about the message “It’s Beautiful” promulgates and/or reinforces and normalizes, while Liberals absolute love that message.

It boils down to whether the viewer loves America and her culture or loathes it in favor of foreign cultures. If the viewer believes that immigrants should strive to become Americans, bringing with them those parts of their birth culture that will add to America, they will likely find fault with the commercial’s underlying message. If, however, the viewer desires for immigrants to keep all or most of their birth culture after relocating to America. they will likely love it.

This is simply because Americans love their country, their culture and language, and convergence. Liberals, contrariwise, loath American culture but love diversity and plurality.

Godless Passive-Aggression

Naturally, the Atheists had to chime in because the song, “America The Beautiful” contains the refrain, “America! America! | God shed His grace on thee,” and any mention of the God(s) anywhere outside of the home or a church that isn’t a denial of the Divinity’s existence sets their teeth on edge. What was interesting about their interjections into the conversations were their acrobatic apologetics.

Reading the various displays of the Godless’ passive-aggression was actually amusing since they had to contort their comments to show support for the various oikophobes that fetishize diversity while still maintaining their Atheist “cred” by bemoaning the Godly reference.

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Tags: America | Americana | Coca-Cola | Cola Wars | Conservatives | Culture | Culture War | Diversity | History | Immigration | Language & Idiom | Liberals | Marketing | Multiculturism | Music | Nostalgia | Oikophobia | Pepsi | Super Bowl | Viral Marketing | YouTube

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 4th, 2014 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Food & Drink, Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

To paraphrase Frank Herbert’s character Gurney Halleck, mood is a thing for cattle and loveplay, not defining a national character or what is right and wrong. In point of fact, if one is an a relationship, I’m not even sure if mood is always a thing for loveplay either.

And yet, as Ravi Zacharias pointed out in Jesus Among Other Gods, there is a certain mood promulgated by the Liberal and Progressives within America that seeks to do exactly that.

Not all moods were created equal and some are, or should be, less tolerable than others.

The difficulty has not been in knowing what to say, but in knowing what not to say. We are living in a time when sensitivities are at the surface, often vented with cutting words. Philosophically, you can believe anything, so long as you don’t claim it to be true. Morally you can practice anything so long as you do not claim it is a better way, Religiously you can hold to anything, so long as you do not bring Jesus Christ into it. If an idea is eastern it is granted critical immunity; if it is western it is thoroughly criticized. Thus a journalist can walk into a church and mock its carryings on, but he or she dare not do the same if the ceremony is from the eastern fold. Such is the mood at the end of the twentieth century.

A mood can be a dangerous sate of mind, because it can crush reason under the weight of feeling. But that is precisely what I feel postmodernism represents – a mood

Zacharias definitely has the right of it. The Liberals and Progressives are very much not in the mood to hear or hear about Christian religious speech, except within carefully circumscribe locales. Conversely, they’re quite in the mood to both hear and defend almost any form of Eastern religious speech in almost any venue, especially Islamic speech.

It is to the point where these domestic enemies will cry in outrage over a Christian saying homosexuality is a sin yet remain silent upon or even support a Muslim who says that the Qur’an and the Hadith state that homosexuals should be killed.

So far, me and mine are outside of this issue. We’re Pagans and, while Western, the Liberals and Progressives by and large don’t yet think of Paganism as a religion so we can express any religious view we want whenever and wherever we want without repercussion…as long as it doesn’t agree with the Judeo-Christian norm.

It sort of make me pity the Christians. America was and still is a Christian nation, culturally if not legalistically, and they’re the normative majority. Yet they, and only they, are the ones attacked for any display of their faith or attempted exercise of morality.

Tags: America | Christianity | Culture War | Islam | Liberals | Political Correctness | Progressives | Ravi Zacharias | Religion

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 11th, 2014 at 3:24 am and is filed under Politics, Religion, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

It seems that the paramount queer activist group GLAAD who spearheaded the assault on Phil Robertson which led to A&E’s suspension of him aren’t so happy right now. It seems that this group, which specializes in attacking anyone and everyone who isn’t on board with the gay agenda, has been on the receiving end of unprecedented levels of angry backlash from normal Americans over their manufacturing outrage and attacking the popular American television personality because he said homosexuality was a sin.

GLAAD’s Vice President of Communications Rich Ferraro, speaking to The Wrap, seemed neither too glad nor too gay about the people’s response to GLAAD’s actions. 😉

“In the five-and-a-half years I’ve worked at GLAAD, I’ve never received so many violently angry phone calls and social media posts attacking GLAAD for us speaking out against these comments,” the media watchdog organization’s vice president of communications Rich Ferraro told The Wrap.

He said those reactions range from those who simply believe as Robertson believes to those who feel that GLAAD and A&E’s actions limit the reality star’s free speech.

Unsurprisingly, yet ironically, and hysterically, GLAAD’s mouthpiece sound a bit butthurt over Americans’ response to A&E’s suspension of the Christian television personality at GLAAD’s behest.

I guess, however, that the voice of the angry queers is just going to have to learn to bend over and take it. I wouldn’t think, given his obvious and openly proclaimed preferences and proclivities, that this should be too hard for Ferraro.

Hard or not though, it something that Ferraro, GLAAD, and queers in general are going to have to learn. American culture has become, for good or ill, very tolerant of homosexuality. We’re not in the least, however, tolerant of agendists manufacturing outrage, attacking our own, and decrying a negative opinion of homosexual sex as defamation, “hate speech,” or some other form of bigotry.

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Addendum / Update: I’m betting that they’re not only not glad but downright sad now. A&E has reversed their suspension of Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson and on Jan 15, will be airing new episodes of the show that include scenes featuring the feisty patriarch.

“There’s no negotiation to have; we’re doing the show,” said an insider close to the situation. “We’ll figure out a solution. It’s just not going to happen overnight. Everybody will take a break for the holidays and regroup afterward. That’s probably the smartest thing for everyone to do. Time heals a lot of wounds.”

That’s going hurt GLAAD’s feelings because it either means that normative American’s outrage beat out GLAAD’s or that the whole suspension was just a publicity mechanism and that A&E just used GLAAD and their following like a cheap rent boy.

Tags: 1st Amendment | Activism | America | Censorship | Christianity | Christians | Culture War | Duck Dynasty | GLAAD | Humor | Intolerance | LGBT | Phil Robertson | Queers | Sarcasm | Society | Television

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 22nd, 2013 at 8:29 am and is filed under Humor, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

So the Art & Entertainment Network (A&E) has indefinitely suspended one of the stars of “Duck Dynasty,” Phil Robertson because in an interview with GQ he said some things which offended queers, Blacks, and their enablers and supporters. What this means for their most popular and profitable series remains to be seen.

But, while seemingly very stupid, suspending Robertson for this reason, any reason, or no reason at all is completely within their rights.

If we’re going suspend, terminate, and otherwise vilify, pillory, and attempt to terrorize into submission people who say things that offend various groups within America’s borders, I just wish we’d do so fairly and apply the same treatment to the various queers, Blacks, and other less than mainstream personalities that spout things that offend the majority of the average American citizenry.

That won’t happen though because political correctness is wholly and solely based upon pandering to- and applying a far lower standard of expectations to non-normative, minority cultural adherents.

Tags: A&E | America | Blacks | Christianity | Cultural Mores | Culture War | Duck Dynasty | Entitlement Society | LGBT | Liberals | Phil Robertson | Political Correctness | Progressives | Queers | Sin | Society | Television

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 19th, 2013 at 9:33 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.