Your 'is the Pope Catholic?' Friday Open thread

by liberal japonicus

This Rolling Stone cover story about Pope Francis is well worth reading. Some grafs I found interesting:

A reporter asks Francis, who is standing at the head of the aisle, about the existence of a "gay lobby" within the Vatican. Francis begins by making a joke, saying he hasn't yet run into anyone with a special gay identification card. But then his face becomes serious and, gesturing for emphasis, he says it's important to distinguish between lobbies, which are bad – "A lobby of the greedy, a lobby of politicians, a lobby of Masons, so many lobbies!" he says later in the press conference – and individual gay people who are well-intentioned and seeking God. It's while speaking to the latter point that he makes the "Who am I to judge?" remark, and this part of the video is really worth watching, because, aside from the entirely mind-blowing fact of a supposedly infallible pope asking this question at all, his answer is never really translated properly. What he actually says is, "Mah, who am I to judge?" In Italian, mah is an interjection with no exact English parallel, sort of the verbal equivalent of an emphatic shrug. My dad's use of mah most often precedes his resignedly pouring another splash of grappa into his coffee. The closest translation I can come up with is "Look, who the hell knows?" If you watch the video, Francis even pinches his fingers together for extra Italian emphasis. Then he flashes a knowing smirk.

and

Even simple gestures, like Francis' rejection of the papal palace, went beyond mere symbolism. "The main reason he didn't want to live there mostly had to do with autonomy," says a Vatican clergyman who has worked closely with multiple popes. "In the palace, they can control what gets to you." Now, while Francis' days in some ways follow an expected papal itinerary – early rising and prayer, morning Mass, visits with dignitaries and heads of state, the occasional off-site trip to a hospital or a church – the space he's carved out for himself has allowed for an unprecedented degree of independence. While past popes maintained detailed public schedules, Francis handwrites his own agenda in a private datebook. "This is unheard of," a senior Vaticanisti who wishes to remain anonymous tells me. "Aides who'd ordinarily know what's going on have to piece things together by talking to other people." Confirms Father Lombardi, the Vatican press secretary, with the hint of a sigh, "Before, I was in contact with the Curia and could ask them what the daily agenda is. Now, we have to discover what the agenda is. He is very free in organizing it."

No word yet on if the Pope has purchased 5 copies for his mother.

Comments

[Countme-In]

This guy is interesting, as in a world-changing kind of way.

[Countme-In]

Did we know that until Ezra Pound got hold of it, T.S. Eliot's working title for "The Waste Land" was "He Do The Police In Different Voices"?

[Countme-In]

Today, Under Armour merged with Armor-All to form a new corporation -- Under Armour All.

Not only will our thighs be cosseted in the finest wicking materials, but they will be buffed to a high sheen.

[sapient]

This guy is interesting, as in a world-changing kind of way.

It sounds to me like disappointment might be setting in. (Not in me, of course.)

[Countme-In]

Have a good weekend all.

If you're planning an ocean cruise, consider a freighter.

Noisy, lousy food, expensive, not much company, difficult to get a berth, but it will beat the buffet on Carnival Cruise's USS Hepatitis Class A.

Royal Caribbean's USS Vomitorium out of Miami has good salsa bands, I hear, and the lifeboats are equipped with stomach pumps for your evacuation convenience.

[Countme-In]

I'm an agnostic in religious matters, so disappointment is factored in from the get-go.

[sapient]

You're leaving, Count, before we can even read about the voices? Okay then.

[Doctor Science]

A couple weeks ago you ask me, lj, about my religious background.

My parents, both of whom are still alive, had what was then called a "mixed marriage": my father is an Irish Catholic from Brooklyn, my mother a Swedish-German Lutheran from north-central Wisconsin. Both were and are leftists and intellectuals. My father's family was working-class in the 20s, very poor in the Depression; my mother's family were factory-owners, so though things got tight in the 30s (*lots* of people living in the one house) they were never less than upper-middle class. They met in the 50s at the University of Wisconsin, thanks to the GI Bill.

As was usual with Catholic "mixed marriages" in those days, my mother "had to sign a paper", she bitterly recalled, promising to raise the children as Catholics. So my brother & I went to Catholic church and Sunday School -- but to public school, not to the parochial school.

