"...I hope that Martin goes on to trounce whichever nutjob the GOP chooses to prop up."The quote above isn't a segue into any lame analysis of the CD#1 Primary or race. It's not an attack on the Republican Party. Instead, I want to spend a few words talking about "nutjobs".
-Jason Call, Ex-NM CD#1 Democratic candidate, 12/21/07
Earlier today, as you know, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated along with 20 or so other people in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. On a less international scale, Albuquerque has seen three attacks (two arsons and one vandalism) at area abortion clinics/family planning centers in the last month.
Nutjobs.
I know "nutjob" seems a flippant, slangy term to describe people who would go around doing such things. But it somehow captures the utter stupidity of one being so convinced s/he is right and others wrong that they would kill the "other" and/or burn down their buildings. How can anyone be so insanely, illogically convinced of their rectitude? How can anyone possibly defend such actions?
Oh, sweet religion. Where would we be without it?
6 comments:
And yet, Jason Call is so convinced of the rightousness of his party's positions that any Republican for CD1 is a "nutjob".
Methinks Mr. Call (of whom I have no acquaintance or would even recognize in a police line-up or teacher's lounge) was using the term "nutjob" a bit differently than where I went with it. I'm sure he's not comparing Republicans to pseudo-Islamic or anti-abortion terrorists.
Neither was I, actually. Interesting, to me, how the term is gaining mainstream traction. Also interesting that law enforcement has already nabbed the anti-abortion duo. One might say that as these two appear to simply be nutjobs instead of proclaimed anti-abortion nutjobs somehow clears the anti-abortion extremists. I don't know about that.
Thanks for reading, Hunter.
Not linking NUT-in to nothing, but mjae at m-pyre has a very thought-provoking review of the book “The Death of Sigmund Freud” in a post on Prejudice – I want to read this book - I also can’t help but think of the movie “Forbidden Planet” whenever I read the word “id” (MONSTERS FROM THE ID!)
What you term "gaining mainstream traction" I would probably call "dumbing down". It would be interesting to do a Lexis/Nexis search on "Nazi" and see how the context of the use of that word has changed over the past 60 years.
My guess would be that you would get more hits on Seinfeld than WWII.
What I notice about the use of nutjob is that it's a throwaway term to discredit an opposing view without any effort put into why the view is worth discrediting. Jason Call discredit the GOP candidate because, from his perspective, the absurdity of a GOP candidate offering anything better than Marty doesn't make sense; not sharing Call's views on Marty, His discrediting of Marty's opposition as autmomatic nutjob seems unfounded.
As for assassination, that screams of nutjobbery. The idea that killing a person is the most effective way to defeat their view is baffling and depressing, and since I can find no sympathy with the assassins, nutjob as descriptor fits. For the abortion clinic bombers (or whatever), it's a trickier thing. The distinction between regular nutjobs and religious nutjobs is an interesting one. Either way, being a nutjob makes them impossible to relate to, but the religious nutjob cannot be related to because of a disconnect in understanding how or why religion could motivate that action.
//. Just bidding my time analyzing language before I get shipped back off to Louisiana.
If you have read any of my platform positions on my website, then the equating of GOP with 'nutjob' should seem entirely consistent. My semi-endorsement of Martin Heinrich (NOT Martty Chavez, as it seems the previous commenter might have assumed) is not at all an endorsement of any Democratic Party 'righteousness.' If the Democratic Party were truly righteous (as I think many Party-line thinkers, which I absolutely don't qualify as, do ascribe to) then we wouldn't have been in Iraq to begin with - let alone the continuance of funding years after this president should have been impeached. I am about as out-of-line with mainstream Democrats as someone who calls themselves a Democrat can be, and I am immensely disgusted and disappointed with my Party. However, I think that as bad as the Democrats might be right now on many issues (mostly plain political weakness), I think there are strong leaders who may be able to turn that around with a Democratic president - Feingold, Boxer, and a few others. And yes, I have no reservations about saying that anyone who still considers themselves a Republican at this point is either a few shillings shy of a pound note, or simply a rotten bastard.
Again, if you've read my website, there is plenty of GOP discrediting going on. www.Call4Democracy.org
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