Nonsense. Nothing is going this disarm except for an overwhelming electoral win. These will always be with us. They will trail us into the future kicking and screaming. They will always do what they always do. But there is a middle and they can be moved to vote Trump out. Words do matter. “I have a dream” and “ask what you can do,” and “not a read state or a blue state, but the United States etc …”.
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Bullshit, if one pulls one’s head from one’s rear end, one will see that there is not one damn thing Omar can do to placate the right. I don’t agree with the premise that she is a bomb thrower, the bulk of the controversy surrounding her has been manufactured by the right. They are doing their best to destroy a Mulsim woman of color, to the extent of putting her life in real danger. So please spare us the victim blaming.
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And of course she’ll need to put a seer on staff to help her predict what words will set off the right wingers. Or maybe not, everything and anything she says will set them off. Unfortunately too many here haven’t figured that out yet.
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What’s an editor going to do? Predict what words may or may not set off the right wing outrage machine? Its about the person using the words NOT THE WORDS being used!
Can’t come quick enough!
For most people on the planet her statement was completely correct. I mourn the Notre Dame of Paris fire for the same reason. I would feel the same way about the destruction of temples in Egypt or Greece or the Middle East. Chartres, like most Gothic churches, was the undertaking of many, many decades of work and devotion. It is not the finest example of Gothic architecture but it is the heart of France. One doesn’t need to be Christian or Catholic to mourn the destruction to such a beautiful structure and the art work within it.
I mourn the tragic loss of the temples in Greece, particularly the Parthenon which even in its sad broken condition today is still sublime in its proportions and beauty.
I just hope that when replacing the roof beams the architects and builders do not turn to old growth trees which are now few on this earth. Steel is stronger and lighter. Have some concern for the remnants of natural beauty on this planet.
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We’re actually getting there.
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I was gonna add, because good people will find ways to be good, no metaphysical excuses are needed, while bad people will find ways to be bad, and no metaphysical excuses should be accepted.
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That’s been my experience of life. If you do good because you’re scared, I don’t think it counts. hahahahaha You should do good because you want to and people do. I agree.
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Mine too, in fact when they try to scare people into doing good, they usually do something even worse. The human psyche is a hard thing to figure out, and 6000 years of metaphysical bullshit has only made it harder.
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Yeah we just don’t do that well with metaphysics. Not since christianity took over so much of the world, anyway. You get a glimpse of the Classical World and how utterly it was destroyed when christianity came in and it’s breathtaking. Everything we had learned was lost.
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I remember being so saddened when I first read of the damage that the Islamic State was doing to ancient Iraqi cities “in the name of Islam”. Wanton destruction of thousands of year old artifacts, now gone forever.
Funny thing is, since I don’t wear a hijab or criticize Republican treatment of minorities, nobody seems to want to deliberately lie about what I just wrote, declare me a traitor, or misconstrue what I meant.
Funny thing that…
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I hated it when the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas in the caves. I hated it when ISIS started destroying Palmyra - a place I’ve always wanted to see. it doesn’t matter what kind of religion might have been involved, it was a matter of history and humanity.
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Looks like I take after Obama. Nice company I keep. 
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Yes, but she can make it much more difficult – but never impossible – for them to do so by choosing her words carefully – with the help of a wordsmith. Predict what words? Yes, better than she can. That’s why politicians have speechwriters. If she doesn’t learn this, she will stumble into one ambush after another only to get slapped down --something she does not deserve. .
If you don’t get what I’m talking about, I don’t know what to say. I’m talking PR 101.
“…do not turn to old growth trees which are now few on this earth. Steel is stronger and lighter…”
I’m no expert of course, but I can’t imagine they’ll use any ordinary lumber. Today we have “engineered” lumber, aluminum and steel. I’ve got to believe they’ll use this destruction also as an opportunity to repair old structural deterioration.
You may know that the flying buttresses were not on the original cathedral. They were added later to relieve vertical stresses in the stone. I think also that the water on the hot stone causes some sort of deterioration.
They’ll bring the best brains to the project and computer analysis of stress and strain. The project will be studied for years and years by structural engineers.
“… Taliban destroyed the Buddhas in the caves…”
Second only to genocide, one of the most barbaric acts we’ve seen in modern times.
as much as it can …
got to keep on trying, making things better as much as we can
From the NYT.
(1) The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 was “something some people did.”
(2) Last month’s attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, was “something someone did.”
(3) The 2015 massacre at a black church in Charleston, S.C., was “something someone did.”
Now imagine that a public figure with a history of making racially inflammatory remarks — someone like Representative Steve King of Iowa or, better yet, President Trump — had said any of this. (Neither of them did.) Would you not be appalled?
Of course you would. You’d be insulted by the evasiveness of the something and someone. You’d be revolted that a right-wing politician would fail to speak forcefully against the bigotries too often found among his followers and fellow travelers. You’d be disgusted by the deliberate attempt to conceal the scale of the horror, the identity of the perpetrators, and the racist ideology that motivated them.
I was sickened by the wanton destruction of the temples and artifacts of those ancient civilizations. They were an important part of our heritage. So much is being destroyed by idiots who only care about their transient cause and it is really ugly and stupid when it is deliberate. Religion has created a great many beautiful and impressive structures and art but it is also responsible for the destruction of the same. And so it goes…
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