I only realized years later that my father was part of the movement that led to the reforms of Vatican II: he was a close friend of Joe Cunneen, and there were always copies of CrossCurrents scattered about the house. My mother was always of a historical-intellectual bent: she was a charter subscriber to The Anchor Bible, volumes of which arrived on a regular basis.

So I grew up in a household that was very seriously and devoutly Christian, but in a way that was intellectually liberal and flexible. Where it wasn't flexible was about social justice. Indeed, when she was 80 years old my mother made the wrenching decision to leave the Lutheran Church -- because the local Lutherans had decided that they had to reduce their budget, and they cut out the soup kitchen. She moved over to the Episcopal Church, which was also wrenching (she *hates* the English! she's not too keen on bells & smells!), but they at least are talking about Christianity as she understands it. And the Episcopal Church and the Catholic Church are next to each other, so it's convenient -- though I think these days maybe they go to Episcopal services together most of the time, while my dad picks up extra Masses at the Catholic Church.

And so now I'm a practicing Jew (never converted, but that's mostly because my husband doesn't feel comfortable with it), and my brother is a Catholic priest (Capuchin). Is this a great country, or what?

[Countme-In]

Avoid the Spew Cruise on Dead Princess Lines' flaghsip, the USS Cramps Amidships, registered out of a mail drop in landlocked Mongolia with a Somali crew that, for some reason, joins the ship halfway to your destination.

[liberal japonicus]

Thanks for that Dr Science. You told me yours, so I'll tell you mine.

I was raised Methodist. Not sure how my mom, who emigrated from England, got involved in the Methodist, but it may have been because my dad was often at the Wesley Foundation at UW Madison. How he and his brothers got to be Methodist, when my grandparents were Shinto was that the minister, Terauchi, felt the best way to minister to the flock was to ride a bicycle around with bats and gloves, so my dad and his brothers ended up playing baseball a lot and got pulled into the church. So when my dad went to UW, he ended up at the Wesley Foundation.

My mom also went to a Catholic nursing school at this time, and so knew a lot about Catholic practice.

When the family moved to Maryland, my folks were quite involved in getting the First Methodist Church started where they lived, which I only found out after my father's death. When I was in JHS, we moved to Southern Mississippi and it was natural for us to transfer our church membership there and because I was in music, church choir and youth group was the place to go.

Here in Japan, my daughter had to study Christianity, so I looked over her notes, and she had names like Justinian and Constantine. Back home for my father's funeral, my brother said that the pastor who was at the church when I was in high school was back doing a special guest sermon, and going back to see a lot of people who were still there when I was a kid had me feeling mono no aware which I really don't have a good English translation for.

This was heightened when I came home and found my daughter studying for a test and when I asked her what it was about, she said Christianity, and when she showed me her notes, she had names and dates for people like Constantine and Justinian.

My wife (and therefore my family) has that Japanese thing where there seems to be a few things that we do, but it never translates into anything organised. Which probably accounts for a number of Japanese traits that are difficult to imagine in a population that has some mor substantial percentage of believers.

[chris y]

There are plenty of Methodists in England, she could have brought it with her.

[Countme-In]

The Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Tokyo firebombing discussion got me thinking again about the thread wherein we chewed over whether the extent of the decline of the American Indian tribe populations could be attributed to disease introduced by European settlement, etc.

I guess I never quite grasped McTX's side of the argument, and still don't, but maybe I'm thick.

At any rate, I decided to read Russell Thornton's "American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492", which was a bit heavy going early on because it is a lot of rather dry demographic scholarship trying to determine native populations before 1492 and you end up with guesses within wide ranges.

But, I recommend the chapters "Three Hundred Year of Decline: 1500 to 1800" and "Decline and Nadir: 1800 to 1900", in which very specific tribe by tribe population declines are provided over these time periods along with recorded instances of smallpox, measles, influenza, etc, not the sole source of decline, but much greater than some posited, I think.

In fact, the figures provided for many tribes approached 90%, especially during the 1800 to 1900 period, this for tribes in what is now the Midwest and then west of the Mississippi.

Of particular interest is the nearly complete disappearance of the Mandan along the upper Missouri, which it seems to me was treated as an unresolved mystery, when historical evidence almost certainly concludes they were wiped out by one of several smallpox pandemics in the 19th century, in this case the one between 1836-40.

On Sunday, July 30, 1837, the beloved Mandan Four Bears made a speech to his people, which is quoted on page 98 of this book, too long to transcribe here, but it moves from "I have loved the Whites" .... "I was always ready to die for them", to pronouncing them "Black harted (sic) dogs" and counseled his remaining remnant to "rise all together ans Not Leave one of them alive."

He recovered, with his face rotten from the disease, but starved himself to death in his wigwam alongside his dead family.

Nearly two centuries earlier, New England colonist Increase Mather wrote 'About this time [1631] the Indians began to be quarrelsome touching the Bounds of the Land which they had sold to the English, but God ended the controversy by sending the Smallpox amongst the Indians of Saugust, who were before that time exceeding numerous.'

Mather noted, Thornton relates, that entire towns of New England Indians were destroyed by smallpox, with not so much as a single survivor.

All this by way of kicking responsibility upstairs for Executive Privilege, I suppose.

Pat Robertson wondered if the tribes might have been gay.

The issue of deliberately-infected blankets issued to the tribes was also raised, by me, and set aside as, by me and others, because of an apparent lack of evidence of intent, but I came across this quote in Thornton's book:

In 1763 in Pennslyvania:

"Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of the British forces ... wrote in the postscript of a letter to Bouquest the suggestion that smallpox be sent among the disaffected tribes. Bouquest replied, also in a postscript, 'I will try to innoculate the{m} .. with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.' .. To Bouquet's postscript Amherst replied, 'You will do well to try to innoculate the Indians by means of blankets as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this exorable race'.
On June 24, Captain Ecuyer, of the Royal Americans, noted in his journal" 'Out of regard for them i.e. two Indian chiefs we gave two blankets and a handkerchief out of the smallpox hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect." (Stearns and Stearn, 1945: 44-45).

Shortly thereafter, tribes along the Ohio River Valley were virtually decimated by smallpox.

At any rate, I agree with Donald Johnson that our exceptionalism in nothing of the sort and that shortfall reveals itself throughout our history, though we do succumb to the ravages of second-guessing after the fact, which lends a certain improvement to our behavior guessing, but mostly to our high-minded self-regarding rhetoric.

I'm sure the words "extirpate" and "exorable" could be found in the historical record of discussions surrounding the fire-bombing of Tokyo as well, if I looked hard enough.

It's not that we are worse than any other people or country, it's that we are the same pretty much, when it gets down to it.

Yes, we want to bring freedom, democracy, and capitalism to the world so everyone has the same choices as we do among the Big Mac, the Whopper, and the Baconator.

Or else.

Thank you for indulging my additions to the smallpox thread.

[Countme-In]

There are a few feral words that make mysterious appearances in that comment, which are pretty obvious.

Sorry.

I'd add that our freedom to second guess and beat our breasts over our history, despite FOX News' and the usual suspects' (most of the media, for that matter) 24-hour per day attempt to shut us up on account of the political incorrectness (they term it political correctness) of our second guessing, in one American trait that is exceptional compared to many civilizations throughout history.

That, and the Baconator, one of which I've eaten and my eyeballs has to be injected with stains afterwards.

It was like eating Mount Rushmore.

[Countme-In]

stains?

Yes, but statins too.

[sapient]

"Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of the British forces ... wrote in the postscript of a letter to Bouquest the suggestion that smallpox be sent among the disaffected tribes. Bouquest replied, also in a postscript, 'I will try to innoculate the{m} .. with some blankets that may fall into their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself.' .. To Bouquet's postscript Amherst replied, 'You will do well to try to innoculate the Indians by means of blankets as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this exorable race'.

I think "we" need to blame the Brits for this one. Pointing fingers rather than breast-beating is way more fun.

I'm sure the words "extirpate" and "exorable" could be found in the historical record of discussions surrounding the fire-bombing of Tokyo as well, if I looked hard enough.

I wouldn't doubt it. There was a lot of hate going around. However, if "our" hope was to exterminate the Japanese, we could have done that by continuing to create and detonate bombs. We stopped when the surrender occurred.

It's not that we are worse than any other people or country, it's that we are the same pretty much, when it gets down to it.

We're all human, yes. I'm the same as Hitler, and you're the same as Stalin. Bush is the same as Obama, and Kissinger is the same as Samantha Power. Donald's the same as McKinney, and Lurker's the same as russell. We're all human.

[Countme-In]

"I think "we" need to blame the Brits for this one. Pointing fingers rather than breast-beating is way more fun."

No doubt, but at the time, "we" were the British.

I dare you to tell Andrew Jackson HE was British during the Trail of Tears resulting from the Indian Removal Act.

He'd sic the NSA on you. ;)

"We" had no problem with those ("our") British actions. I wasn't until they wanted to tax us that we raised a fuss, and then the Tea Party donned the Native American victimization duds, neglecting of course to infect themselves with smallpox, one feature too far.

Yet, for us, taxes were worse than smallpox.

[wj]

While we are sharing stories of our religious upbringing, let me offer another. (Note, the date is circa 1960.)

My parents were raised Lutheran and Episcopalian (I think). But by the time we came along, they didn't go to church much. Still, they thought it was the right thing to do, to send us off to Sunday school as kids.

Then one day, on the ride home from Sunday school, the following conversation occurred:
Mother: "So, what did you learn today?" (Just the sort of thing we got asked about school any day.)
Little sister (maybe 7 at the time): "Today I learned that we are born evil."
Mother: "Well, you weren't!"

And that was the end of Sunday school, and church, for all of us.

I suspect that all of my siblings still believe in God. Given a multiple choice test, they would probably check "Christian" or "Protestant" for their faith. But none of us embrace a theology which would fit with any Christian sect I am familiar with. And I doubt any of us ever see the inside of a church, outside of the occasional wedding.

[Countme-In]

Can I be Samantha Power?

Russell and McKinney would be my second and third choices, especially McKinney, because his marginal tax rate is so high.

I think Kissinger should be Hitler because he can already do the accent.

That leaves you with Stalin (Hitler, with the funny walk and all is just not you, which unfortunately means you can't be John Cleese either), so I'm sure the Ukraine will be spared, though their IP addresses heavily monitored, and Lurker with Donald.

The Kardashians will eventually date all of us.

[Nombrilisme Vide]

For my part, I was raised attending the Brethern Protestant church my parents had attended - indeed, had met through. For me, it was as more a social thing than anything else, though. I remember only really thinking about getting to visit my cousins when thinking about church, and in retrospect I can think of instances of pure cognitive dissonance between secular historical beliefs and what I learned in church. This was complicated when I started attending (public) grade school and started having weekly "religious ed" - a weekly hour of fundamentalist Baptist indoctrination; during school hours (though next door and off school property after the first year I was in it), with non-participation being strictly parental opt-out with the alternative being given an hour of busywork and forgoing the opportunity to get candy for memorizing Bible verses. Cognitive dissonance increased. This only ran through grade school, thankfully, though to my knowledge my old school district continued doing it up until 8 or 10 years ago.

Around 12 I seriously started considering theology, and my cognitive dissonance, and found theology lacking. It didn't help that my greying church was dying for lack of new blood around this time, so we had gradually stopped attending. I drifted into a vague agnostic Christianity, and from there into a vague agnostic monotheism, then agnostic deism, and finally around 17 or 18 agnostic atheism. At this point, I discovered the Internet, and the Usenet in particular, and within the hierarchy and flamewars of alt.atheism considered and refined my beliefs extensively, while developing Internet debate techniques that have stayed with me to this day. For that, I truly and sincerely apologize; I do my best to hide it, but my formative time on the Internet was spent in some of the most vitriolic pits of the Usenet, and despite my best efforts it still shows sometimes.

I ways fairly set in my ways by this point, though from around 21 or so I grew less contentious about it; I became much more open-minded and laid back, though still a staunchly agnostic atheist. In my mid-twenties, this changed slightly. Well, more than slightly. I became interested in Islam (for the Oldest Reason), and spent years trying to overcome my agnosticism enough to make Shahada. Ultimately, after years and years of observing Ramadan, very loosely (and inconsistently) keeping Halal, making infrequent Duha and occasionally even trying to get into the habit of making Salat, I finally gave up during the Ramadan I spent in Afghanistan. I'm too fundamentally agnostic to be capable of observing even an extremely theologically (and socially, duh) liberal Sunni Islam, not when the fundamental point of conversion and basis of faith is the certainty of Shahada.

Most of my family remain essentially of the same religious bent I was raised in: Peitist-esque Christians whose churchgoing is increasingly infrequent (though my parents did go through a period when they took my (much) younger brother to the local Unitarian church every week); more theologically liberal than socially liberal, but that's more in a quiet, reserved old-German-immigrant-family sort of way than a modern socially conservative sense. My older brother, who became a fundamentalist in his late teens, still sticks to broadly Brethren churches and while he and his wife are certainly more actively religious (and politically and socially conservative) than anyone else in our family, he still tends towards the same quiet and private faith the rest of my family cleaves towards.

[sapient]

The Kardashians will eventually date all of us.

More worried about the paparazzi than the NSA then.

[russell]

Little sister (maybe 7 at the time): "Today I learned that we are born evil."
Mother: "Well, you weren't!"

And that was the end of Sunday school, and church, for all of us.

Well done, mom.

This guy is interesting, as in a world-changing kind of way.

This is my feeling also. At a minimum, he at least sounds like a guy who's read Matthew 5-7.

I frankly am amazed he was chosen.

[russell]

my formative time on the Internet was spent in some of the most vitriolic pits of the Usenet

my first foray into online political discussion was Free Republic.

it was borderline hallucinatory.

[bobbyp]

pope, schmope...Seahawks by 3.14159 & change.

[liberal japonicus]

chris y points out that there are plenty of Methodists in the UK, which is true, but my granddad was a Freemason, which doesn't get along with Methodism, at least in the UK. I don't have any fix on my grandparents religious beliefs, my granddad was a WW1 vet who was widowed 3 times before marrying my mom's mom, my mom was married to an American in India who passed away there before marrying my granddad.

[wj]

bobby, when you start by picking up a safety on the very first play, you have to believe that it's going to be your day.

And when the other team doesn't even manage a first down in the whole first quarter, that only reinforces the idea.

[Ugh]

Totally called that one!

[thompson]

Ugh:

I don't think anybody saw that. I predicted (in hedging fashion) blowout by the Broncos OR slow grinding attrition match ultimately going to Seattle.

Blowout by Seattle?...yeah, I'd like to meet whoever called that.

[wj]

Well bobby did say "3.14159 & change." He just neglected to note that it would be a LOT of change!

[hairshirthedonist]

He just neglected to note that it would be a LOT of change!

You're being irrational.

[Slartibartfast]

You're being irrational

There's always room for pi.

[hairshirthedonist]

There's always room for pi.

I did a 180 when I read this.

[cleek]

I did a 180 when I read this.

there is no sin in this.

[hairshirthedonist]

there is no sin in this.

Not even tangentially.

[wj]

I'm waiting for someone to start the old engineering school cheer. The one that starts:

e to the x, dy dx
e to the x, dx
secant tangent cosine sine
3.14159
....

[cleek]

let's not get hyperbolic about this

[hairshirthedonist]

Why couldn't the mathematician get a bank loan?

[cleek]

his credit limit approached zero?

[Laura Koerbeer]

I thought the Broncos would win. Shows what I know about football.

Raised atheist by ex-Catholic parents. My dad had a Jesuit education. My mother's mother didn't' believe in divorce or birth control so she had nine kids by her husband who never supported the family, just showed up once a year to impregnate her. I sort of envy people who believe in an afterlife and I read mostly fantasy literature, but I don't believe. I was trained in skepticism..

[hairshirthedonist]

He couldn't get anyone to cosine.

[russell]

math puns are the worst.

[Donald Johnson]

"We're all human, yes. I'm the same as Hitler, and you're the same as Stalin. Bush is the same as Obama, and Kissinger is the same as Samantha Power. Donald's the same as McKinney, and Lurker's the same as russell. We're all human."

Most normal humans who don't answer to the names of either "Hitler" or "Stalin" are good at condemning the atrocities of those who are their enemies and ignoring those committed by their friends. Like the Syrian Christians described in this piece, who support Assad because they are afraid of "liver-eating cannibals" on the other side.

HRW commentary

[cleek]

math puns are the worst.

Carnot

[sapient]

I don't think that the atomic bombing of Japan was an atrocity. It was the use of a terrible weapon in order to end a massive world war. It's fine with me to study the history of the time to determine the context, to decide whether other options existed, to analyze whether the decision was reasonable, etc. Certainly people are entitled to make judgments about the morality of the decision and the decision-makers if they want to. I decline to do so.

I have known, during my lifetime, many people who fought in WWII, and who lived through it, some of whom went to Japan after the war and fell in love with Japanese culture and people. They understood the horrible results of the atomic explosions, and mourned the dead, and were horrified at the those who were mutilated and sickened. Many of them never wanted to see another war. Many worked for nonproliferation. Most believed, however, that the bombs put an end to the war and saved lives. Maybe they were wrong, but I am not prepared to judge them as evil.

We can't redo history with alternative facts, so we will never know what would have happened had the bombs not been dropped. But the motivations of the people who dropped the bombs were not the same as those who committed calculated genocide, torture, and terror.

We're all human, but our actions aren't all the same, even violent actions in war. False equivalence is destructive.

[sapient]

Oh, and as for the pope, I think he'll be responsible for bringing a lot of people back to the church. I just hope that his status as media celebrity (which is not his doing) doesn't soon turn into a reason for people to be hypercritical and "disappointed."

[Donald Johnson]

"But the motivations of the people who dropped the bombs were not the same as those who committed calculated genocide, torture, and terror."

The motivations were different and genocide wasn't one of them, but terror was. Truman threatened that if Japan didn't surrender, there'd be a rain of ruin the likes of which the world had never seen. I think this was supposed to frighten them. I hesitate to judge Truman, given that proposed "humane" alternatives might have killed more people. (I've seen some say that the continuation of the blockade would have ended the war eventually, but the obvious question there is how many people die because of the blockade and also under continued Japanese occupation.) But it seems just a little silly to say that they weren't trying to terrorize the Japanese. We use the term "terrorism" as an epithet so much, maybe it's jarring to say that the bombing of Japan was terror bombing, but how could it not be called that? And that was part of my point in the last thread--go down the list of "terrorists" today and it's not enough just to say that the tactic is always wrong. We can't say that if we think we were allowed to blow up or burn down cities. You want to get into motive--that's fine with me, but then everyone's motives and provocations have to be taken seriously. Is the PLO the same as Hamas and is Hamas the same as Al Qaeda and what about the various Syrian rebel factions? A few decades ago what about the contras or Savimbi's Unita group, which the Republicans supported on the grounds that they were fighting oppressive leftist governments? Do the Israelis get to bomb Gaza, but Assad isn't allowed to bomb civilians? How about neither of them getting to bomb civilians? But then why did we get to do it, and not just in WWII? I'm not interested in comparing Truman to Stalin or Hitler. Of course he wasn't Hitler or Stalin. I am interested in the American tendency to moralize about terrorism, except when we or our allies target civilians, in which case it's something else.

"False equivalence is destructive."

Hypocrisy and double standards on human rights, because we're the good guys and so how dare you compare us to the bad guys, is vastly more destructive. There's very little danger of moral consistency breaking out during wartime and even less of most people caring more about the atrocities of their side, except in cases (like the war on terror) when there really isn't any sort of existential threat. In total wars one can safely expect the rules to be tossed out the window. Americans have tossed the rule book out in much lesser wars than WWII. Nothing unusual about that, but we still think we're special.

I linked to the HRW post on Syrian refugees for a reason--it's interesting to look at a situation where most of us have no stake on either side and see how ordinary decent people on both sides can so passionately condemn the very real atrocities of their enemies and react with hostility when their own side's crimes are brought up. Are Americans somehow immune to this tendency? Not that I can tell.

[sapient]

I'm not interested in comparing Truman to Stalin or Hitler. Of course he wasn't Hitler or Stalin.

Well, good. Not sure why you're arguing this so hard, because that was pretty much my point.

We were discussing the manner in which we fought the Japanese, during a war that the Japanese started, a war in which the Japanese prevailed for a very long time, a war in which many human beings (including Americans, as a very small percentage, but mostly civilians) were tortured, brutalized, subjugated and killed by the Japanese army. We were talking about that, and the decisions that were made to end that war. We weren't talking about Syria or drones or Central America.

[sapient]

And, I forgot about the post-end-of-horrible-war-decisionmaking: the very elegant and generous peace. We actually helped to rebuild Japan. Sure, doing so was an excellent exercise in self-interest, but still: Japan did pretty well by it.

[Nombrilisme Vide]

during a war that the Japanese started

Jus ad bellum does not jus in bello make. Who started a war has no universal bearing on whether a particular act in war is just, unless you equate justice to punishment.

And since we're talking about outrages being committed upon civilian populations, that means you're equating justice with collective punishment.

a war in which many human beings (including Americans, as a very small percentage, but mostly civilians) were tortured, brutalized, subjugated and killed by the Japanese army. We were talking about that, and the decisions that were made to end that war

...by means of the brutal killing of many human beings (mostly civilians) by the United States Army Air Forces...

We were talking about that, and the decisions that were made to end that war. We weren't talking about Syria or drones or Central America.

Actually, no. We were talking about American exceptionalism, so we were talking about drones, and Syria, and Central America.

Or if you really, really want to insist that ObWi conversations aren't allowed to stray from the original subject (ha!), then still no. We were talking about the American firebombings of Tokyo, etc.

So yeah, either the topic of conversation can shift, in which case you're forced to hear untoward truths uttered about the saintly and pure US of A if you want to remain in the thread, or your conversational whipping boy is just as illegitimate a sidebar as that which you're trying to set aside out of some odd notion of purity of discourse. Either way, we were talking about American exceptionalism just as much as the motives, rationals, and morality of the parties that decided to terror-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[Hartmut]

And you are going at each other in the wrong thread. This one is about a papal not napalm topic.

[bobbyp]

Papalm, administered in small doses, is a soothing balm for some existential disorders. Large institutional amounts tend to be diluted by conservative secular tendencies that cannot be surmounted by either catholic or papal exceptionalism.

[Countme-In]

Various folk heroes of the conservative pandering anti-gummint dumbassery "movement" seem to be segueing their political grifting into even more entrepreneurial areas of batsh*ttery.

First up, he's both "off the grid" and he has a "TV Show". Peekaboo:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jesse-ventura-drones-mexico-off-the-grid

If I were DMX, I would have my seconds demand the ref frisk Zimmerman for shivs, eye-gouging instruments, and the obligatory piece he's carrying in his jock, and then proceed to kicking his f*cking murderous ass.

I'd also have Ted Nugent closely watched for the automatic weapon tag team handslap.

Turns out Zimmerman was taking boxing lessons before murdering Trayvon in cold blood (he was so unprepared for that wrestling match over Skittles) and then joining the conservative gravy train in this bullsh*t Republican culture we're cultivating:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/george_zimmerman_dmx_boxing

I wondered where she went. Victoria Jackson has two favorite things --- Jesus and show biz --- which pretty much sums up the right-wing prosperity gospel, fundamentalist, religious grift harnessed by the Republican Party.

Pass the hat and a little soft shoe for the thick and ordinary acolytes:

http://wonkette.com/541130/victoria-jackson-just-says-yes-to-running-for-office-all-wonkettes-fever-nightmare-dreams-comes-true

Combined IQ = 3, and that includes Louis Gohmert, Steve Stockman, and Sarah Death Palin) which leaves Paul Ryan's blue-eyed score of 97 (74 being scum line for following along by the numbers in "Atlas Shrugged") leading the conservative caucus.

[Countme-In]

I winder if Ryan would ever grant an audience to Pope Francis.

They could have a Gospel face-off. On pure poundage alone, Ryan's scared text would win.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTNlXcagcZY&feature=kp

[Countme-In]

You may winder too.

[Countme-In]

You may also have scared texts, you fraidy cats.